Held in Trust: Iot, Efficiency, and the Ethics of Big City Data

• In Event: Activating Context: Data Ethics, Data Sovereignty, Data Justice

Abstract

This paper looks at the Toronto King Street pilot—an experiment using internet of things (IoT) infrastructure to reorganize traffic flow on the most heavily traveled street in the city. I ask, How are ubiquitous automation technologies (“smart”) such as Bluetooth and visual-capture IoT deployed in public space? The city of Toronto’s Traffic Data Officer describes the data ontology of the project as “designing for efficiency.” In many ways, it is the ideal picture of smart technology application. Yet, I am interested in the slippage between the language (and methods) of “efficiency” and the complexities of deploying what are, in effect, surveillance technologies in public space. If one looks closely at the structures of data acquisition, holding, and analysis, one finds a complicated scenario of “efficiency” obfuscating the (design) values of transparency, consent, and privacy. Part of the attraction of this case study is that the city agents are earnestly working toward a public good; it is the complexity and invisibility of machine-to-machine (m2m) automation that presents new challenges for human-computer interaction. Increasingly, the contours of a data-driven society are shaped by the transformation of nearly all interactions (monetary, communication, locational, etc.) into a modality of quantifiable data. The significance of this is profound and, often, largely, invisible. In making visible the infrastructure and ontology of this public works project, I ask a broader question regarding smart technology in context and the civic status of data ethics and data sovereignty, with implications for data Justice.

Author

• Beth Coleman, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto