Government Plans for Smart City Implementation in Hong Kong
Government of Hong Kong proposed to upgrade Technology Crime Division (TCD) of Hong Kong to Cyber Security and Technology Crime Bureau. They proposed to the Legislative Council and explained the hypothesis behind the upgrade. The police of Hong Kong also explained their strategies to the Legislative Councillors after the establishment of new technology crime bureau. To face evolving technological landscape government of Hong Kong recognizes that upgrading police and equipping them is the need of the time by using mobile devices like Smartphone and tablets (Ko & Choo, 2015). As a part of Smart Nation 6Plan of the Government of Hong Kong smart sensors and cameras at bus stops, traffic lights, rubbish bins connected by fibre-optic. The main objective behind these smart implications were to detect air pollutants in the environment, traffic jams in Hong Kong roads, and to report about rubbish bins paired with cameras to detect litters and make litterbugs to collect their trash and throw them in bins. For this innovative implication Government of Hong Kong had taken big steps by availing fibre internet to most households with high speed of about 1Gbps at very less expanse that is US $50 per month.
As visitors view of point, this approach is undeniable perfect approach, as this approach will make the city clean and help in maintaining the cleanliness. It will also keep environment pollution free and a visitor will always want to visit a country without any risk and the places which are clean. Sensors will also help in the navigation process and approaches can be made to implement self-driving cars and buses which have already been established in Hong Kong and a visitor will never want to cut his touring time in being stuck with the traffic jams (Li, 2012). He or she will always want to see the whole city in the time estimated by them. Many cases it is generally seen that visitors lose their luggage at the bus stops in the enthusiasm of touring new city or being looted by some criminals at bus stops or railway stations, cameras and sensor will help in detecting the buses, autos and other vehicles who were at that place on that particular time and thus police can get information easily and bring their luggage or other objects to the real owners. Smart Nation Plan will be beneficial in all aspects for the visitors who are touring Hong Kong city by being safe from community destroying individuals and protected from the pollution (Landry, 2012). This will also help in locating particular places or famous places which they intend to travel in expected time.
As a resident of Hong Kong there are privacy issues related to the implication of sensors in the whole city including bus stops, traffic lights even at rubbish bins. These implications are more suitable for making city more developed, smart and technological advance but this will also affect the privacy of all the individual citizen of Hong Kong. By these innovative and advance implications the government will start monitoring all the activities done at the streets bus stops and even near rubbish bins means they have the power to manipulate our activities at public places (Kogsn & Lee, 2014). Collecting this information is no doubt beneficial for the government and all the citizens of Hong Kong but if this information is accessed by some unauthorized individuals then there is more possibility of expose of personal activities to the world. Now government is able to see where an individual is going and coming from by the cameras at bus stops and traffic lights. Government can collect lot of information about a citizen by this vast surveillance on different areas in Hong Kong without being noticed by anyone in the state. According to Schmidt & Cohen (2013) for this implication government is providing fibre internet connections to each household which can act as a bridge for the hackers and let them accessibility to each house of Hong Kong if not implemented proper encryption to this server. There should not any window left for the hackers to breach the information to maintain privacy for the citizens of Hong Kong (Rothins and McCann, 2016). As a resident while voting no one has informed with this new technological implication which can monitor the privacy of an individual travelling out of the house. Expose of such information to unauthorized person or to unwanted individuals to the community may lead to several security issues.
Smart Sensors from a Visitor’s Perspective
This was one of the key features of the proposal of Smart Cities to use sensor boxes to set up wireless hotspot network for heterogeneous network in order to let mobile devices like smartphone and tablet to switch their mobile data to Wi-Fi network. To make it happen Singapore Government has set aside spectrum in a way to create new super Wi-Fi networks with greater range and high speed internet which consumes less power as compared to standard Wi-Fi which will also be used for the transition of Smart Nation data via cloud (Ohmeni, Obaidat & Zarai, 2016). Government is harnessing the power of technology to increase the efficiency and productivity of Singapore’s economy. This approach was made to fight technology related crimes, as it is relatively easier way to fight them back than it would be in other western countries. People’s Action Party ‘PAP’ is showing concern about this new innovative and advance way to fight crimes and their consequence on the general people and their privacy and security (Ko & Choo, 2015). This raised a concern to citizens of Singapore that it is more important to stop street crimes which is continuously increasing rather than fighting crimes taking place on the Web.
