It’s probably something like Apple’s Face ID sensor, which is a “camera” in the strict sense of the word but it captures a depth map rather than an image. I’m willing to believe that they aren’t transmitting images or even raw depth maps over the Internet (for one thing, it would be a lot of data and it’s hard to conceive of what the use of such data would be), but they are almost certainly attempting to correlate demographic information, or possibly even individual users, with specific purchasing patterns.
They don't have to transmit images. It's enough to generate a unique hash that can track your activity in the presence of the panopticons. Sweeten the deal even more by capturing your IMSI for future reference.
Is the "USB optical sensor" really a hidden camera, and "digital image maps" is images from the hidden camera?
If so, then are they also being weaselly in the rest of the sentence?
> without storing such data on permanent memory mediums or transmitting it over the Internet to the Cloud.”