Are Smart Cities Unconstitutional? And Stop X-Mode
Whose Streets? Our Streets! (Tech Edition) Issue 4
Whose Streets? Our Streets! (Tech Edition) documents trends in the surveillance of public space. Curated by Rebecca Williams and Madeleine Smith as part of "smart city" surveillance research for the Technology and Public Purpose Project at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center. Subscribe now so you don’t miss an issue and help us spread the word to folks who would enjoy this content.
City Watch
Columbus, OH, U.S. - “The Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) is embarking on a grant-funded project — along with the state Department of Transportation, 12 surrounding counties and others — to set up what could very well be a data fusion effort unprecedented in scope.” [Government Technology]
Montana, U.S. - “Montana Highway Patrol started using drones and photogrammetry software to examine crash scenes.” [Government Technology]
Various EU Cities - “Billions of euros in public funding flow annually to researching controversial security technologies, and at least €1.3bn more will be released over the next seven years.” [The Guardian]
Various Global Cities - “How Smart Cities Succeed or Fail: Uncovering the impact of governance regimes on data sovereignty and surveillance” compares the case studies of smart city use in Barcelona and Singapore (successes) versus Dubai and Rio de Janeiro (failures). [Dialogue and Discourse]
Various U.S. Cities - “A recent survey of more than two dozen officials from 20 transit agencies found that cybersecurity concerns and protocols were inadequate across organizations of all sizes.” [Government Technology]
Market Watch
Cell phone location data - “Apple and Google to Stop X-Mode From Collecting Location Data From Users’ Phones. After the data broker came under scrutiny for national-security work, tech giants tell app developers to remove trackers or lose access to their operating systems.” [The Wall Street Journal]
Smart cities -
“Smart City Forecasts Ignore Budget Realities...cash-strapped local governments will be hard-pressed to transform cities if the current Covid-driven exodus continues. That reality, unfortunately, takes much of the bloom off the rosy smart-city forecasts.” [EE Times]
“With 36 buildings, 25,000 employees, and hundreds of acres of land, the San Diego campus of telecommunications giant Qualcomm is almost a city in itself. That made it the perfect testing ground for a suite of new technologies aimed at making spaces and cities smarter” [Fast Company]
“Globally, Singapore is the current top smart city investor, followed by Tokyo, New York and London. Regionally, the U.S., Western Europe and China account for over 70% of the world’s total spend on smart cities, with Latin America and Japan experiencing the fastest growth in spend.” [Forbes]
“As the ‘smart city’ movement continues to grow — making local governments more reliant on traffic cameras, environmental sensors and other internet-connected gizmos — a leading nonprofit group wants to create a platform to help city officials ensure that their efforts don’t discount cybersecurity.” [StateScoop]
Veritone’s biometric applications - “Veritone has joined a growing list of companies leveraging Nvidia’s chip and software market presence in AI to speed up biometric identification and other applications.” [Biometric Update]
Policy Watch
Baltimore, MD, U.S. - “…an independent audit showed police made false statements about how mass-surveillance data was being used…The revelations in the new audit could substantially affect the court’s decision to hear the ACLU’s appeal and, if it does hear that appeal, how it will rule. ” [Motherboard]
Hangzhou, China - “China’s first lawsuit against facial recognition was a victory for privacy advocates. But there’s a limit to how far they can push against surveillance.” [VICE]
Massachusetts, U.S. - “Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has returned a police reform bill back to the state legislature, asking lawmakers to strike out several provisions — including one for a statewide ban on police and public authorities using facial recognition technology, the first of its kind in the United States.” [Tech Crunch]
"New Zealand - “[The New Zealand Law Foundation] has published what might be the most detailed argument for regulation of face biometrics used by government. The group proposes a full 15 recommendations...it also defines roles whose virtues are intensely debated such as attendance-taking in school and smart city projects.” [Biometric Update]
U.S. Federal - Nick Maynard submitted a “Smart Cities Technologies: Driving Economic Growth and Community Resilience” to the Federation of American Scientists’ Day One Project website soliciting policy ideas. It calls for “the federal government [to] convene representatives of cities, industries, universities, and federal agencies to identify obstacles to adopting smart-city technologies and to identify gaps where the federal government can provide additional support.” [Day One Project, h/t Mark Lerner]
U.S. Federal - “In response to a report by the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s Biometric Subcommittee, EPIC urged the Council to table the report until they can address the privacy and civil liberties implications of the Department of Homeland Security’s collection and use of biometrics in full.” [EPIC]
U.S. Federal - “‘Nearly half of states introduced privacy bills in the first half of 2020…’ With the incoming Biden administration, the federal government may be well positioned to finally preside over a robust privacy agenda. ‘The Biden team doesn't really have a huge learning curve. Lots of the folks who are involved were also involved in the Obama Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. And they're coming back into the room and they can pick up where they left off’ said [Pollyanna] Sanderson.” [Government Technology]
U.S. Federal - “Are smart city sensors unconstitutional because they inadvertently allow for aggregated government collection of personal data without a probable-cause search warrant?” [Iowa Law Review]
Various Global Cities - “[The World Economic] Forum has partnered with Deloitte to produce the Global Technology Governance Report 2021 – a survey of the most pressing gaps in technology governance and how to solve them.” [World Economic Forum]
Watching the Watchers Watch
Berin, Germany - “A work that features the faces of 4,000 French police officers, which was withdrawn from an institutional show after the intervention from France’s interior minister, will premiere in Berlin instead.” [The Art Newspaper]
Bonus Section...Community Shareholding Models to Watch
📝 Report: New Models for Community Shareholding: Equity Investing in Neighborhood Real Estate Investment Trusts [Urban Institute]