Presented at
33C3 (2016),
Dec. 30, 2016, 1:45 p.m.
(30 minutes)
Cities are emerging as a space for local action and local change but also as dangerous spaces where social engineering, exclusion by design and privatised policing take place rapidly, without adequate frames to catch up and assure fundamental rights. Is the city the answer to a new digital ecosystem, with effective mechanisms to enforce it, in the local government powers?
Sophisticated surveillance systems are approved by, funded by and deployed by local authorities, Cities are emerging as the spaces 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 behaviour. Control people and the local and micro local level.
But cities are also the spaces where a different form of politics is emerging, from Rome to Barcelona, from Madrid to Paris, citizens are taking back the domestic infrastructure. Is there the answer for digital sovereignty?
Today, 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 behaviour. Control people. 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.
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.
The talk will explore how local surveillance systems are rapidly expanding across Latin America and Asia. 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.
The talk will also look into the public policy and budgetary implications of the surveillance city, when 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 modelling 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.
The talk will also look into current efforts to reverse the smart city model into a humane city and how the local power could be the formula to challenge the surveillance space and take back our fundamental rights.
Presenters:
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renataavila
Renata Avila is a human rights lawyer specialised in Intellectual Property and Technology. She worked as one of the lawyers representing the Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum and more recently, Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
Involved in Internet and Human Rights research since 2006, she worked with the Web Inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee in an effort to uphold human rights in the digital age. She serves as a Board Member of Creative Commons. She is also a member of Courage Foundation advisory board, assisting whistleblowers at risk and in the BITS initiative for sovereign technologies of the municipality of Barcelona. She is currently exploring Digital Colonialism.
Renata Avila holds an LLM from the University of Turin and advanced studies in International Law by the Hague Academy. She worked as one of the lawyers representing the Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum and litigated several cases involving digital rights in Latin America and Europe. She was one of the leading researcher for the Open Net Project, at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. She was one of the pioneer researchers exploring the uses of technology for transparency and its importance for users and consumers. She worked for three years with the Web Inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee in an effort to uphold human rights in the digital age and popularize the struggle for the Open Internet among common people, co-leading and supporting efforts like the Web We Want Festival and My Digital Rights, by the British Library. She is also the human rights advisor for the European Fundamental Rights Agency Project on Biometrics and refugees. She is currently an Advisor of the BITS initiative by the Municipality of Barcelona and exploring the concept of digital colonialism, subject of her upcoming book. She is part of the cast of ForEveryone.net, a film exploring the future of the Web.
Renata Avila ist Menschenrechtsanwältin mit dem Spezialgebiet geistiges Eigentum (Intellectual Property) und Technologie. Sie hat einen LL.M. von der Universität Turin und hat weiterführende Studien in International Law an der Haager Akademie absolviert. Sie arbeitete als eine der AnwältInnen, die die guatemaltekische Friedensnobelpreisträgerin Rigoberta Menchu Tum repräsentierten; dazu prozessierte sie sowohl in Lateinamerika also auch in Europa eine Anzahl Fälle, in denen digitale Rechte ein Thema waren. Sie ist seit 2006 an Internet- und Menschenrechtsforschung beteiligt und war eine der leitenden ForscherInnen für das Open Net Projekt, basiert im Berkman-Klein-Zentrum für Internet und Gesellschaft an der Harvard University. Sie war eine der bahnbrechenden ForscherInnen, die die Anwendung von Technologie zum Schaffen von Transparenz und ihre Bedeutung für Nutzer und Verbraucher erforschten. Sie arbeitete drei Jahre lang mit dem Web-Erfinder Sir Tim Berners-Lee in dem Bemühen, die Menschenrechte im digitalen Zeitalter zu wahren und den Kampf um das offene Netz in der Allgemeinheit zu popularisieren. Dabei hat sie Projekte wie das ‘Web We Want’ Festival und ‘My Digital Rights’ von der British Library mitgeleitet und unterstützt. Sie dient als Vorstandsmitglied von Creative Commons. Sie ist auch Beiratsmitglied der Courage Foundation, die gefährdete Informanten unterstützt, und des D-Cent Board, das das Potenzial von dezentralen Technologien erforscht. Sie ist auch die Menschenrechtsberaterin für die Europäische Agentur für Grundrechte, hier insbesondere für das Projekt über Biometrics und Flüchtlinge. Sie ist zur Zeit Beraterin der BITS-Initiative der Gemeinde Barcelona und untersucht das Konzept des digitalen Kolonialismus, auch Thema ihrer bevorstehendenden Buches. Sie ist Teil der Besetzung von ForEveryone.net, ein Film über die Zukunft des Webs.
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