As if London’s not had enough bad press thanks to the PRISM scandal, TechEye reports on more data harvesting in the British capital. This time, though, it’s less about spying on users for nefarious governmental purposes, and more about spying on them for nefarious advertising purposes.

The bins, part of a project called Presence Orb – run by a start-up company called Renew – are placed around London and have been tracking the smartphones of pedestrians, noting information such as movement type, direction, and speed. The information harvested would then be used to direct personalised ads at the people in those locations. Thankfully, it’s not as simple as advertisers tracking us and pushing ads to our phones. Instead, the data on users’ locations would simply be used to display relevant ads in their browsers or apps.

Renew runs the network of smart bins, of which only 12 were connected. The rest of its 100 recycling bins are just plain old digital advertising boards. It boasts that its system allows unparalleled data on the behaviour of users, which is inferred from the data. Its system is capable of calculating entry and exit points, as well as where users spend most of their time.

What do you think, though? More information harvesting and snooping? Granted, you can just turn off your phone’s Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to “opt out”, but that does mean you’ll be subjected to more generalised adverts. Oh, the humanity.