Visitors come to city to see the beauty, obviously they want to see safe city but they will never want to be a part of the system. These new implication may force them to share their personal information with the government which may be breached by the hackers and many security related issues affect them. Various sensitive information, files, images and videos may be saved in their devices which they are not willing to share but government can save and access those data and information without their authority which will be against the will of visitors (Patsakis et al., 2014). For an instance if they allow to access their personal information to the government of Singapore for the security purpose of himself and the citizens of Singapore but these information can be breached by a programmer and expose them to the world or person who is not authorized to look after those data and information. No one wants to share their personal information to the unknown government of other country but by this implication government will monitor all his actions and can manipulate his data. Hackers may collect very personal information and for being famous on the web they can share that information on the internet (Schineier, 2015). Transactional data can also be collected by such intrusion and can be used for personal use which is a serious crime in the eyes of Singapore Government and rest of the other countries.
Government is offering high speed internet and also providing Wi-Fi facility but at what cost, this will give them control to monitor the information, data, images and videos saved in the mobile devices. As it will be a very easy process for the government to access these data by connecting every citizen to the same network and access or manipulate them. This heterogeneous network may be safe but with certain simple coding it can be made a way to collect personal information of individuals which is a point of concern related to the sensitive information saved on the mobile devices of those individuals. Nowadays mobile devices have become an integral part of the lives of population. This is no doubt one of the biggest and efficient ways to decrease the level of crime stats in Singapore by monitoring everyone’s data but it may lead to expose of sensitive data which an individual does not want to expose. Decreasing crime rate at the cost of an individual privacy and security was not promised during the election when citizens of Singapore decided to vote that government and chose the leader (Kumar & Kumar, 2014). According to PAP there should be exchange of information using cloud but it should be limited not every information should be broadcasted but this new Smart Nation Plan is not bided with any of such agreement. An individual can decide what information and data should be exchanged but what about technology they do not have any such programming to describe between personal information and sensitive information (Mosco, 2015). Collecting personal and sensitive information in such manner cannot be tolerated as it is against the right of an individual and violate several laws related to security and privacy of a citizen of Singapore.
Smart Sensors from a Resident’s Perspective
Digital identity is composed of information stored and transmitted in digital form of data (Redlich & Nemzow, 2013). It is the recorded information all about an individual and it consist of two components which are first; it is a small set of defined, static information which is an important aspect for a transaction which generally consist of full name, birth date, gender and a specific identity of that individual may be a mark or signature of an individual. Another component of Digital identity is a large collection of more detailed information about the individual can be stated as “Other Information” which has a place behind the transaction in the database (Keen, 2012). The ‘other information’ is being up-to-dated with the time based on the history of recorded transactions which can be used as a profile for that individual (Ko & Choo, 2015). There may be a malfunction in the programming, or any fraud that an individual’s identity is being used by another person.
Issues that can be accountable on the use of digital identity in services can be listed as:
Operability: Straight forward establishment and operations of digital identity service may result in some significant practical issues which can be sub divided into: Quality and coverage of data communications which covers the effects on registration scheme and effects on subsequent authentication activity (Mezgar & Rauschecker, 2014). And availability of flexible data centres. Even making investment in urban areas Data Communication services are facing many challenges which focuses on the implication of data communication difficulties in the process of authentication and registration.
Commercial Case: There is not any commercial case for the scheme of digital identity even being rare principal driver behind the establishment of digital identity scheme. Drivers are generally around the objectives proposed by the government including delivery and planning of government services and benefits (Caperna, Minervino & Serafini, 2017). However such functional identities can be useful for NGOs, public bodies, and organizations involved in the service deliveries.
Liability: Definitions stated in the white paper can be considered to emphasis on different models for digital identity. Organizations consider more nuanced approach with liability as a matter of negotiation and agreements between participated bank and relied customers. But in emerging economies implementation of digital identity is lagging behind the capabilities of the technology (Sass et al., 2015). Further including regulatory framework in places enforcement is another issue in practicing digital identity in services.
Scale: This section can be divided into two subgroups general and contracting out. In General, scale is an issue for the scheme of digital identity across larger countries including the developing countries and emerging economies. Although countries like China and India can face significant issues in deploying, operating and designing digital identity scheme due to their very large population. Issues addressed using technology and automating process can be listed under contracting out sub-division which reduces the opportunities for ensuring that data is well encrypted and cutting corners which cannot be used by unauthorized user.
