Today’s Singapore provides free WiFi inside subway stations, and it’s paved the way for its first driverless taxis. With limited access to fresh water, the city-state has also developed technology to catch rain and desalinate some 100 million gallons of seawater a day. Even its fabled fancy bus stops get a dose of high technology. [...]
In short, Singapore is a city—and nation—of sensors, barely noticeable to the average citizen. But they know they’re there. It’s all part of the government’s plan to become the world’s first “Smart Nation,” which was kick-started in 2014 with the rollout of 1,000 sensors. In the grand scheme, Singapore wants to build a network of sensors to collect and connect data from all aspects of urban life—not just traffic and infrastructure but also human movement and behavior. All that information, collected across various departments, will then feed into a central platform, accessible to all governmental agencies. The engineers behind it have dubbed the plan “E3A,” for “Everyone, Everything, Everywhere, All the Time.” [...]
The thing is, Singapore is as exciting for the future of big data and connected technology as it is unsettling for those concerned about the role of privacy in a smart city. It’s been successful in providing public services in part because it can collect vast amounts of data on its citizens without raising much public concern about mass surveillance—something that U.S. cities would find difficult.[...]
Singaporeans have a remarkable amount of faith in public institutions: One survey found that 74 percent of the general population trusts the government. Meanwhile in the U.S., the 2013 leak of National Security Agency documents by Edward Snowden have put Americans on edge, and seemingly harmless initiative like making streetlights smarter often brings up the question of whether the technology could be turned into a surveillance tool. From Oakland, California, to Seattle, to Chicago, cities have faced backlash over smart initiatives to learn from big data collection.
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