The Guardian / Oscar Williams

In an attempt to analyse footfall and demographics, Royal Parks are analysing mobile phone data, capturing and locating visitors up to 12 months after their visit. Using the EE network and a third party (Future Cities Catapult), Royal Parks used data captured during visits to their parks and stored for a four week period before being analysed. This allowed them to track the locations and movements of park visitors, where they had travelled from and other demographic detail. In recent years visitor numbers have hit record highs, but government funding has dropped, this data collection deal is one way of securing revenue to help with the £35million annual operating costs. Whilst by law, the data must not be identifiable, this form of data collection is controversial. The idea of public space must include some anonymity, surely if you don’t have the right to define that anonymity your rights have been taken away. With every company, including mobile phone companies, looking for new ways to increase their revenue streams, the sale of data has become big business, but questions about the privatisation of public space through data capture must be raised. The question will always be not whether these technologies can be rolled out in other forums and situations, but when they will be. In declining markets, telephony companies will always aim to increase their profits, it is only a matter of time until our data is captured in all manner of locations. How will this affect our day to day experiences? If our social media feeds are already covered in algorithmically determined personal adverts (for the products we search for on other platforms for example), what direct marketing techniques will be employed by companies once they know such a range of data about us?

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