Cities are getting smarter. The smartest among them deploy a host of information communication technologies from high-speed communication networks to sensors and mobile phone apps in order to boost mobility and connectivity, supercharge the digital economy, increase energy efficiency, improve the delivery of services and generally increase welfare. Becoming “smart” typically involves harnessing troves of data to optimize city functions—from more efficient use of utilities and services to reducing traffic congestion and pollution—all with a view of empowering public authorities and residents. Notwithstanding global enthusiasm for hyper-connected cities, this futuristic wired urban world has a dark side. What’s more, the pitfalls may soon outweigh the supposed benefits.
In the latest edition of Foreign Policy, SecDev Group’s Robert Muggah and Greg Walton find that “smart” is increasingly a euphemism for “surveillance”. Cities in at least 56 countries worldwide have deployed surveillance technologies powered by automatic data mining, facial recognition and other forms of artificial intelligence. Urban surveillance is a multi-billion dollar industry with Chinese and U.S.-based companies such as Axis, Dahua, Hikvision, Huawei, and ZTE leading the charge. Despite their promise to improve human welfare, there are growing concerns about the ways in which supercharged surveillance is encroaching on free speech, privacy and data protection. But the truth is that facial recognition and related technologies are far from the most worrisome feature of smart cities.
Across North America and Western Europe, tensions over smart cities can be distilled to concerns over how surveillance technology enables pervasive collection, retention, and misuse of personal data by everything from law enforcement agencies to private companies. Debates frequently center on the extent to which these tools undermine transparency, accountability and trust. There are also concerns (and mounting evidence) about how facial recognition technologies are racially biased and inaccurate. This helps explain why in the two years since San Francisco banned facial recognition technologies, 13 other U.S. cities have followed suit. By contrast, in China, racial bias seems to be a feature, not a bug—patented, marketed, and baked into national policing standards for face recognition databases. What is more, Chinese companies are rapidly bringing their technologies to global markets.
But a narrow preoccupation with surveillance technologies, as disconcerting as they are, underestimates the threats on the near horizon. Smart cities are themselves a potential liability—for entirely different reasons. This is because many of them are approaching the precipice of a hyperconnected “internet of everything,” which comes with unprecedented levels of risk tied to billions of unsecured devices. These do not just include real-time surveillance devices, such as satellites, drones, and closed-circuit cameras. By 2025, there could be over 75 billion connected devices around the world, many of them lacking even the most rudimentary security features. As cities become ever more connected, the risks of digital harm by malign actors grow exponentially. One of the paradoxes of a hyper-connected world is that the smarter a city gets, the more exposed it becomes to a widening array of digital threats.
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