conflicts. >> a reminder you can always keep up-to-date on the latest news including our top story and that is the conflict in gaza. we have analysis, features, interviews. everything you could want on www.aljazeera.com. >> hi i'm lisa fletcher and you're in the stream. walking down the street in chicago may now have a lot more meaning as city officials plan to attach dozens of sensors gathering data from everything from pedestrian movement to air pollution. online data, what happens to it after we die and who has rights to it? and later, struggling mom and pop shops and unrealized retail

concepts, as locals turn to crowd funded real estate investments. ♪ ♪ >> digital producers and co-host wajahat ali is here. it's always an interesting question, waj, information is knowledge how much is too much and how much is it getting into our personal business? >> exactly. i play video games for research. >> you tell your wife? >> so i tell my wife and all my co-workers. there's a game called watchdog out. chicago much all cities which is a hyper-connected city connects data on all its citizens, you have to hack in to do good against evil doers. we asked our community, is all this good?

daniel says, the use of metadata only helps communities and people. but the concern here is privacy. >> yeah, we're going otalk about it. the city of chicago may soon be able to sense what's happening in some of its busies areas. 50 sensors to downtown light poles to aggregate data ranging from noise to other conditions. track things like pedestrian movements. researchers say the information will improve city planning and while it will be available to the public via an open-data website some are concerned about the scope of the collection. and broader implications when with it comes to privacy. joins e-joining us is charlie, a scientists working on the chicago sensor project. john, currently president of the

engineering firm positive energy practice, which promotes environmentally responsible design. and here in washington, d.c. justin brook little, center of democracy and technology. charlie, about 50 sensors going up by the end of the year. i mentioned a couple of things. what data are you most excited about collecting? what will these sensors do that hasn't been done before? >> what's different about this project is it's a platform for sensing and other services that you may want to try out in a major city. the data we're collecting is primarily environmental and i would actually accessory it as not the -- characterize it as not the city watching people but the people watching the city. what this will do is publish air quality information, light, noise, things like that. >> what is to gain that people don't already know? >> as we get more sophisticated

sensors for example sensors this will be able to detect upon, d , mold, and other things, in the evening you might want to navigate yourself through a path that has the most pedestrians present. >> so justin, one of the concerns that some people have with this project because some of it is connected to cell phone data is that it's a bit of an invasion of privacy. what are your thoughts on this? >> yeah, i mean, i think it could be done in a way that's pretty privacy-preserved. there is not a lot of information about exactly how it will work, right? threthere are sensors, micropho, cell phone personal device has a lot of unique identifiers tide to me. is the city of chicago going to

collect this information? what i've heard online is they're trying odesign it in the right way. citizens trying to assess, are they keeping logs where i go? for people to figure out what's going on or what they plan to do. >> lisa, this is a new technology, open data, can be accessed by everyone. there is a question by 18th-capital. where will all this data be stored? who will have access to the data and what other data do centers have ability to capture. john this is a question for you. >> sure. the data being captured is from the sensor array that charlie has put together. not collecting -- phones themselves are not the sensors here but i think the process ever collection is transparent that is that you know that something's happening around you. this is probably signage for instance at the base of the pedestal where these are. but also, the city has a number of years now behind it of you know building up a lot of trust

with the public, publishing open data. you know there's millions of rows of open data on the portal and people have become dependent on that, where the buses are, taxis are, trains are. this is data not collected by mches, it imachines, it is colly citizens as the bus trackers and train trackers and those sorts of things. >> charlie but what if the government changes its mind about how they want to use these sensors? who is monitoring or not monitoring this data? >> what john mentioned in terms of transparency, ought the sensors in the array, all new sensor that goes in, any new software that will go in is going to be reviewed by a technical review team that looks at security and privacy. and it's an external team to the project. that team will advise the

executive governance body which includes people from the city, scientists, as well as representatives from the community, and they will ultimately decide what's acceptable to do in these sensors and what they prefer not be done. >> so john, you know, obviously this type of data could be worth millions of dollars. there are people that are concerned that some of the industry groups or businesses that the city's partnered with like motorola and cisco could find great value in this sort of data. what prevents the city from withholding some of this data, and then selling it to the highest bidder? >> well, for one, it's not the city of chicago's data. what the city of chicago is doing is permitting its fracture, in thiinfrastructure,d

that type of thing, this is taxpayer data, citizen data, generated by people using the city. not by some sort of secondary party. so it's really not in the city's ability to do that. this particular project is an academic project, that intends to make it public. >> well john, earlier you mentioned that the chicago residents have trust. isa disagrees. don't have personal experience, the trust factor is gone with citizens of chicago and the mayor. and justin to quote peter parker, who quoted uncle ben, with great power comes great responsibility. what would you say that the government and the city not abuse the technology and keep it maintained for good? >> better clarity, bright line rule for what you're not allowed to collect. i went to the data.chicago.gov

