Marseille edit
The concept of Smart City was born on the occasion of a discussion between Bill Clinton and John Chambers, the president of Cisco (the American specialized at first in the network material then, secondly, the servers). The former president of the United States challenged his interlocutor to return more long-lasting and intelligent cities.
When more than half world population lives in cities and when the UNO’s projections plans an urban population of 2.6 billion inhabitants (66 % of the world population) on the horizon 2050, the management question of this urban demographic growth arises on the economic, social and environmental plan. Yet, a solution seems to take shape.
Utopia
It can summarize in a word: data. His project: the smart city. Making promises, it shapes the imagination of the future-oriented of all beliefs to the point that it would be at the origin of a new age of the utopias succeeding the dreams libertarians of the years 60-70, socialists of the 19th century, humanists of the Renaissance. Barely born, the concept has already known several declensions. In the vertical intelligent city managed from a center and semi authoritarian, succeeded the notion of "smart citizen" which indicates a re-appropriation of the city by the human being through the project of "civic hackers" as Open Street Map (tool of collaborative mapping). Since then, they are the data industrialists who in big blow of Uber and Airbnb reshape the urban field.
Why is it enthused over the intelligent city? Because it "promises the individuals, inhabitants or passage, a seamless experience, without friction, interoperable cities, efficient and updated permanently services "according to the description made by CNIL. At any time, in any place, the citizen benefits from a personalized, optimized and free service. In the face of such a performance, the public authorities are not more than a name. In France, we remember the application failure "Alert attempt" facing Safety Check of Facebook which has a broader base of users.
Smart City in the service of the common property?
But does the sum of the particular interests of these applications contribute to the general interest? It is not the case, the deprived interests even multiple incomer sometimes in contradiction with the common property. This is the way an application which facilitates the use of the automobile in town is not compatible with the objective of the community to reduce the use of this means of transportation. Besides, the utility of these services does not have to forget that they are supplied by companies led by a logic of the profit which urges them to get the most attention of the public. A company as Uber was able to reveal ghost vehicles on its application to persuade a plentiful offer.
The datum being the mainspring of Smart City, arises irreparably the problem of private life. The access and the manipulation of this one is the free access corollary. Don’t we say on the Internet that it is free, and you are the product? What becomes the data used to run the intelligent city? Like the jurist highlighted, Roseline Letteron, Lecturer of public law at Paris–Sorbonne University, they make the object of an extremely diversified use and especially as "the owner of the data ignores most of the time their capture". In 2016, London city experimented "Pocketsourcing": the smartphone Wifi of users was used without their knowledge to recognize and manage the flows of travelers. As indicated in CNIL, this "data’s capture by the crowds" takes us away even more "reasonable expectations of private life". After all, we are not owners of our smartphone and don’t we have to agree to the flows which cross it?
Intelligence or surveillance?
With the successionof the connected objects, this capture is also the fact of the elements of the public infrastructure. Always in London, the inhabitants had protested against the installation of trash cans endowed with tracking WiFi for advertising purposes. Following the example of the browsers, the street is now on the prey of "cookies". But that was precondition to pay for intelligent trash cans which would reduce our ecological footprint. The intelligence has to be everywhere because it is infallible. It contributes to the environmental protection just like it allows "to fluidify" the circulation in town by eliminating the "congestion trouble". By pushing the logic up to the end, Smart City would be governed in an autonomous way by an artificial intelligence connected to all the objects and would reduce the human being to a simple variable of adjustment.
Let’s talk about the fluidization exactly. Is it desirable? No, if we believe CNIL. Why? Because the die-hard utilitarianism of the applications 2.0 is not compatible with the general interest once again. "To increase the travelling speed is not an optimum of society", CNIL said. To the point that the congestion can be advisable. It urges the town planners to redraw the territory of the city to fight against the algorithmic logic of bypassing susceptible to create nuisances for the inhabitants, for example.
But if there is a domain in which the private life passes by losses and profits, it is the security. This one "is then treated as a "flow" additional which we could follow, measure, optimize and maybe even predict". Following Philip K.Dick’s example "minority report", the prediction became the security policies doped with data allowing "to analyze the behavior" and identify the boors (of which the latest avatar is the facial recognition - directly implemented in the iPhone X) at the risk of operating erroneous inferences or stigmatizing.
The surveillance is completely easier as it is invisible thanks to the miniaturization of the capture instruments and the latter’s office on the social networks. This asymmetry places the citizen in a situation of vulnerability which is, definitively, "in tea city, everybody knows that you’re a dog". The anonymity is fragile. Coming out under control, the citizen adapts his behavior. After Edward Snowden's revelations, the consultation of some Wikipedia pages on sensitive subjects (terrorism, radicalisation ...) fell in a drastic way.
However, this surveillance could be translated by more insecurity (cette surveillance pourrait se traduire par plus d’insécurité). The whole connected returns the vulnerable smart city to the computing attacks the consequences of which are potentially devastating when their targets are critical infrastructures. For example, in 2013, pirates had tried to take control of a dam near New York.
Dealing with this dark picture, it is possible to forward solutions reconciling the utility of these applications and the respect for the "privacy". If several models are possible, CNIL seems to set its sight on "Outbuildings", only solution which seems respectful of the "individuals and their liberties". According to the researcher and the activist Valérie Peugeot, it is a question of "developing a sphere of data in Outbuildings, that is to say data can be considered as a collective resource, and neither enter the regime of the properties managed by the public authorities, strictly speaking, nor a market regime". This regime is based "on the management by a community of the considered resource, which organizes the governance rules in reliance on a "bundle of rights". This objective is not a matter of the utopia. It has already created in various legislations which are French, European or American.
The European regulation on the data protection (RGDP) which has to come into force next year, is a typical example.
Article written by Thierry Randretsa