The City That Has Its Own Operating System 14:29min

SUMMARY

A city in the UK has decided to create an open wife network as a sandbox for development of new technologies and products. This video has interviews with a city planner, a local entrepreneur and a former hacker who speak about the threats and opportunities of this initiative.

TRANSCRIPT | 2,620 words

[1] How hackable would a digitized city be?
I guess, the more complex you make a network, the more attack surface there is for hackers
So what is that worst case scenario?
Government on government hacking cyber warfare
By accident we have become passive observers of this technology
There is huge potential for abuse but you have to balance that with the huge potential for good and for benefits

[2] 0:42 I’m Victoria Turk and this is Motherboard. Today we’re talking about digitization and how we’re connecting more and more objects around us and using big data on an unprecedented scale.

Joining us to share their insight are:

• Anab Jain, designer and co-founder of Superflux and The Internet of Things Academy (IOTA)
• Jim Davis, former hacker turned consultant and researcher
• And Steven Hilton, who is Director of Futures at Bristol City Council and who’s been leading a city-wide digitization project that we’ll see more about later

So, the internet of things, smart cities, Big Data, these are all popular buzz words right now.  What are we actually talking about?

 If you’re talking about cities, there is a lot of ideas around connecting the infrastructure of the city to networks so that you can get real time information about various kinds of things

There’s stuff around measuring traffic, there is stuff around waste disposal. There are sensors that can measure different activities, basically

In the domestic environment, you’re talking about connecting, there are connected lamps or, you know, toasters, and you know, there are all sorts of, the whole idea of, connected smart phones, and mattresses – all of that, that is going to supposedly help us … better understand … what we do in our lives, and … make it easier and more efficient

Yeah, so, what’s the point of this kind of digitization?

I’m…, I say I’m more of a Luddite with internet of, kind of things related to, uh, toasters, forks… connecting the cats and dogs to the internet

And I thought about that especially the other week when I heard about, uh, an internet-enabled cat water bowl

And, and there seems to be an element of convenience over security with it, as well

(sort of) It’s quite an innocuous device, like a, an internet-enabled toaster and so, when it’s built there is no budget set aside or real thought put into how this thing would be secured because that toaster is connected to your phone, or your router at home, or your laptop, and it becomes a very insecure sort of device so … I’m a bit skeptical about the household appliance internet of things, in that sense

But obviously there is a lot of promise there, too.  What is the potential benefit that we can take from this kind of thing?

From the city perspective, a lot of smart city (sort of) talk is about making the city as efficient as possible

But, I guess, in Bristol, we also recognize that it’s more than that

How can you create different sorts of cultural experiences using some of these technologies to allow you to sort of interact with the city, with other people in different ways

 Obviously you’re involved with some of these projects on that city scale.  Tell us about the Bristol is Open project – what is that?

We call it the open programmable city

We’re trying to create an infrastructure within the city that lots of different people can plug into

[3] 3:27 Great, so we recently went to Bristol and visited this project so let’s take a look

There is a promise that technology might help us to manage living in cities in a cleverer way

Today more than half the world’s population live in cities

And soon it will be about 70% of the world’s population

In that space where there is now more connectivity than you’ve ever seen in your life before

We expect a lot of innovation to happen

Why are we meeting here at this lamp post?

Well, all along here – this is called … we call it the Brunel Mile, and this is a mile of waterway and we’ve created what we call ‘the wireless mile’

And then we have a mesh canopy of connectivity across the whole city, on the lamp posts

So, there are tens of thousands of people who use this area and we are going to use this for experimental work on wireless communication technology

[4] 4:25 You have organized chaos so it is, you know, Bristol is Open, it’s an infrastructure to bring in very, very, very large amounts of data from the sensors that the wireless mesh will connect up, and making citizens part of that ongoing experimentation

Good cities in the future are ones where everybody is part of the experiment about what it means to live within the city

That must also pose some privacy questions…

Yeah…

…about treating your citizens as lab rats

Yeah, well, indeed, a city is a laboratory where the citizens are not treated as guinea pigs, is how we described it, … cause there is a real risk that this starts to feel like ‘Big Brother’ and that there is some shadowy figure collecting all of this data from people as they walk or drive around Bristol

So what do you do about that?  So I think what you do about that is you have a really open conversation with people about how they want to engage

 [5] 5:24 So, with the Bristol is Open project, uh, which is bringing these (kind of) super-fast networks to the city, how does this control room fit into the future of that?

The irony is … it’s an integral part of one of many forms of information that either we would like to hold or we would like to hold or we hold already from a resident of the city

So, the early intervention – as well as obviously using that intelligence to be recorded, if there is a criminal act, they’re caught

So you’re almost trying to stop crime and stop injury before it happens?

Yes, this around public space reassurance, public space intervention, to enable issues to hopefully be prevented at the earliest point

[6] 6:08 The key concept, the key architecture that we are promoting for Bristol is Open; an operation system for all smart cities

It’s actually going to transform the cities the same way that Android transformed the mobile phone industry

So anybody could program or customize the service for themselves so it’s operating on full democratization of the smart city infrastructure

So it’s essentially open source?

Ah, it is completely open source

Yeah, absolutely it’s open source

So the city does whatever the citizen would like it do

It’s not a top-down provision of services

The local authority does not necessarily always know the best what the citizen needs

I think that we are going to be able to provide more human services to the citizens, and make the city a happier place, and some of the things that are happening at Bristol, for instance, they are around citizen happiness, they are around playability…

It’s going to provide completely new concepts for future smart cities

[7] 7:10 So how does all your work fit in with the Bristol is Open project?

