Frisco Approves $345K Placer.ai Deal After Questions Over Location Tracking

By R.J. Morales | TX3DNews

FRISCO — Privacy questions surrounding Flock cameras have already reached city halls across North Texas. In Frisco Tuesday, a different location-data service prompted some of the same questions.

Frisco City Council voted 4–2 to approve a three-year, $345,136 expansion of Placer.ai, a platform the city uses to analyze attendance at events, where visitors come from and traffic at businesses and attractions.

During a roughly 25-minute discussion, council members questioned where the data behind those reports comes from and whether it could be sold to third parties. Council Member Jared Elad pointed directly to the recent controversy over Flock cameras, saying, “I’m sure you’ve seen recently in the news about Flock cameras — privacy and data.”

What Placer.ai does

Placer.ai turns location data collected from mobile devices into estimates of how people move through real-world places.

For Frisco, that means the city can use the platform to estimate how many people attended an event, where they came from, how long visitors stayed at a location and what other places they visited.

The company says it receives location information through third-party mobile apps and mobile-data partners. It does not publicly identify every app or provider supplying that information.

Placer says identifying information is removed before it receives the data and that customers see aggregated results rather than the movements of individual people.

Frisco has used Placer since last year, and staff told council its use has grown well beyond the original tourism-focused contract.

Frisco says it uses Placer regularly

Josh Dills, assistant executive director at Visit Frisco, told council the original contract was limited to 10 users and focused largely on tourism and events.

He said the city now uses Placer for Visit Frisco reports, economic-development prospects, Stonebriar Centre analysis, the city’s gift-card program, sports venues and grant applications.

One major use is providing attendance information for Texas’ Event Trust Fund program.

“That program generates a few million dollars a year to offset these events,” Dills said, adding that some of those costs include police and fire services.

Asked whether Frisco needs Placer every year, Dills said the city uses it “on a pretty much daily or weekly basis.”

He pointed to a report he sent earlier that day measuring attendance at Dallas Cowboys training camp and where visitors came from. Dills said the expanded agreement would allow more city departments to use Placer directly instead of relying on Visit Frisco to pull the information for them.

Questions over the data

The discussion turned to where Placer gets its data and what happens to it.

Elad pointed to recent concerns over Flock cameras before asking how Frisco could know information collected by Placer would not be sold to third parties.

Dills said Frisco receives aggregated information, including foot-traffic counts and visitor origins, rather than individual data or device IDs.

“We are not getting any individual data,” Dills said. “We’re getting aggregated data.”

But when asked whether the agreement could prohibit the sale of data to third parties, Dills said, “I don’t know. We definitely could look into that.”

He later added, “It’s a private company. I don’t know what their ability is to sell that data.”

That left council divided over whether to vote that night or first get more answers from Placer.

‘Put that in writing’

As council members pressed for more details about how the data is collected and protected, Dills described safeguards he said are built into Placer’s system.

He said Placer does not see or store names, phone numbers, emails or specific addresses and blocks reports when fewer than 50 devices are in a sample.

“If all that’s true, then put that in writing,” Council Member Burt Thakur said.

Thakur said he was not accusing Placer of violating residents’ privacy but wanted more information about where its geolocation data comes from and how it is used.

“That’s what I’m just trying to ensure, that the privacy of our citizens are not being violated,” Thakur said. “I’m not saying that they are doing it, but we don’t know exactly what they’re doing and how they’re gathering.”

He proposed delaying the agreement until the next meeting while staff contacted Placer for answers.

Dills said Frisco is paying for “the analysis and the aggregation” of information Placer already collects. City Manager Wes Pierson added, “We’re not giving them any data.”

Council moves forward

Thakur’s motion to delay the decision until the next meeting failed, leaving the Placer agreement before council for a vote.

Laura Rummel moved to approve it, with Angelia Pelham seconding the motion.

The agreement passed 4–2 after council declined to delay the decision for additional answers from Placer.