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. 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, traffic management, energy use and waste reduction. This serves to facilitate better urban planning and allows governments to tailor their services to the local population. Such technology has been implemented in a number of cities, including Santa Cruz, Detroit, Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Stockholm. Smart city technology has developed practical applications in improving effective law enforcement, the optimization of transportation services, and the improvement of essential infrastructure systems, including providing local government services through e-Governance platforms. This constant and omnipresent transmission of data from disparate sources into a single government entity has led to concerns being raised of these systems turning into ‘electronic panopticons’, where governments exploit data-driven technologies to maximize effective surveillance of their citizens. Such criticism is drawn from privacy factors, as the information sharing flows operate vertically between citizens and the government on a scale that undermines the concept of urban anonymity. 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. The technology available in smart cities includes extensive CCTV installations (such as in London and Dubai), smart traffic sensors in New York and crime prediction software in Santa Cruz, California.