88% concerned about ‘smart city’ privacy: poll

A new research paper on smart cities argues municipalities should proceed with caution on ‘smart’ projects and hyper-consult over the ways citizens’ data can be collected and used. “Municipalities should tread carefully and engage in as much public consultation as possible as they re-conceptualize and remodel infrastructures around digital platforms,” the report authors Sara Bannerman and Angela Orasch conclude. The report presented online polling data suggesting Canadians are leery about how smart city technologies and projects treat their data and affect their privacy. It found 88 per cent of Canadians are concerned “on some level” about how smart cities treat their privacy. Broken down, the topline results showed 23 per cent are “extremely” concerned, 29 per cent are moderately concerned and 19 per cent somewhat concerned, while 17 per cent were concerned slightly, and 11 per cent not at all concerned. “Due to the high degree of concern over the privacy, data collection in the smart-city context should look beyond de-identification measures as a first strategy, towards data control and self-management mechanisms baked into the technologies themselves,” said the January report ‘Privacy and Smart Cities: A Canadian Survey.’ It showed Canadians are split over whether their data should be used to prompt them to modify their behaviour, while they tended to be more leery about private organizations using their data to refine their business models to become more profitable. “While many did not want to have their personal information collected at all, those who would permit the use of their personal information wished to have levels of control over that data that are, often, not currently available, such as the ability to opt-out, view, correct, download and delete their data,” it said. “This was particularly true regarding data use by private businesses, as opposed to public data uses, but many Canadians wished to see greater levels of control in a public context as well.” The study was funded by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Canada Research Chairs program and McMaster University. The polling was conducted by EKOS Research. The survey was fielded online from October 23 to November 1, 2018, which sampled 1,011 Canadians drawn from an online probability panel, recruited by email. EKOS placed a margin of error on it of plus or minus three percentage points, accurate 19 times out of 20.

88% concerned about ‘smart city’ privacy: poll

Brief | January 18, 2019

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88% concerned about ‘smart city’ privacy: poll

Brief | January 18, 2019

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