Smart cities and personal data: balancing innovation, techonlogy and the law
| Autor | Jesús Manuel Niebla Zatarain |
| Páginas | 205-223 |
Smart cities and personal data: balancing
innovation, techonlogy and the law
Cidades inteligentes e dados pessoais:
equilibrando inovação, tecnologia e o Direito
Jesús Manuel Niebla Zatarain*
Faculty of Law of Mazatlan, Autonomous University of Sinaloa, Mexico
1. Introduction
One of the technological developments that have deeply influenced society
is, without a doubt, the Internet. Its impact can be seen in areas that were,
prior to its arrival, considered of human realization only. In this aspect,
the relation between government and citizens has been shifting towards
the adoption of ubiquitous technology and digital platforms, which has
incentivised communication and increased transparency levels. This is
the particular case of smart cities. Nonetheless, these technologies operate
through schemes that require gathering personal data, generating a poten-
tially harmful scenario for their holders. To answer to this situation, many
jurisdictions have developed their own version of digital driven legisla-
tions, having mixed results at best. This is due to several reasons ranging
from the incompatibility of the traditional approach to enforce the law in
digital scenarios to a lack of collaboration between experts in these areas.
It is within this last position that law compliant operation of smart cities is
currently located. As a result of the importance of this scenario, a proper
understating of the particularities of the environment is proposed, along
Direito, Estado e Sociedade n. 53 p. 205 a 223 jul/dez 2018
* Professor and researcher of the Faculty of Law of Mazatlan of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa,
Mexico. His areas of interests are legal informatics and digital regulation. Email: j.niebla@uas.edu.mx.
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with the cooperation between the technical and legal aspects to deliver law
compliant and technical efficient development.
2. Turning traditional urban centres smart
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a technological platform that presents a
new paradigm where everyday life objects will be equipped with devices
such as microcontrollers, transceivers and communication protocols that
will allow communication with each other and with its users, becoming an
integral element of the Internet1. This development has been addressed by
a sector of the information technology community as the natural evolution
of the cyberspace, making it more pervasive. Relevantly, the IoT monitors
and interacts with a large variety of appliances, such as surveillance cam-
eras, monitoring sensors, actuators, vehicles, etc. producing a large variety
of data that can be used for efficiency purposes.
In this context, the next step on the evolution of the IoT has been
its insertion into urban spaces. This idea has been supported by many
governments that considers it as a suitable platform to achieve urban effi-
ciency goals such as managing resources, to increment the quality of pub-
lic services and encourage government-citizen interaction2. Additionally,
smart cities favours transparency, facilitating cooperation of citizens in the
achievement of public strategies, increasing awareness of urban needs and
enabling the collaboration between local and state public spheres3. Over-
all, these elements have allowed smart cities to rise.
However, the development of smart cities is a long term process, which,
needless to say, requires large volumes of economic investment. To achieve
this, several initiatives have been proposed, in the case of the European
Union, the Smart finance for smart buildings initiative4, which aims to
create attractive schemes for investing in smart technologies for residential
and private buildings. This project will operate from 2018 to 2020 creating
up to 22,000 new jobs and developing a sustainable market for smart cities
infrastructure.
1 ATZORI; IERA; MORABITO, 2010.
2 ATZORI; IERA; MORABITO, 2010.
3 CUFF; HANSEN; KANG, 2008.
4 To know more see: EUROPEAN COMMISSION, 2018.
Jesús Manuel Niebla Zatarain
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