today. i tried to determine what the limits are. there are no limits whatsoever. the only information, they don't use cookies and that was a lie, they actually collected cookies from my search. i'm not trying to tell the city of chicago or anyone elsewhere i am, i'm just trying to find a hot spot. if you are trying to use that to generate logs on people's where they go, that's really a hot topic. and information they're knot going to collect and not going odo. >> charlie why don't you respond to justin's concerns and after that tell me what you hope to gain from these sensors five years down the road. >> i guess i would respond to justin saying all the things you are describing are the things that we intend to do. and i would agree that our web

presence could be a little more detailed about that. it also is important to point out we've started this discussion before any of these things have gone up on polls. and we won't put them on polls until all this information is available. i mean not just the policies but the software and hardware specifications of what's in that box. so the transparency we're working on getting that there and by the time these things are deployed that transparency will be there. >> and charlie five years ago down the road. >> five years down the road as we get better sensors, the next wave of sensors is really focused on air quality, sulfur dioxide, we already do carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. the things we measure in terms of quality, those are some of the first targets we want to go after in terms of more information. as i mentioned before in the next few years we'll see centsors that can pick up things

like pollen or mold. people would want to know if the pollen count is high in this particular part of the city to avoid that part of the city. >> thanks to our guests, nice having you here. when you come back, these days are more than one to leave a living plig legacy, especially online. how do we bury our presence when we all go? and later would you spend as little as $100 to own a piece of your town. the surge in crowd investing and what it means to local communities.

in coming forward, is to help change the culture of sports >> an america tonight investigative report only on al jazeera america

>> hi, my name is natalie, i'm from chicago, illinois and i'm in t "the stream." "the stream." >> welcome back. the uniform law, gives family members the right to access their deceased loved ones social media and e-mail accounts. sparks the question, who should have custody of these things? ben and carl.

be being and one of the things he focuses on is privacy issues. thanks for being here gentlemen. ben, the ulc is proposing laws to govern a person's online materials after they die. what would your law do and why do you think it's necessary? >> well it's necessary because in the predigital world we had a well established process of distributing the property of people when they die. it goes to probate court. and to administrator the estate of the deceased and they distribute that property in the way the deceased person wishes. much of our property is now online. our photos, instead of in albums we store them on the internet. the same thing as our documents, they're not in file cabinets, they are online or on a server somewhere. what the law does is gives the ability, to the account holder

to you and i who have these online accounts to say in our will or our trust or our estate plan where we want this information to go after we're gone. >> so carl under this proposed legislation if a person doesn't make a choice about how their digital material is to be used or not used after they die, it defaults to everything being available and going to next of kin. do you have reservations about that? >> it's a great question. and of course i do. one of the problems is that most americans actually die without a will, more than half of americans today don't have a will. so the idea of designating where our stuff goes, in a will, just doesn't really work. so the idea that the state will come in and say, well, all of your e-mails, all of your communications, all of your twitter posts, all of your facebook messages are just exposewhen you die, i think that really strikes a tough chord with those of us who consider

the privacy of our users to be a top priority. and what i would rather see is, rather than the state coming in and setting the default privacy stand ozero, to allow the users and the custodians and the services that they interact with to kind of take hold and get the first crack at what the user's privacy should be rather than set the bar at the bea bare minm for the state and trust attorneys. >> well lisa most of our community like dan says wow. i never even considered that. this is a brave new world for them. >> great point. >> and talks about the diligently demise. 31,000 facebook users died in the first year of its existence. quez tquestion to ask, who ownsy data?

what happens when a friend or family member passes? the google page, the inactive account level, how do i report a deceased person, or an account that needs to be memorialize being -- >> all of this is confusing. >> i've never thought about this. has made me think about my digital mor mortality. i have not written my nonare dlilnon-digital will. two decades later, he ends up as a hologram. to control your digital footprint and identity after

death. >> that's the option. if tupak had written a will perhaps he would have said he didn't want that to occur with his assets after he was gone. but i'd like to distinguish something that carl has cell said. there's one thing to grant access by a trusted fiduciary. but another to make it to the general public. whether a fiduciary has access to that information doesn't mean that that information then gets revealed to either the public or to family members. the trusted fiduciary is somebody who can disloo delete t information when appropriate and close the account and the issue is not whether your information remains private after you're gone but who decides whether your information remains private. google and an facebook decides what remains available or whether it's public or private.

