By Lee Davenport, US Ignite Communities Director
With all the recent discussion about AI-powered surveillance, Flock cameras, and Palantir software, it’s worth remembering that these concerns aren’t new. License plate readers, traffic cameras, and public surveillance systems have raised questions about privacy and government accountability for years. What’s changing is the scale of monitoring, the ability to connect information across systems, and what institutions can learn about us.
We explored these issues during a recent invite-only US Ignite Communities discussion among municipal technology leaders. The conversation surfaced some difficult tradeoffs:
- Automated enforcement can improve efficiency while creating new burdens for residents.
- Facial recognition can make everyday transactions easier, while raising questions about how meaningful consent is when convenience drives the decision.
- Transparency matters, but explaining what information an institution collects does not resolve whether the collection itself is appropriate
These concerns also connect to US Ignite’s earlier work on Fostering Civic Trust: A Policy Guide for Municipal Leaders, which addresses privacy, data governance, cybersecurity, and community engagement. The invite-only discussion reinforced why these issues matter as cities adopt technologies that collect and use more personal information.
About Dr. Shaffer’s research
Working with the City of Long Beach and Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. Gwen Shaffer and her research team are developing a mobile privacy assistant and dashboard that could give people a clearer picture of what information connected technologies collect about them, along with ways to exercise applicable privacy rights.
The research examines how people can better understand what information connected technologies collect, what rights they have over that data, and what happens when those rights are difficult to exercise in practice.
The team is exploring how this approach could work beyond Long Beach, including technologies operated by private businesses. They’re interested in hearing from mayor’s offices, city managers, chief technology and information officers, transportation departments, public safety agencies, privacy and data governance staff, and other local government leaders responsible for technologies that collect or use resident data about the challenges they face and how the research might apply locally.
Join the conversation
Join usNovember 12 at 2:00 PM ET to explore the research, see how the privacy assistant works, and discuss opportunities for other communities to participate.