There
are companies, which have been advertising smart cities with all information
linked and displayed. I don’t think that is a good idea.
There
could be an umbrella with all information databases from all public departments
linked, e.g. city data, provincial data, federal data, public transportation, income
tax agency, citizenship department, etc. With all information linked and
analyzed, staff could have an overview of a city, province, or country quickly
and accurately.
Could
government ask private sectors for user data? I don’t think this is a good idea
to ask private sectors such as private company, publicly traded company,
wireless network operators, ISP, etc. to provide data or open databases. There
is an issue of privacy, confidential information, trade secrets, etc. that governments
should not get involve in case of leaking.
The
packet analyzer team is different as they must monitor Internet, phone
communications, etc. to provide secure and safety to everyone. They could ask
wireless operators and ISP for secured links to a R/O mirrored database for that
purpose. They could also link to some less sensitive government database such
as public transportation for more information. However they should not ask
private companies or sensitive government’s databases access, because if data
was leaking, they would be blamed for that.
In
brief, smart cities to monitor and control everything in a city could be done
with current technologies, but we should not do so due to privacy, trade
secrets, confidentiality, and secured data by different parties involved.
