Open Data - Under Surveillance

CCTV and ANPR are also ubiquitous surveillance tools. And now, we have InLink too – a first-generation ‘Demolition Man’ surveillance engine that’s so bare-faced you hardly notice it. Sound, vision, height, gait, clothing, head-gear, pace, time, date, weather, age, sex, race … who knows what tools and algorithms are in there, or who it’s for.

Actually, anybody can start collecting data; anybody can survey anyone else, or anything. But who *is* watching, and who *is* setting the rules for those watchers – those are the questions we should be asking. Oversight, anyone?

Now, throw the notion of collecting information that will be labelled as open data into this mix – or don’t, because if we’re not careful, then this could be a baby-with-the-bathwater moment.

Platforms, by their nature, accumulate data, power, and wealth in an upwards direction. The very diversity and opportunity that open data activists promulgate is merely adding fuel to already near-bottomless resources, which makes it harder for start-ups, scale ups, disruptors and innovators to gain traction and contribute to economic diversity and strength. The best they can then hope for is to be acquired before the cash runs out.

Conversely, at the highest level, the state already has far-reaching surveillance powers. But it may not have the insight (or support) to deliver a similar set of deliverables. In an age of austerity, it almost definitely doesn’t have the appetite – and so the private state intercedes. At the next level down, local authorities are also conflicted: they’re trying to reduce maintenance costs, to free themselves from financial liabilities, and yet still deliver the public good.

That said, do the (patchy) open data releases on data.gov.uk amplify or empower the privatised surveillance state? Not really. Although the national LIDAR data sets are nice!

But wouldn’t those same private organisations (the Googles, the Facebooks, Ubers, Apples and Amazons of the world), wouldn’t they jump on the opportunity to start using detailed national data sets? Asset registers, land ownership, property and site level data, national topographic mapping etc.? Of course, they would – even though that would represent further accretion of the public good into private hands for the purpose of behavioural futures.

What seems almost unavoidable is that that transfer of (albeit licensed) public goods to private hands appears to most a benign panacea that they wouldn’t be without. However, as consumers’ views and understanding evolve, will they weigh their appetite for the actual and perceived benefits against the pay-offs and blind eyes inherent in a privately curated future? Acceptance of this path as an acceptable quid-pro-quo may be cognitive dissonance writ large but we should be careful what we wish for. It might be a high price to pay.

James Cutler is co-founder and CEO of emapsite. He also has the role of Vice-Chair of the AGI Council and serves on Ordnance Survey Partner Advisory Committee.