>> what if letters under the bed or a journal or locked cabinet of documents that a family would have access to once a person dies? >> that's a good question. a lot of the state's attorneys that i discussed thissal eyes te to, rather than keeping a box full of my letters in my closet, i instead hand them to my friend david. i say david, when i die i want you to delete, burn all my letters. the trust and state's attorney can go through my dresser and look through my closet and look through my letters, but they can't go through david's house. that's what the trust and estate bar is is trying to do here today. it's important to note that the ipad is only four years old, the iphone is oafn seven years old and google is not old enough

to vote. when we were creating these innovative services we weren't thinking about user erchtd of life but we are now. we are giving specific control over what happens to their accounts when they die. the reference was made to the google inactivity manager, the facebook memorialize. even yahoo is is dealing with inactive account me manager conl right now. i'd rather have the user determine rather than the state decide what happens to my e-mail and my content when i die. >> the state is trying to seek uniform legislation on this tithe type of thing. >> when you die it's a matter of state law how that property gets distributed. so really it's necessary to work with the states but this is one area where the law should be uniform from state to state

because digital assets cross state lines so easily. >> is it possible since you're talking about google and yahoo and global communities, is it possible to keep everything the same across the board? >> conceivably it could happen. we're going to work with the existing raw -- you la in the states had we have now. i agree with carl, i commend google for providing choice to their consumers. i believe when the law ufada is enacted in the states it will refer to those services that are provided by companies like google account manager. the only reason companies are moving that direction is because of the digital assets act that is going to override some of the terms of service agreements that maybe they would prefer people

didn't know about. >> mohamed says privacy should be constituted by the individual whether dead or alive. carl, this is a being brand-new world but how can we balance it with prierves concerns. quickly your thoughts. >> first we need to respect the privacy interests of the user. industry is giving the user more control. second if we are going to move forward unfortunately the bill that came out of the uniform law commission isn't the way to do it. i would defer and recommend people look at the law that's been around sings 1927. there is a federal prieives law that preempts all states and unfortunately the uniform law commission hasn't addressed it. >> gentlemen we're out of time. i'd like to thank you for your insights. still ahead, how average locals across america are staying control of their city's

development using crowd funded microinvestment. who's benefiting? see you in two minute. conflict, stay with al jazeera america, your global news leader.

borderland only on al jazeera america >> welcome back. you can invest as little as $100 in your town and own a piece of it. autopsies like that are popping -- apps like that are popping up all over town, dan, one of his investors, michael, who is on skype from washington, d.c. thanks so much for being here. dan i love the concept of giving

everyone an opportunity to invest in real estate. but if somebody's investing 50 or $100 how does that translate into something of real value? >> sure, it's really all built on lines. you can go to the website and invest directly. when someone is investing at the $100 level, it is about being a part of something around them. but we have investors as high as 50 or 100,000. so there's real scale capital being invested. >> michael why did you invest? >> i had originally sought it as a way through the food angle being involved through the restaurant from a chef i really liked. and he it was about being invested in my community where i live. >> by being invested you're supporting the community. >> yes. >> are you expecting to make money off of this or does it really matter? >> for me it's really not about making money. making money would be obviously great but it's really a way to

be involved and to own part of my community and feel likely i have -- like i have ownership and in the community that i live in and plan on continuing to live in. >> that's interesting. did you feel that people would be making donations to their community rather than expecting a return? >> we thought it would be a blend. right now people have investments that nothing you can connect to or nonprofit donations where there's a whole separate world, there's no perceived return. but they like the architecture. they like to make money on the building but michael is saying, he's connected to that area, he wants to help the businesses that are happening. >> here is fun rise. 300,000 raised from the crowd, 8% expected return, the average age is 37.

we asked our community what would you invest in for your local neighborhood, cheeryo said, i would invest in schools, water taps, and college education for kids. aaron said, i would invest in the local store. life is very difficult. michael, are you concerned, for communal empowerment, it may be used by some of the elves that dan was saying, that was not concerned about community empowerment but the return on investment? >> the great thing about fund rise, you had to live in the d.c. area, you couldn't come in and just invest a massive sum and just expect to make a lot of money. i've met loot of investors and there are a lot of people that just really want to be involved in the community. everywhere is the chance for

people to you know stay advantage of it in a negative fashion. but i think with fundraising there is a bigger focus on community. >> dan, give me an example of what would exist if not for fund rise? >> a young chef without much credit, not someone that normally a business would lend money to. a local community investment, helps support the real estate and get the local businesses open. i think this is going to be an exceptional place and something very difficult but for local investment. >> all right. interesting concept. thanks so much to dan and iblg momichael and the others on our show. until next time, waj and i will see you on the website.

>> hello and welcome to al jazeera america. i'm del walters. these are the stories we're following for you. despite a seven hour partial truce more civilians die in the israeli-gaza conflict. toledo's city officials say the water is okay to drink but the problems are yet to be solved. thousands of people nearly cut off from the world.