And incidentally, what part of "the property you own" is being used here? The cable modem, which isn't yours? The Comcast network, which you don't own? The wireless spectrum, over which you have no exclusivity? Your IP connectivity, which isn't affected?
I find it baffling that people can be so hugely resistant to such harmless ideas. Seriously, where does that come from?
The property you own that they are utilizing is just that, your property, or your estate. They are using the land that you work your entire life to rent or own to scan mobile devices around it and gather information which they are profiting from.
I just think it is a stretch to go from a simple cable modem (which customers could easily own, but they'd rather give away their natural right to control their own property for ease of use/access) which should just simply be providing access to the bandwidth you are paying for (like cable boxes would just provide you a connection to your TV channels of choice), to operating an internet service to anybody in your area.
What is the basis of your claim that they are using this as a way to 'scan mobile devices .. and gather information which they are profiting from'? What information? Profiting how?
Without facts, what you're saying is indistinguishable from any other conspiracy theory.
You say 'operating an internet service to anybody in your area' and in the main it's not "anybody" - it's Comcast customers. Of which you, if you are so affected, are likely to be one. Comcast using their equipment, their facilities, their network and their backhaul to operate an internet facility to THEIR customers.
The long and the short of services like this is that people - where they have a choice - are more likely to choose, or stay with, or be happier paying for, an Internet Service Provider if they get more value from it. If your Comcast internet service suddenly comes with the ability to access that service from wifi hotspots throughout the town or city where you live [and there's a great chance of there being a significant number of such hotspots available in a locale served by a dominant cable operator] then you, as a Comcast customer, are likely to get a good value from that.
Good value equals more and happier customers willing to keep paying the same or more. Simple business. No covert data-gathering and "seeing what people are doing" conspiracies required.
Fact: Once you have a XfinityWIFI added to your device and wifi turned on, you are automatically connecting to these hotspots.
Lots of customers don't understand the implication of this, which is that Comcast knows where you are located.
Fact: You can see a lot more information about devices connected to the an internet access point if you control the lowest routing layer. Just try hooking up a router into another router, and try seeing the devices connected to the first router on the second.
Giving Comcast control of routing the internet connection available on your property is allowing them to see details about devices in the area, which they would not see if they were simply providing you a single connection to a router that you own. Sure, plenty of providers had wifi built into their modems (all those crappy 2WIRE things), but at the very least the customer is able to set a password and control who Comcast is able to see is near their property. With this service it just seems like Comcast is making all it's customer's homes a tracking point for everybody else.
Why should customers be able to access the internet at random locations based on where other customers live? Isn't that what a mobile data connection is for? Sure, the more hotspots available the better, I guess, but if comcast wants to provide access to the internet it should create a technology that can do it without using other people's property/land/estate, and without being able to gather useful information about peoples' locations and maybe more detailed device and network traffic information.
Also, I don't know much about analyzing a single network interface for internet traffic from multiple users, like what we hear about the NSA doing at major internet hubs, but I assume a lot of work needs to be done to filter through information like that. I admit I don't have enough knowledge/experience/evidence/facts about networking, even though I did study computer engineering, but I will make an assumption (at least educated?) that if you have control over the lowest layer of routing you can get a lot more information about the activities taking place on the clients.