Well, Bristol is Open is, um, brilliant for us because what we, obviously, a massively networked city that allows us to have huge potential to make new work in this way and it helps us open up ideas, but also to support the bigger ideas, because we’re really looking at playable city, as it’s growing internationally –

we want to really start tackling bigger and bigger projects and the more capability as city has for us to do – is great for us.

 [8] 7:45 It’s obvious this could be used for so many good things but at the same time, I think, any technology that is as widespread and as far-reaching as this can appear a little creepy at least at first

This is going to happen.  It’s coming.

The sooner we can embrace this and get to grips with it all and all the consequences positive and challenging as well

There are as many answers about what this about as there are people in the city.

[9] 8:15 What do you think Jake, does this hyper-connected future inspire or terrify you?

Uh, I think, on paper it’s kind of, it’s fascinating, it is inspiring, it must be, um, amazing to look at (kind of) the back end of this and see how it all works

I was thinking about that … wireless mile over lamp post, etc.

There are so many things that could go potentially go wrong with that, from, even, uh – accidentally hardware failure, software failure, failure of the sensors to more (sort of) harmful risks like, we looked a little at the potential for Big Brother, government, corporate surveillance, collecting that amount of data

Do people want that data in the hands of others, or they even really care?

So I think there is an education aspect there

What is the problem if there is a security risk in an internet-connected bin?

Well, it depends what the internet-connected bin is connected to

And so that if there is a unique exploit found in one of the bins and a hacker sat dormant in that bin’s software for a year, waiting for some … connectivity fault between that bin and, um, the super computer it’s connected to and then, (kind of) through leveraging, they could access more parts of the city, I guess, the more complex you make a network, the more attack surface there is for hackers

Um, they don’t (kind of) go into it thinking; “this is a city, it has a million different things, we’re going to get them all at once”

It would probably start with a bin, or something innocuous like that, and then branch out slowly

So, yeah, I think each individual part of the city needs to be kind of looked at and audited, but that doesn’t really happen with things like toasters and bins, and so security it overlooked, where it’s…, it shouldn’t be

So what is that worst case scenario?

Oh, I guess the worst case situation would be not individual hackers, government-sponsored hacking…

If we’re in a sort of war zone situation where a government hires a…, hires a building full of hackers, and then decides to take out everything on the power grid at once

I guess when you’re talking about hacks on that level, it’s pretty challenging to defend against that sort of scenario

There is a (kind of) two-way risk there, the risk of having so many individual different individual, um, manufacturers and parts, not … (kind of) autonomous unit at once that it becomes impossible to unify and protect everything at once … and then there is the other end of it, which is, … it would be absolutely even more terrifying if everything was owned by one entity, because then they have that control, which is … slightly … as scary as the potential for things to go wrong, so there is the balance to be struck, I think

[10] 10:33 There is risks in mind, what are the benefits here?  Could we use this network to design some kind of digitized utopia instead?

I think there are a lot of benefits if we, if the education part happens first, so I think that is a really good point you made there

Um, the benefits are that if people start understanding what the potential is, then they’ll start using it for actually what the technology to do, like…

Can farmers use the internet of things to understand how to make our ecosystems more sustainable, what kind of crops to grow, where do they grow, what moisture do they need?

Um, for health purposes, you know, where there is more polluted water, where there is radioactivity in water, all of those things are possible.  It comes from people and their passion to do something about a concern

And I think you’ve designed a few prototypes already

Yeah, we’re doing a project currently called ‘Buggy Air’, it’s part of IOTA, that we’ve co-founded and it’s, this…this is a very big sensor kit which contains three sensors, one for measuring carbon monoxide, one for carbon dioxide, one for particulate matter

We’re going to attach these to prams, and walk around the city, and there is an app which is connected to website, where the data is in real time, measured

We’re basically giving people a sense of what data they’re collecting and letting them decide what they want to do with the data

So, you’re trying to (kind of) enlist individual parents to stick that on the back of their buggy, and become a walking pollution sensor

Basically yes, because walking exposure to air pollution is very different to what is being currently measured

When does monitoring people’s behavior coincide with snooping on citizens?

There is huge potential for abuse I recognize that, um, but you have to balance that with the huge potential for good and for benefits and, and unless you have a (sort of) sensible conversation with people about what the right level is, then we’re not going to be able to (sort of) get to that point of being able to exploit the benefits

Well, worst case scenario, I don’t mean to put you on the spot with this question: What if an agency, like the NSA or the GCSQ approached you and said, “You’ve got all this information about, um, people walking down the streets in a certain way, we want all of it”

Where do the ethics lie in, in handing that information over from the, the community to a … what, … can you be subpoenaed into fully disclosing … lamp post data?

I can’t comment on the legalities of what we could or couldn’t be legally enforced to do

But what I would say is that I think what you described is a really good reason why a city needs a project like Bristol is Open

I’d much rather be in a position where got some sort of policies, some sort of statement, some sort of governance of our own, that could we use to say “Well, no, we’re not going to do that because … this is our policy.”

Do you think that people actually want this?

[11] 13:30 People right now, I don’t think, by and large, are in a position to decide what they want because they don’t know quite what they’re getting right now, or taking away, … being taken away from them

If there is a way that every time my data is being used by X company, I get something in return, financial or otherwise, then, I’m sure, all of people want in

I don’t think many people currently even understand what they would be getting with the smart city because, it would be kind of … when people (kind of) think about that, unlike Bristol is Open, they see it ‘us vs them’ and all this new (kind of) smart technology, and they’re being quite mystified and quite abstracted and so this (kind of) gives them more of ingress point into that

If the smart bit is an enabler of all those other good things that make a city like Bristol a good place to live, then I’m happy.  The feedback we get is that people want to be part of that conversation, even if, even if experimenters don’t always get it right the first time.