Privacy by design
It counts people. It has no way to know who they are.
Threshold was built so that the private thing, who someone is, is never captured in the first place. That is a limit of the system itself, not a setting someone could switch off.
The rules it is built on
Six things Threshold does not do, in any industry.
- No facesNo facial recognition, no stored face data, no biometric templates of any kind.
- No following people aroundNobody is linked from one camera to another, or from one visit to the next.
- No stored imagesVideo is processed where it is recorded and discarded. Only counts and durations are kept.
- No guessing who someone isNo age, gender or ethnicity estimates.
- Private spaces are off limitsRestrooms, changing rooms, fitting-room interiors and medical rooms cannot be measured. The software refuses.
- Totals, not peopleReports hold totals and averages. There is no per-person record to request, leak or misuse.
What is kept
The whole record is a table of numbers.
For each space you mark, Threshold keeps a row every fifteen minutes. That row is everything it knows.
Kept
- How many people came in and went out
- How many were in a space, on average and at the peak
- How long stays lasted, as a spread of durations
- How long a line was and how long it took
- Whether each camera was working
Never kept
- Video, frames or snapshots
- Faces, or anything derived from one
- A path, a history or an ID for any individual
- Estimates of age, gender or ethnicity
- Names, phones, cards or devices
Where things happen
The video never leaves your building.
On your network
A computer at your site reads the recorder you already have. It only reads; nothing on the recorder or the cameras is changed.
Counted and discarded
Each frame is used to count and is then thrown away. Nothing is written to disk but the totals.
Only totals travel
What reaches your dashboard is the table of numbers above. A fully on-site setup is available where policy requires that nothing leaves at all.
Common questions
Asked by owners, staff and visitors.
Is this facial recognition?
No. Threshold detects that a person is present and where they are standing. It does not look at faces, does not store them and cannot match one person to another.
Can it tell whether the same person came back?
No. Nobody is recognised from one visit to the next, or from one camera to the next. A returning visitor is counted as a new one.
Can it be used to watch an employee?
No. There is no record for any individual, staff or visitor, so there is nothing to look up. Staffing figures are totals: how many people were on, against how much traffic.
Can someone ask for their data?
There is none to give. The record holds totals for a space and a time, and no row in it belongs to a person.
Does it change what our cameras record?
No. Your cameras and recorder carry on exactly as they do today, under whatever notices and policies already apply to them. Threshold reads the same video and keeps only counts.
Does it certify that we are within our occupancy limit?
No. The live headcount helps your staff manage a posted limit and keeps a log. It is an operating aid, not a compliance certification.
How accurate is it?
It depends on the camera and the space, so it is measured rather than promised: counts are checked against a manual count at setup, and the dashboard shows how each camera is performing.
Questions we haven't answered?
Ask us directly. We would rather lose a sale than have you unsure what the system does.