Smart city or watched city?
Montreal’s quiet expansion of urban surveillance
We are being watched every day. Transit and CCTV cameras record our every movement. License-plate readers keep tabs on our cars. AI systems identify us based on our walk.
And the list goes on.
The more we enter the digital age, the more technology expands and specializes in urban police forces. So, new methods for the deployment of available resources have been utilized. These methods are what we call surveillance tools.
Surveillance tools are everywhere around us, expanding quietly and rapidly with the promise of better services and a safer city. At the same time, uncertainty remains about how our personal information is protected.
The City of Montreal defines personal information as “any information that relates to a physical person and that allows that person to be identified.” Personal information is confidential unless agreed otherwise, and cannot be disclosed without the consent of the person concerned.
This definition recognizes an inherent "humanness" to the data, that personal information is inalienable from a person and, by extension, their personhood. To ensure that we protect the privacy of a person, we need to ensure that their personal information is anonymized, and no de-identification of said data is possible.
This realization creates the following dilemma: although the mass collection of personal information enables more efficient and responsive city services and presents residents with new means to stop crimes, it also poses risks of excessive surveillance and data exploitation.
It also opens the door to numerous ethical questions concerning social justice, digital divide, equity and democracy.
The nature of consent in smart cities complicates the situation even more. A resident cannot easily opt out of city-wide data collection if it is embedded into public infrastructure. This lack of meaningful choice transforms what might appear to be voluntary participation into a condition one must comply with.
These technologies enable the mass collection and analysis of vast amounts of data, creating a new digital space that may recreate familiar systems of oppression. These systems may have harmful impacts on marginalized communities when their digital privacy is infringed upon.
This is not merely a matter of individual privacy violations; rather, it reflects how historical patterns of discrimination can be encoded into digital infrastructures. When data-driven systems are trained on biased historical data or deployed without meaningful safeguards, they risk automating and amplifying existing inequities.
In addition to the consequences for individual privacy, there are many ways in which these mass data-driven processes may undermine transparency. The complexity of said tools and algorithms may be beyond the comprehension of some citizens, as some technical expertise is deemed necessary to fully understand the configuration.
To answer this question, we need to define what makes a good data governance framework.
First, it establishes clear values and accountable outcomes. Second, it provides a transparent, operational and inclusive structure to describe who makes decisions and how they are made. It also outlines how decision-makers are held accountable regarding the production, use, distribution or control of the data throughout its entire life cycle.
In summary, a good data governance framework reconciles the collection and use of vast amounts of personal data with the principles of privacy, consent and transparency.
The City of Montreal tried to establish the groundwork for a good data governance framework by publishing a digital data charter in 2024. This charter aims to make “the management of the city’s digital data more transparent, accountable and efficient.”
It includes 13 principles that reflect the city’s stated position on these issues. However, translating these principles into concrete action is challenging.
While we can’t fully deny the benefits of these new technologies in improving the quality of our lives in many ways, we need to recognize that digital privacy is a basic right for all. and ensure that digital inclusion, transparency, and data control all remain part of the solution.
