Serious question, did anyone else notice the new security cameras at the Denver airport?

I was picking someone up last month and saw they installed about a dozen new black dome cameras in the main terminal. They're all pointed at the floor, not the doors or ticket counters. A worker told me they're for 'crowd flow analysis,' but that seems odd. Why would they need that many cameras just to watch people's feet? Has anyone heard a real reason for this setup?

3 comments

3 Comments

angelaellis3mo ago

Actually, that crowd flow tech is pretty common now. Airports use it to reduce bottlenecks and figure out where to put more signs or staff. The angle at the floor is to track foot patterns while avoiding faces for privacy. It seems weird, but the explanation checks out.

angelaellis3mo ago

Yeah, the privacy angle makes sense. But I wonder if it also helps them spot unattended bags easier by tracking objects that stop moving in the flow.

ruby_lane23d ago

Actually, I gotta push back a bit on the "avoiding faces for privacy" part. Ngl, a lot of these systems still capture facial data in certain zones, just not in the main crowd flow sensors. The floor-mounted sensors are usually lidar or infrared, so they don't read faces at all, but airports also have separate cameras for security that absolutely do. Honestly, the privacy thing is more about marketing than full anonymization. Tbh, I've read a few audits that show the data gets matched to boarding passes sometimes if you're in a frequent flyer program. So it's not as clean-cut as they make it sound.