Surveillance issues in smart cities
Smart cities seek to implement information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve the efficiency and sustainability of urban spaces while reducing costs and resource consumption.
From these sensors, data is transmitted, aggregated, and analyzed by governments and other local authorities to extrapolate information about the challenges the city faces in sectors such as crime prevention,[2][3][4] traffic management,[5][6] energy use[6][7] and waste reduction.
Such criticism is drawn from privacy factors,[12] as the information sharing flows operate vertically between citizens and the government on a scale that undermines the concept of urban anonymity.
[12] The most discernible use of smart city technology for Government Surveillance arises in law enforcement, where critics consider the accumulation of intelligence through data collection strategies key to intelligence-based policing.
Most policing technologies developed within smart cities appear to have shifted law enforcement from "disciplinary" to "actuarial",[14] with less focus on identifying individual criminals to ascribe guilt and a tendency to classify and manage groups based on levels of dangerousness.
An extensive camera system in Amsterdam relays data regarding the traffic situation to a central control point,[5] allowing authorities to warn motorists of incidents ahead or adverse weather conditions.
[18] Similarly, by monitoring the location of vehicles through a mix of GPS and camera technology, authorities are able to react in real time to minimize heavy traffic incidents and therefore the likelihood of crashes.
More controversially, GPS tracking and camera monitoring may be inappropriately suited to other high-risk behaviour (such as drunk driving and fatigue),[18] which are also major factors in traffic accidents.
Extrapolating this lack of discretion across multiple areas of criminal law, with automatic enforcement being implemented as the norm, the potential for unfair outcomes and public dissatisfaction with such technology becomes evident, due to the relatively high risk of non-accountability by governments using these methods.
Although it is possible to envisage such law enforcement intervention as becoming the norm where smart city surveillance technologies have been adopted and implemented, predictive policing has raised a number of legal and non-legal controversies.
This means that officers must be able to “point to specific and articulable facts” that “warrant the intrusion”, or make a predictive judgment that the person is in possession of an item that related to the commission of an offence.
The ability to formulate such “reasonable suspicion” on the basis of big data algorithms is controversial, with some critics arguing that in the absence of active police corroboration of predictive forecasts, there are insufficient grounds to warrant an arrest.
[20] Further, the general nature of predictive forecasts is arguably incompatible with the acceptable standards outlined by the United States Supreme Court[20][26] with respect to specific individuals.
[12] The European Court of Human Rights has also acknowledged the disproportionate targeting of search powers against persons of colour in the UK,[25] highlighting the dangers of smart city technology in predictive policing.
[40] Critics of the increasing role played by data-based surveillance for the purposes of law enforcement foresee that such reliance could lead to issues in prosecuting individuals based on a probability-based crime system.
[12] Should an individual wish to appear “off the grid”, they are forced to employ a range of tedious measures (such as paying in cash only and not utilizing a mobile phone) in order to reduce their data footprint.
As much smart city technology is based on open platforms that are often outsourced[12] to private citizens and corporations, there are massive risks that PII may be unlawfully shared with third parties.
[12] Government surveillance is arguably driven by paternalistic desires to protect citizens;[12] however, the individualistic and tailor-made benefits delivered by smart city technology may reduce autonomy.
[52] In this regard, the development of smart cities and the resulting increase in the surveillance capacity of the Government gives rise to conditions which mirror that of the disciplinary society described by Foucault.
To this end, the development of smart cities are seen by its critics to foreshadow a larger societal shift - particularly the role adopted by the Government - towards mass surveillance, paternalism, discipline and punishment as a means to attain social order,[52] particularly in the United States, where the “Internet of Things” is being used to collect increasingly specific data.
[53] One of the major issues with Panopticism in the Smart Cities context is that the 'surveillance gaze' is mediated by the selective biases of the operators of any application or technology, as was shown by a study on the use of CCTV cameras in the UK, where the "usual suspects" tended to be targeted more frequently.
[54] Compounding these issues, digitally based panopticism usually views the "visibility" of undesirable characteristics as the problem, and often fails to adequately address matters that are invisible to the surveillance gaze.
In seeking a middle ground between the societal benefits afforded by big data and the resulting loss of privacy and autonomy, academics have proposed a number of solutions.
[19] This means that smart city technologies must satisfy citizens of their effectiveness, have a major beneficial impact that encourages uptake and align with generally acceptable ethics and values.
A potential solution to bridge the divide between the competing benefits and costs of big data surveillance is to turn the management of personal information into a ‘joint venture’.
[65] In data-driven processes, particularly in the fields of law enforcement, it is difficult to attribute responsibility to a single body or source, as often the information is derived from a number of different locations.
[19] Transparency processes however remain crucial to ensure that a panoptic view or electronic police state cannot be imposed, as it allows for a review of how decisions are made in relation to them and what criteria this is based upon.
[66] Such partnerships incorporate elements of democracy[66] and highlight how digitally inclusive decision making generates the requisite level of trust to support the implementation of smart city technology.
[72] Underpinned by the Stokab Model of government provisioned dark fibre,[73] more than 1000 companies[74] including multinational Ericsson,[75] the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and Stockholm University reside in Kista,[74] which has grown to become the largest corporate area in Sweden.
Given the potential government presumption that parties unwilling to share their information are inherently suspicious,[14] the difficulty of maintaining anonymity in modern smart cities is clearly quite high.
