. . . . Yesterday afternoon (Friday, Oct. 25, 2019) , I sent an email Letter with Appendix (see below) to Schenectady City Council President Ed Kosiur, and others. My recommendation was that the Council first do its Smart City Homework before allotting another large budget item for the Mayor to use in his Smart City efforts. Unfortunately, as a Gazette article reports (online, Sat. AM, Oct. 26, 2019), the Mayor’s automatic Majority clique, led by Ed Kosiur and John Polimeni, ignored its responsibilities, and are prepared to force through more Smart City dollars at the Council Meeting on Monday, despite the efforts of Council Members Riggi, Perazzo and Porterfield. update (Oct. 29, 2019): The Mayor got $2 million more to spend on his “Smart City” project, and the people of Schenectady got left in the dark with the bill to pay. See “City Council adopts spending plan” (Gazette, by Pete DeMola).
. . .. . share this post with this shorter URL: https://tinyurl.com/SmartCityHomework
- Wise Cities know which experts to consult with first: the residents. (see Appendix Item #1 below)
- Until you each know what information is being collected, and whether it could be used by outsiders to identify individuals, especially if cross-referenced with other data sources, you should not be thinking of writing another big Smart Cities check.
- Do you know, for instance, what sorts of information is being collected by the City’s WiFi stations, and whether that data might be misused? E.g., do our sensors keep a record of which smartphones are passing by?
P.S. In a thought-provoking article that is discussed in the “Appendix” below, I was concerned to see this sentence: “These technologies range from the mundane (speed cameras) to the fantastical (“Streetlight hubs that host WiFi nodes, license plate readers, environmental sensors, and gunshot detectors)”. “The Future of Living: Smart Cities, Uneven Safeguards” (Washington Lawyer, Nov. 2018). Note that Schenectady already has that “fantastical technology”, but with no transparency, public input, or disclosure of how security, privacy, and consent are being handled.
- The technology disrupting urban living today undoubtedly has the potential to improve quality of life, but exactly how that happens still boils down to good decision-making.
- Boston’s Smart City Playbook brings up one central question time and again: “What can it do for us?” Whether talking about building a platform, collecting big data, or boosting efficiency, the playbook insists on a strategy built from the bottom up. A similar approach called The Clever City also advocates downsizing before upsizing.
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Boston knows which experts to consult with first: the residents.
- “There is a more basic concern when it comes to smart cities: They will be exceedingly complex to manage, with all sorts of unpredictable vulnerabilities. There will always be a place for new technology in our urban infrastructure, but we may find that often, “dumb” cities will do better than smart ones.”
- “New technology in 2015 will be outdated before 2020. If we widely deploy smart tech in cities, we need to be prepared to replace it every few years, with the associated disruption and cost. But who will assume those costs?”
- “[W]who can guarantee that future elected leaders, in an effort to cut costs and appease taxpayers, won’t shortchange spending on replacement technology?”
- Managing all the sensors and data will require a brand-new [expensive] municipal bureaucracy staffed by tech, data-science and machine-learning experts. . . . . If the answer is to outsource that staffing to private companies, then cities need to have frank conversations about what that means for democratic governance.
The most critical question, however, is whether having a smart city will make us meaningfully better at solving urban problems. Data and algorithms alone don’t actually add very much on their own. No matter how much data a city has, addressing urban challenges will still require stable long-term financing, good management and effective personnel. If smart data identifies a road that needs paving, it still needs people to show up with asphalt and a steamroller.
3] 
The November 2018 edition of Washington Lawyer (the D.C. Bar magazine) also has an article that I recommend to those who want to make smart decisions about Smart Cities. It is titled “The Future of Living: Smart Cities, Uneven Safeguards” (by Sarah Kellogg). The author talked with and quotes technology, legal and privacy experts. The key points:
- The need early in the process for a policy and rules for cyber-security and privacy protection
- “Transparency” in the collection and sharing of all the data is very important
- The temptation to make money on the data raises the risk of abuse.
- “It is incumbent upon governments to first engage communities and communicate effectively about these questions” [about privacy and data risks].
An expert of digital forensics and cybersecurity points out in the article that “few are even remotely aware of how intrusive these applications can be in their daily lives. . . Most people below a certain age don’t care about all the sensors in our lives. . . .The folks of a certain age tend to get the privacy dangers.”
“A major issue is Consent. Consent to be monitored may not be a legal requisite, but consent should be obtained from individuals whose data has been collected and massaged to allow the identification of individuals (especially if the buyer of the information can cross-reference it to other data bases), before a municipality shares/sells it to outset entities.”
Followup (October 21, 2021): Two years later, I see no signs of completed Homework assignments. Nor, incomplete ones. There are, of course, more signs that we should be worried and demand protection and transparency. The use of Parking Passport software and 5-G and “free” WiFi expansion greatly widens the scope of Smart City data collection. Meanwhile, Mayor Gary McCarthy has again stated his intent to monetize the stream of data. See City to expand free Wi-Fi: Schenectady network adds more neighborhoods .
I was unsuccessful finding on the City website the permissions required to use the Free WiFi. However, I bet it is similar to what one must give up to use the Parking Passport system:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.passportparking.mobile&hl=en_US
PERMISSIONS
This app has access to:
Storage
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- read the contents of your USB storage
- modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
Location
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- precise location (GPS and network-based)
Wi-Fi connection information
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- view Wi-Fi connections
Photos/Media/Files
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- read the contents of your USB storage
- modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
Other
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- receive data from Internet
- read Google service configuration
- view network connections
- full network access
- prevent device from sleeping
PRIVACY POLICY
https://www.passportinc.com/privacy-policy/
snowmen at the gates 