Yahoo's spying billboard: It would ID you, watch and listen to your reactions to ads

Yahoo's idea is for the billboard's ad content to be based on real-time information about a crowd of people, who could be commuters on a train platform. Hacked web giant Yahoo has filed a patent application for the ultimate ad-targeting system: a billboard that uses sensors to watch, listen and capture biometric data from the passing public. Yahoo, still in damage control from this week's claims that it helped the government spy on its email users, has filed a patent for smart technology that brings online ad-targeting capabilities to public billboards. The billboards would have cameras, microphones, motion-proximity sensors, and biometric sensors, such as fingerprint or retinal scanning, or facial recognition, according to the patent, which was filed last year but published on Thursday. The sensors would be used to measure engagement of passers-by. "For example, image data or motion-proximity sensor data may be processed to determine whether any members of the audience paused or slowed down near the advertising content, from which it may be inferred that the pause or slowing was in response to the advertising content (eg, a measurement of'dwell time')," Yahoo writes.