information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve the efficiency and sustainability of urban spaces while reducing costs and resource consumption.[1] In the context of surveillance, smart cities monitor citizens through strategically placed sensors around the urban landscape, which collect data regarding many different factors of urban living. 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. This serves to facilitate better urban planning[8] and allows governments to tailor their services to the local population.[9][10]
Such technology has been implemented in a number of cities, including Santa Cruz, Detroit,[11]Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Stockholm. Smart city technology has developed practical applications in improving effective law enforcement, the optimization of transportation services,[12] and the improvement of essential infrastructure systems,[12] including providing local government services through e-Governance platforms.[13]
This constant and omnipresent
transmission of data[8] from disparate sources into a single government entity has led to concerns being raised of these systems turning into ‘electronic panopticons’,[1] where governments exploit data-driven technologies to maximize effective surveillance of their citizens. 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]
Law enforcement
The most discernible use of smart city technology for Government Surveillance arises in law enforcement, where critics consider the accumulation of intelligence through
crime prediction software in Santa Cruz, California.[2] This technology holds the potential to significantly improve the type and volume of information that may be relied upon by law enforcement authorities when dealing with crimes. 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.
The English philosopher Jeremy Bentham created a circular prison design, known as the Panopticon, whereby prisoners knew that they were capable of being observed at any time without their knowledge – thus affording the prison officers a position of omnipresence.[51]
The French philosopher Michel Foucault re-conceptualized the notion of a panopticon as a metaphor for a ‘disciplinary society’, wherein power relations (and imbalances) can be defined and reinforced.[52] In such a society, power is seen to approach its ideal form by increasing the number of people who can be controlled.[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.[12] The commodification of surveillance in exchange for services has tended to normalise data collection and create indifference to panoptic developments in technology.[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.[14] In Durban, this panoptic "gaze" extends based on CCTV operator intuition due to a normalisation of the characteristics of criminals.[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.[54]
Police state
See also:
Surveillance state
If a shift toward mass surveillance came to fruition, it could give rise to the development of an electronic police state as a result of the increased surveillance capabilities and law enforcement activities. This represents a distinct narrowing of the purpose of surveillance to that of maintaining social order via improved law enforcement. Van Brakel argues that these changes have already taken place, and that the focus of police has gradually moved towards "front-loading" their intelligence systems with relevant knowledge that can be later sorted and used,.[14] Supporting this institutionalised shift, the House of Lords in the UK argued in 2009 that an advantage of surveillance activities is the ability for the government to provide a more tailored approach to governance,[28] and by extension, law enforcement.
Solutions
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.[12] Deakin argues that “smart cities” are not simply those that utilize ICT, but where such intelligence is tailored to meet the needs of citizens through community and environmental drivers.[55] Komninos refers to the three layers of intelligence in smart cities[33] as the artificial intelligence of smart city infrastructure, the collective intelligence of the city’s institutions and the intelligence of the city’s populations. By integrating these layers in the implementation process, smart cities may be able to overcome the issues of government opacity that plague them. One of the issues with establishing a legal framework for smart city technology is determining whether to take a technology-specific or technology-neutral approach.[56] Many technologies have developed too rapidly to be covered by a single technology-specific regime, while a technology-neutral approach risks being too ambiguous to encourage use or development of the regulated technology.[56] Further, most applications are too benign to be regulated, while other more controversial technologies tend to be enabled by the creation of legislation, such as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which established scenarios where police were able to carry out surveillance, with or without authorisation.[14] A challenge to these laws is currently pending in the European Court of Human Rights,[57] reinforcing the difficulty of establishing a suitable legal regime. One potential legal solution in the UK has been the development of the tort of misuse of private information,[58] which the English Court of Appeal held could potentially be breached by data collection, for which damages may be claimed.[59]
Studies conducted by Deakin and Campbell in 2005 identified three types of interaction between citizens and smart cities.[60] They concluded that citizens desire accessible and reliable information and seamless and responsive governments during transactions.[60] Further, any consultation with the community needed to be transparent and based on democratic engagement and accountability.[60] Bennett Moses et al. hold that the success of data-driven technologies is based on technical, social and normative dimensions.[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.[19]
Access
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’.[61] Increasing awareness of how, where and why data is collected by the Government establishes the groundwork for a non-adversarial approach to the use of data within smart cities.[61]
Barcelona is a city that has embraced smart city technology while maintaining public access.