Inclusion: It can be sub-divided into political, financial and surrendering privacy for finance. There can be disenfranchisement of a significant proportion of the population due to the inappropriate and insufficient political differentiation between dominating political party and the registering agency. This can result in the unavailability of pensions for the population of opposition parties.
Singapore’s Super Wi-Fi Networks and Smart City Technology
Interoperability: This section can be explained based on the example, banking services which completely rely on the digital identity for financial services and subsequent access there is a need of interoperability. This may result in privacy issues as digital identity should be pseudonymous and must ensure that only appropriate and necessary information is being collected about the individual. The use of open regards in this case will assist in both addressing and processing of privacy issues.
Funding: It can be categorized into development, operation and enforcement. On-going funding can have consequential results for long-term viability of the scheme digital identity which means registration centres in order to support registrations updates can be messy and national identity databases make become out dated and devalued in a quick span of time (AI Award, 2015). Security issue is the first objective that can be suffered by government agencies with potential consequences for both integrity and privacy of the national identity database. Funding for enforcement is the purview of the national government which tends to slide.
Appropriateness: It is a long-term interest of emerging economies to evolve to a fully digital economy being supported by a flexible service of digital identity. Particularly many developed economies have been managed to applicable and experienced with the implication of digital identity scheme and services until their community has developed as per the criteria that was needed.
Today’s digital identity situation is typical up to an extent as users have to provide sensitive personal information like name, birth date, number and credit card numbers to access any online websites (Zhu, Carpenter & Kulkarni, 2012). On counting IP address and cookies as information of an individual, then it can be seen that internet users have left behind many personally identifiable information at each sites where they have been. They have left behind “digital bread and crumbs” throughout many cyberspaces without being well acknowledged that how data can be used and how much protected that server was. In future internet users will not have to re-centre their personal data for accessing new website. By using one or more identity services they can control or monitor who has their personal information and how that can be used which will help in minimizing or eliminating the threat of identity theft or fraud made by false identity.
The nature of mobile devices generally put them at higher exposure to threats and issues as compared to other client devices like desktop and laptop. To tackle this problem mobile devices need additional protection. An organization should develop system threat models before deploying and designing mobile devices (Kleidermache & Kleidermache, 2012).
Following are points of concern that should be kept in mind during using mobile devices to ensure personal privacy and security:
Web Browsing: Browsing is the most common activity when a mobile device is connected to the internet or any Wi-Fi network, therefor it is very important to use proper programmed and well-designed mobile devices that can stop malwares to interact with those devices and harm the operating system or manipulate any data. One can get in trouble because of his log of history accessed websites (clickstream) which is a considerable topic to widen the security administration. In order to eliminate this threat one can use browsers which are unreservedly accessible like Tor Browser and many other paid versions of browsers.
Security and Sensitive Data Issues from a Visitor’s Perspective
Using Online Password Generator: It will help in achieving more security even at the maximum level. The best password usually consists of random numbers, alphabetical letters of different cases (means capita and small letters) and including different symbols. An individual can also set auto generated password randomly generated by the device and keep it saved in mind not in the device for further use.
Bolstering answers to security question: Traditional questions are often easy to crack by any close individual any family member but adding extra characters to the answers at the end or starting or anywhere to the responded answer will help in ensuring security of the digital identity of an individual and keep their personal information very personal and secure themselves from future threats.
Updates of Operating System: There should be updated version of operating system in the mobile devices through which an individual is accessing the internet. This will help the device in defending latest malwares or new malicious activities and improve the security of that device.
Using products like Bitium: Products like Bitium help in protecting passwords and confidential data from letting in wrong hands. It is a single sign-on solution which allows an individual to input password of all web apps that is accessible on that device or an individual want to access on that device without feeding the passwords many times. This software gives liability to create one secure password for more than one apps without remembering the passwords as this software take cares of logging in and logging out for certain interval of time.
Proper Evaluation of Websites before accessing it: Proper notice should be taken on the web addresses before accessing any website and entering personal informational. It can be identified by checking whether the web address is ‘http’ or ‘https’ (Grigorik, 2013). ‘Http’ means the website is secure and verified but ‘https’ are not verified websites, an individual or internet user should not access websites starting with ‘https’.
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