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Will 'Smart Cities' Violate Our Privacy? (computerworld.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Computerworld's article on the implications of New York City's plan to blanket the city with "smart" kiosks offering ultrafast Wi-Fi.
The existence of smart-city implementations like Intersection's LinkNYC means that New Yorkers won't actually need mobile contracts anymore. Most who would otherwise pay for them will no doubt continue to do so for the convenience. But those who could not afford a phone contract in the past will have ubiquitous fast connectivity in the future. This strongly erodes the digital divide within smart cities. A 2015 study conducted by New York City found that more than a quarter of city households had no internet connectivity at home, and more than half a million people didn't own their own computer...
Over the next 15 years, the city will go through the other two phases, where sensor data will be processed by artificial intelligence to gain unprecedented insights about traffic, environment and human behavior and eventually use it to intelligently re-direct traffic and shape other city functions... And as autonomous cars gradually roll out, New York will be well positioned to be one of the first cities to legalize them, because they'll be safer thanks to 5G, sensors and data from all those kiosks.
Intersection, a Google-backed startup, has already installed 1,000 of the kiosks in New York, and is planning to install 7,000 more. The sides of the kiosk have screens which show alerts and other public information -- as well as advertisements, which cover all the costs of the installations and even bring extra money into the city coffers.
New York's move "puts pressure on other U.S. cities to follow suit," the article also points out, adding that privacy policies "are negotiated agreements between the company and the city. So if a city wants to use those cameras and sensors for surveillance, it can."
Over the next 15 years, the city will go through the other two phases, where sensor data will be processed by artificial intelligence to gain unprecedented insights about traffic, environment and human behavior and eventually use it to intelligently re-direct traffic and shape other city functions... And as autonomous cars gradually roll out, New York will be well positioned to be one of the first cities to legalize them, because they'll be safer thanks to 5G, sensors and data from all those kiosks.
Intersection, a Google-backed startup, has already installed 1,000 of the kiosks in New York, and is planning to install 7,000 more. The sides of the kiosk have screens which show alerts and other public information -- as well as advertisements, which cover all the costs of the installations and even bring extra money into the city coffers.
New York's move "puts pressure on other U.S. cities to follow suit," the article also points out, adding that privacy policies "are negotiated agreements between the company and the city. So if a city wants to use those cameras and sensors for surveillance, it can."
Question answered. Move along now...
Here's a Larry Niven novel (I haven't read it, unfortunately) in which the inhabitants are "sacrificing privacy - there are cameras (not routinely monitored) even in the private apartments - in exchange for security" (Wikipedia).
Unfortunately, due to the vast amounts of data collected on us by myriad gadgets (smartphones, Alexa, cell phone towers, public cameras, private cameras with Geo tagged data on social media, credit card machines, ATMs... perhaps even smart parking meters!), it appears as if we've already sacrificed privacy. Have we gotten more security? Honestly, maybe, aren't crime rates supposed to be down?
New York's move "puts pressure on other U.S. cities to follow suit," the article also points out.
Does it? Of course, says the company pushing it. But not all cities will take the bait. Seattle citizens would probably have a fucking cow; when the city tried to install a mesh network downtown to enhance emergency response, the uproar resulted in all the installed equipment being taken out.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I have seen several of these kiosks in Manhattan already. They are ugly, most of them in a state of disrepair, and more unresponsive than your grandpa's internet explorer. And I'm a talking about the ones in front of Penn Station. I cannot imagine the ones they will install in the Bronx, or in some other non-central location.
If you want to be useful, just install free wifi repeaters (starting from the goddamn airports, please), like any other civilized city in Asia do.
Until the city's AI for whatever reason, classifies your future crime as imminent, or worse, decides your continued existence is no longer useful to it.
The good news, the city rewards it's faithful, it's worshipers.
Just a simple thought experiment tells you all you need to know. In scenario one, the sensors are all run by Google and Facebook, in scenario two they are run by the municipality and all the data is open. That's very crude and, in a mixed economy, the ownership is likely to be mixed too, but see below. However, the Roomba discussion provides some indicators about what will eventually happen to data that is in commercial hands.
It's also worth noting that sensor networks and infrastructures are, to some extent rivalrous, in the economics sense. That is, they compete for physical placement, for bandwidth and (probably) for standards and protocols.
There's questions of scope, governance and separation too. For example, I never go into Apple stores and that's a choice, but I may have to go into a hospital. I personally don't mind advertising beacons because I choose not to have a smart phone and don't receive their output. I don't want any of my data sold on, but have zero faith in GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft, as proxies for the usual suspects) not to do that.
I think 'we' can do really good things with city data and wrote about it somewhat in 2009 but that was on the basis of municipal control, public health and ecological objectives. The current picture looks a lot more invasive and murkier.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
He is the only presidential candidate in the last 25 years to talk about the damage done to people's lives by globalisation and talk about reversing it.