This process minimizes perceptions of secrecy,[12] and cities that invest in multiple points of access, such as Barcelona with its Open Government platform[62] have seen growth in the use of smart city applications.[63]
Furthermore, this process has developed to allow individuals to access their own data in a usable format,[61] as seen through Barcelona’s Open Data project.[64] In this way autonomy is regained both in relation to awareness of how an individual is affected by the collection of data as well as participation in the actual application of this data to generate information, as new technologies are developed.
Accountability
In addition to general awareness of the intended purpose of data collection ‘before the fact’, accountability processes ‘after the fact’ are also required.[12] A potential measure is for responsible parties to be notified where some sort of discriminatory decision is made, thus allowing appropriate action to be taken.[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.[14] Further, opacity is often essential to predictive policing technologies, as transparency may encourage potential offenders to alter their behaviour to avoid detection.[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. Accountability is particularly relevant in the implementation stage
Implementation
The implementation stage of smart city technology is considered to be crucial, as the applications and platforms must be grounded in the “social capital, environmental and cultural attributes of the communities they represent”.
decision making and implementation process.[13] Confirming this, studies by Deakin et al. highlight that community backlash to smart city technology is minimized where e-government services are co-designed by governments and communities.[60] An example of collaboration at an extreme level was seen in Bletchley Park, where the Nazi Enigma cypher was decoded in what is often referred to as the first smart city.[33] More recently, citizen participation has been encouraged in Edinburgh,[67] where citizens are invited to ICT ‘taster’ sessions in local venues, enabling them to learn about the planning, development and design of new smart city technologies.[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. Trust acts as an empowering and engaging mechanism for citizens according to Finch and Tene.[12] This empowerment intelligence allows citizens to upskill[33] and assist in the development of innovative smart city networks, addressing areas not contemplated by authorities. In Hong Kong, such development takes place in the Cyberport Zone,[68] while in Amsterdam, “Smart Citizens Labs”[69] are designed for interaction between citizens and government. These mechanisms have resulted in large levels of enthusiasm for smart city technology,[13] as evidenced by the numerous crowd-sourced Amsterdam Smart City projects to date.[70]
Kista has implemented smart city technology using the Triple Helix Model with positive outcomes.
The Triple Helix Model for Smart cities, combining university, industry and government[36] in the development process is regarded as a potential benchmark for smart city development and implementation. Kourtit et al. advance that this model implements the knowledge generated from collaboration to tailor smart city applications to market needs.[71] Empirical studies conducted on smart cities in the Netherlands compared the level of ICT penetration to the city’s level of smartness under the Triple Helix Metric, finding a strong positive correlation. A live example of the Triple Helix Model in practice can be seen in the Kista Science City business cluster in Stockholm.[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. The success of Kista highlights the usefulness of the Triple Helix Model in Smart City implementation and provides a potential platform for cities seeking to introduce smart city technology in a manner that optimizes resident uptake.
Anonymity
When considering the potential for privacy law breaches, particularly within the smart cities context containing a vast scope of data that is available to the Government, data may often need to be de-identified to maintain privacy.[12] Whilst this may make it difficult to reconcile data collected from multiple services, it could still allow for the useful collection and aggregation of data for defined purposes. The E-CAF system (Common Assessment Framework),[76] where a database of all children assessed by government services (including police, social services and schools) is maintained by the UK Government, highlights how anonymity is fading due to data-driven technologies.[14] The system allows authorities to predict which children will commit crime in the future and allow them to intervene, based on a number of risk factors and profiling.[14] It is evident that citizens captured by the database as children will no longer be "anonymous" members of society. 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.
^ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzaaabacadFinch, Kelsey; Tene, Omer (2014). "WELCOME TO THE METROPTICON: PROTECTING PRIVACY IN A HYPERCONNECTED TOWN". Fordham Urban Law Journal. 41: 1581.
^Cerf, Vint (2013-11-19), "Keynote Address"(PDF), in Gilley, Stephanie (ed.), Internet of Things Workshop, Washington, DC: Federal Trade Commission, pp. 118–153, retrieved 2015-05-30
^O'Reilly, Tim (2010). "Chapter 2: Government as a platform". In Lathrop, Daniel; Ruma, Laurel (eds.). Open Government. O'Reilly Media. Retrieved 2015-05-21.
^Mayer-Schonberger, Viktor; Cukier, Kenneth (2013). "1". Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How we Live, Work and Think. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing.