MERL's (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories) presentation of a new surveillance system that doesn't use video but that tracks every footstep in a building you do would be more effective and would protect the privacy of people even better than CCTV, says Yuri Ivanov, one of the developers of the motion detection system at MERL. This system doesn't make pictures of you when you enter rooms and hallways, but it records your footage with several sensors thus enabling the controller to have a 'god's eye view' (Ivanov) on evereybody's movements in a building.

Certainly there are advantages of this system compared to older systems: facility management might improve escape routes based on the collected data, saving energy could be made easier by tracking people's stay times. But also every break somebody has and every walk to the toilet will also be detected to name just a few. Surveillance will be total, it will be possible to identify each one's position in no time. So this system won't 'preserve privacy' but it will just be ignored, or: more convenient, while scanning its data. Maybe most people will forget they're being tracked with every step they do. Maybe they think it isn't surveillance at all. I don't like the idea. (Source)