If your life had been wrecked by transfer of jobs abroad, you'd probably feel a bit differently. Shouting "stupid" at these people might make you feel good but trying to understand them would be a better use of your time. It didn't help that the wife of the architect of their misery was the other candidate.
The trouble with the left these days is that the compassion for everyone in need has been replaced by virtue signalling on Twitter and judging everyone's needs by their physical characteristics. White = privilege even if you can barely afford to eat and so is it any wonder that poor white people don't buy into that political philosophy. Ask yourself why your message is so unpopular that people were willing to vote in great numbers for the most unsuitable candidate in history.
Yes plenty. Many cities in Norway and Sweden provide public WiFi that works flawlessly. I also never had any problems with implementations in Hong Kong or mainland China or those offered in many parts of central Europe.
Also I basically live at Airports including one of the largest hubs in Europe, and frankly airport WiFi also works quite flawlessly in most places. The last time I had an issue with airport WiFi was at Teeside and that issue was they only offered 15min free (but that was the least of my problems at that craphole).
Or we could try to do something about it. Technology can be broken and bent. We aren't slaves to it because we made it.
Globalization was spearheaded by a number of free trade treaties. If I recall correctly, the US government was a major player in most of these treaties, and fought tooth and nail to ensure that neither workers rights nor the environment was protected by those treaties. Given that the US was the largest economy by far when most of these treaties were negotiated, the US government could have demanded some protection of workers rights, offsetting some of the damage done to regular people. Instead they gospelled the glory of free trade making everyone richer. What they did not say, was that "everyone" in the West actually meant "everyone already rich".
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
That is what appears to have happened. In actual reality, it was not those treaties, but the push for something in that direction that made it happen. And that push would have just found another outlet without these treaties.
Now the problem about worker protection is that it is infeasible. Sure, if possible, it would be the thing to do, but it is not. If you start protecting the workers, you lose on other fronts and in the end the workers and up worse. We are seeing this now at all fronts: The time of the worker is over. They are less and less needed, globalization just shifted it for a while. We likely go towards a society were, in addition to the well-known 1%, we will also have the 10%, and that will those whose work is still needed because it cannot be automatized. The interesting question, and the one critical for survival as a society, is what to to with the remaining 89%.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Friend, they already do violate our privacy. There are cameras at every intersection, and everywhere else (ATM cameras, security cameras, and so on). Your 'smartphone' has a highly sensitive GPS receiver in it, which (despite any settings of yours to the contrary) is on all the time, can pinpoint your location to within a few meters even deep inside a multi-floor building, and reports that position on demand (or all the time for all anyone knows). Even without GPS your position can be determined by triangulating from cell towers. Any WiFi that your phone connects to, even briefly, can be used to geolocate you. Unless you pay cash for everything walking around, your purchases not only pinpoint your location, they add to a list of your purchasing habits, from which your behavior can be predicted. If you live in a big urban city like New York and take a cab everywhere, your movements are tracked that way, too. There are microphones all over the place that are part of a gunshot detection/location system, and for all we know those are also used to listen in on people in public; leveraging your smartphone to listen in on you is a trivial task, too. Having free WiFi all over a city like New York, that enables anyone to have Internet access for free wherever they go in the city is just the final nail in the coffin of your privacy; you're now 'connected' everywhere you go, watched, and listened to in redundant ways. Not carrying a smartphone and paying for everything with cash isn't even enough and may just flag you as a potential criminal/extremist/terrorist/person of interest. Using the Internet at all these days, even with a VPN, still leaks all sorts of information about you, especially if you're so dumb as to use so-called 'social media', which EXISTS to collect information about you, ostensibly to sell you things, but also so governments can produce a profile/dossier of you -- just in case you're a terrorist. Using Tor is better and worse than a VPN because there are things you just can't do using Tor, and I'm certain it's like that on purpose. The only way you can have any modicum of privacy anymore is to live in the middle of nowhere, have a landline phone and no smartphone, stay off the Internet, and pay for everything you can with CASH, never use credit or plastic or even checks if you can help it, and stay away from urban centers as much as possible. Sadly doing all the above, in the current socio-political climate, will flag you to law enforcement as a potential criminal, extremist, or out-and-out terrorist, and you might well be specifically scrutinized because of it. If you're married and have kids, it's basically impossible to be 'off the grid' unless you're all on on the same page somehow -- and kids especially won't put up with being isolated and ostracized because their dad is a 'nutjob' who won't let then use Facebook or have a smartphone. Basically, until the current socio-political climate changes, you have damned little privacy of any kind, except in your own home, with the blinds shut and no electronics that could listen in on you -- and it's highly unlikely that any time in the near future that any of this is going to change. First people have to WANT it to change. Good luck with that.