Sure, technically the data is available at every town hall. But the process of collecting and collating it is vastly different than the process of collecting i

Sure, technically the data is available at every town hall. But the process of collecting and collating it is vastly different than the process of collecting it from an active mobile sensor kit in every home. Collecting official records required paid workers scaling linearly with every record, and yields info that is out of date at best (how many small renovations are done without permits?). In contrast, with these devices, your target pays you to buy and run the device, and it automatically collects live-up-to-the-minute data merely incidental to the standard operation of the device. Car analogy: Police can technically observe every speeding incident and issue tickets, but it scales only with the hours worked. Change that to collecting data from every car's internal sensors (engine RPM, gear, wheel speed, GPS location, etc.) and issuing tickets for every infraction. Most of us would get five tickets from the first commute vs likely going more than five years without one. Technically the exact same data availability, but the process of collecting it has insanely different results.