If we don’t want to become the United State, we have to figure out how to stop smart cities from becoming surveillance cities.
Since the growth of “surveillance cities” is no longer a hypothetical, we should all be ready to do what it takes to create responsible safeguards and prevent the unnecessary risks and harms this technology can create. Both elected officials and the public should be provided notice of the potential deployment of these technologies, the potential privacy and civil liberties risks they present, and the real impact of their use.
An interesting piece from the ACLU discusses how smart cities can become tools of surveillance. We have a modern example of this in Xinjiang, China.
Check It Out: Here’s How to Avoid Becoming the United State
Over this side of the pond there are so many ‘security cameras’ – millions of them, operated by local government / businesses etc, its hard to avoid being subjected to almost continuous surveillance in most towns and cities of any size.
Add the ‘traffic monitoring’ cameras on every major road – not just motor/freeways that can read an entire number plate – license plate in the US – [officially they only read the middle three characters to monitor road speed] then its hard to go anywhere and not be tracked, assuming you are a ‘person of interest’ of course – and that’s ignoring Average Speed enforcement cameras / speed cameras / normal traffic cameras that are all capable of reading plates on a vehicle.
There’s no substitute for cash and revolving number plates, a la James Bond’s DB5.