Rebel Cities Rejecting Surveillance

[grarpamp]

https://decentralize.today/rebel-cities-towards-a-global-network-of-neighbourhoods-and-cities-rejecting-surveillance-6a92e68243a8

Renata Avila
Guatemalan Human Rights Lawyer, @Couragefound Advisory Board and
@CreativeCommons Board

The city of the future I see in promotional videos for systems of mass
surveillance and mass control seems to be subsumed in a permanent
state of normalcy. It is a city with no traffic, no protests, no
visible disasters, no spontaneous mobilisations, no surprises.
Spontaneous events, as if they were system errors, are suppressed
before they occur. Movement analysis and decision-making happens in a
control room that looks like a spaceship, where technicians work in
real-time, watching all of us, without us being able to see them.
There is no citizen access. To the contrary, these are closed systems,
difficult to monitor. Where actions are regulated by a system,
designed elsewhere, that pretends it is not political. But technology
is political.

Cities where everything is controlled by invisible technology, almost
imperceptible in daily life. Those surveillance cameras now visible on
street corners are replaced by systems of constant monitoring
integrated in the landscape. Cities of sensors collecting our data all
day long, where each movement is registered and stored, where
decisions are automated and dehumanised. Monetised to optimise
consumption, predict behavior. Control people. And where the benefits
of not knowing who decides and why, stand to be gained by the same
conglomerate who bets on this vision. A few companies developing
software, hardware and capacities in countries that can be counted on
one hand. A market of US$8 billion, which is expected to grow tenfold
by the year 2020. Fed with meager public funds from countries like
ours [in Latin America].

Although discourses keep feeding the imaginary, descriptions of
cameras detecting pickpockets, this is something radically different.
Matrices that combine lots of data in real-time. This vision for the
city of the future, promoted by a small group of technology
conglomerates, is one where quality of life is directly proportional
to the predictability and homogeneity of its inhabitants, clashing
with the struggle for diversity and diverse behaviors. To achieve this
vision, much more is sacrificed than privacy. We pawn off our security
to those in the sealed-off control room. It is to sacrifice the purest
form of democracy we have, our right to protest freely and anonymously
in the town square.

Local surveillance systems are rapidly expanding across Latin America.
Much earlier and faster than the regulatory frameworks for adequate
protection of privacy and personal data. Without democratic
mechanisms, community or neighbourhood consultations to determine
their necessity or appropriateness. They are sophisticated and
ephemeral systems that require updates and costly maintenance and show
vague results. In Tegucigalpa, Honduras, for example, the city could
not maintain the surveillance system due to a lack of budget to
maintain the cameras.

The contracts that are signed tie the hands of more than one public
institution, borrowing from future municipal budgets, with a
coordinated marketing and data machinery that does not offer solid
evidence to prove effectiveness. Public authorities assure us that
cameras, scenario modeling and mass surveillance will eliminate the
problem of insecurity, advancing these over other public policies
meant to attack extreme poverty and inequality of access to basic
services, as well as the recovery of public space. The studies that
vouch for the effectiveness of surveillance as a crime reduction
measure are incomplete; they do not take local internal and external
factors into account, and cannot be applied to different contexts.

Cities of the future, promoted by the conglomerates benefitting from
them, allow for events to be preempted, for preventive decisions to be
made to control the masses, block protests, predict civic
mobilisations for more and better rights. To discriminate by
algorithm. To exclude by patterns of behavior.

Do we want a future without surveillance? A future where diversity,
and not uniformity of behavior, is the rule? Let’s start by
eradicating (the now invisible) vigilante culture of the neighbourhood
and the city. Let’s start by participating in all public spaces and if
they do not exist, let’s open them. Before the final bastion of
democracy becomes a memory erased by someone behind a screen. Among
the steps we can all take, here are three I will elaborate on:

Prevent the arrival of surveillance

If mass surveillance is still at the exploratory stage as a security
measure, it is important to organise neighbours against it, asking if
municipal goods or services will be sacrificed in favor of
surveillance, and question the impact that prioritising it will have
on community and neighbourhood life. Moreover, it is important to ask
about the long-term sustainability and viability of such projects, the
conditions by which the municipality is acquiring them and the time
frames. It is important to quantify what is being sacrificed to invest
in surveillance. For example, indicating how many programs for
children and youth at risk could be started for the same price,
offering more complete and long-term solutions. Once a mass
surveillance system is installed, privacy and intimacy are only for
those who can afford them.

Question mass surveillance already installed and the costs of
maintenance and updates

Decisions to improve security and quality of life of neighbourhoods
and cities should be participatory. The benefits of installing mass
and continuous surveillance mechanisms in public space should be
weighed against analog, social alternatives. Technological
surveillance is expensive because for every camera installed there are
not just related fixed costs for maintenance and updates, there is
also a sacrifice in terms of public spending on social programs.
Moreover, almost all the technology providers are not domestic
companies. Mostly closed technology, running on proprietary software,
makes effective citizen oversight impossible. Contracts with camera
providers and services are generally in the millions of dollars, and
are binding long beyond the term of the signing government, without
considering the realities of a municipality.

Connect with other rebel cities and collectives

To free ourselves from surveillance and other repressive and
authoritarian forms of power that this opens up, we must immediately
activate the mechanisms of law that allow us to oversee the functions
of mass surveillance systems in our cities. And do this collectively,
in coordination with other cities affected by the problem. Just as
there are Smart Cities networks we should form our own Rebel Cities
networks where surveillance is rejected and participatory democracy is
affirmed, a democracy framed in respect for human rights and
diversity, focused on collective solutions, which is the true path to
safer cities. Not cameras.

We can then simultaneously activate collaborative mechanisms to
prevent their expansion. Make freedom of information requests for
public information detailing their costs. Demand studies on their
results. Take serious legal action in face of possible illegal uses of
surveillance for discriminatory policies. Demand from authorities
protection of personal data where it exists, and where it does not,
demand that human rights authorities undertake feasibility studies,
weighing the impact on individual guarantees before installing
systems. Democracy begins and ends there. In its exercise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvGuw2zZ3qc
http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/fiscal-crisis-honduras-security-cameras
http://www.pic-six.com/?module=catalog&item_id=3&c_id=12