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.

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 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. 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", with less focus on identifying individual criminals to ascribe guilt and a tendency to classify and manage groups based on levels of dangerousness.

Policing Techniques

Proactive policing

Garland's culture of control theory has been used to describe the trend towards proactive policing in smart cities. In Palestine, there have been proposals to introduce GPS-based tracking systems to cars for the purposes of law enforcement within a modern urban environment. Here, the location and speed of every vehicle is recorded and transmitted to the local authority, with a fine issued if the speed of the car exceeds the limit for more than 10 seconds. The technology also holds the potential to relay information regarding accidents and traffic jams, allowing traffic to be rerouted. An extensive camera system in Amsterdam relays data regarding the traffic situation to a central control point, allowing authorities to warn motorists of incidents ahead or adverse weather conditions. Such technology has a combined preventative and deterrent effect on motorists committing traffic violations. By controlling the speed of vehicles, authorities may minimize one of the more common risk factors in vehicular crashes. 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. Such technology also enables police and emergency authorities to respond instantly to accidents that may occur. The extended ‘reach’ of the ‘long arm of the law’ could thus improve traffic management and efficiency, reducing energy consumption and improving civilians’ safety. There is criticism of the use of smart city technology for proactive policing. The constant monitoring of every vehicle's location couples with the panopticon-like concept of continuous law enforcement and introduces a level of individualistic paternalism, where citizens are deemed incapable of obeying traffic laws voluntarily. More controversially, GPS tracking and camera monitoring may be inappropriately suited to other high-risk behaviour (such as drunk driving and fatigue), which are also major factors in traffic accidents. There are also implementation difficulties, as older vehicles lacking GPS equipment would not appear in data streams, severely reducing the accuracy of potential analyses. There is also the risk of arbitrariness within proactive policing. GPS-based speeding enforcement would hold an individual driving above the speed limit for 9 seconds innocent whilst exceeding the limit for 10 seconds would constitute an offence. Such arbitrary measures do not account for the differences in car performance and remove discretion from law enforcement. 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.

Predictive policing

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