Is Quasi-MNPI The Ultimate Alpha Generator For Public Equities?

It seems like a lot of HFs across the stack of L/S, Quant, L/O and SM/MM seem to have an unusual focus on financial modelling and quantitatively synthesizing data using methods such as linear regressions and whatnot (I'm not a STEM major) versus just getting quasi-MNPI from human sources, which is much easier and cheaper than quant algorithms and data scraping and cleaning. 
 

What I mean by quasi-MNPI is basically using information from not-so-easily-accessible sources, think satellite photos, although that's old-school and obsolete now.

Here are a few examples I can think of the top of my head

• If you're a marquee platform with access to management, keep prodding them on a regular basis until they divulge quasi-MNPI to you. For instance, text the CFO on a weekly basis "so how's this quarter shaping up?" until he basically spills the beans
• If you're covering Disney, instance, hit up your college roommate's buddy who's a data scientist at Uber and ask him about the latest activity levels and trends in rides around the Orlando areas
• If you're covering Carnival Cruises, have a couple contractors posted at Cape Canaveral and Nassau counting the number of passengers who walk on/off every single cruise ship equipped with binoculars, pen and paper
• If you're covering Walmart, have a buddy who's in IT at Hasbro's straight up send you screenshots of their orders from Walmart this fiscal quarter
• If you're covering P&G, slip someone who works at Cincinnati's private airfield 200K to send you a photocopy of P&G's corporate jets charters and flight logs, especially if the CFO or Head of CorpDev is onboard
• If you're covering Tesla, have dock workers in a port in Shanghai email you the number of Tesla shipments (by TEUs or weight) heading across the Pacific each week

Note that I'm unsure of the legality of what I just mentioned above as I don't come from a law background, but they all seem like highly legitimate ways to generate alpha and triangulate accurate earnings predictions from diversified and uncorrelated data sources.

Additionally, there's really a huge amount of underpaid middle management employees at each company who would likely jump at the chance to give you actionable MNPI for a 50K one-time cheque.