[Music]
how hackable would a digitized city be I
guess the the more complex you make a
network the more attx surface there is
for hackers so what is that worst case
scenario government on government
hacking cyber
warfare by accident we have we have
become passive observers of this
technology there's huge potential for
abuse but you have to balance that with
the huge potential for good and for
[Music]
benefits 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 Jane designer and co-founder of
superflux and the internet of things
Academy Jake Davis former hacker
returned 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 buzzwords right
now what are we actually talking about
if you're talking about cities there's a
lot of ideas ideas around connecting the
infrastructure of the city to network
works so that you can get real time
information about various kind of things
there's stuff around measuring traffic
there's stuff around waste disposal
there 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's
all sorts of the whole idea of connected
smart forks and mattresses all of that
that's 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 more of a LED with internet of
kind of things related to uh toaster
Forks connecting the cats and dogs to
the internet and I thought that
especially the other week when I heard
about uh an internet enabled cat water
bowl and there's there seems to be an
element of convenience over security
with it as well sort of it's quite an
innocuous device like an internet
enabled toaster and so when it's built
there's no kind of budget set aside or
real thought put into how this thing
will be secured because that toaster is
connected to your phone or your router
at home or your laptop then it becomes
part of becomes a very insecure sort of
device so I'm I'm a bit skeptical about
the household appliance Internet of
Things in that sense but obviously
there's a lot of promise there too
what's the potential benefits that we
can take from this kind of thing from a
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 is 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 and with other people in different
ways obviously you're involved with some
of these ideas on that City scale tell
us about the Bristol is open project 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 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 clever way today more than half the
world's population live in cities and
soon it will be about 70% of the world's
population and in that space where
there's 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 Brunell Mile and this is
a mile of uh 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 lamposts so
there are tens of thousands of people
who use this area and we're going to use
this for experimental work on wireless
communication
technology It's s of 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 a city that must
also pose some privacy questions if
you're treating your citizens as labat
yeah well indeed a city a city as a
laboratory where the citizens are not
treated as guinea pigs is how we
describe it cuz 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
well I think what you do about that is
you have a really open conversation with
people about how they want to
engage so with the brist is open project
uh which is bringing these kind of huge
super fast networks to the city how does
this control room fit into the future of
that the eyes and ears it's an integral
part of one of many forms of information
that either we would like to hold or we
hold already from a resident of the the
city so the early intervention as well
as obviously using that that
intelligence if we record it if there's
been a criminal act at
court so you're almost trying to stop
crime and stop injury before it happens
yes this is around public space
reassurance public space intervention to
enable issues to hopefully be prevented
at the earliest
point the key concept the key
architecture that we are promoting from
Bristol is open an operating 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 and
customize a service for themselves so
it's full opening up full
democratization of a smart City INF
structure so it's essentially open
source oh it is completely open source
yes our solution is open source so the
city does whatever the citizen would
like it to do is 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
happening at Bristol for instance that
around citizen happiness the around
playability is going to provide
completely new Concepts for future smart
cities so how does all of your work fit
in with the Bristol is open project well
Bristol is open is um brilliant for us
because what we obviously a a a
massively networked City that allows us
to have huge potential to make new work
in this way um helps us to open up ideas
but also to support the bigger ideas
because we're really looking at playable
city as is as it's growing
internationally we want to really sort
of start tackling bigger and bigger
projects and the more capability that a
city has for us to do that is is great
for
us it's obvious that this could be used
for so many good things but at the same
time I think any new technology that's
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 and
challenging as well there are as many
answers to what this is about as there
are people in the
city what do you think Jak does this
hyperconnected future inspire or terrify
you uh I think in 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 and I was thinking about that
Wireless mile or the lamp post Etc there
are so many things that could
potentially go wrong with that from even
uh accidentally Hardware failure
software failures failure of the sensors
to more sort of harmful risks like we
looked a little bit at the potential for
Big Brother governments corporate
surveillance and collecting that amount
of data you know do people want that
data in the hands of others or do they
even really care so I think there's an
education aspect there what is the
problem if there's a security risk in an
Internet connected bin well it depends
what what the Internet connected bin is
connected to and so that if there was a
unique exploit found in one of the bins
and a hacker sat dormant in that bin
software for a year waiting for some
connectivity fault between that bin and
um the supercomputer it's connected to
and then through kind of leveraging they
could access more parts of the city I
guess the 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
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 I
toasters and bins and Social Security is
overlooked where it shouldn't be so what
is that worst case scenario oh I guess
the worst case scenario would be not
individual hackers know government
sponsored hacking if we're in a sort of
War Zone situation where a government
hires hires a building full of hackers
and decides to take out everything on
the power grid at once and I guess when
you're talking about hacks on that level
it's pretty challenging to defend
against that sort of scenario there's a
kind of a two-way risk there's a risk of
having so many different
individual um manufacturers and parts
and a kind of autonomous units that it
becomes impossible to unify and protect
everything at once and then there's 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 going wrong so
there balance to be struck I think those
risks in mind what are the benefits here
could we use this network to design some
kind of digitized Utopia
instead um I think there are a lot of
benefits if we if that education part
happens first so I think that's a really
good point you made there um and the
benefits are that if people start
understanding what the potential is then
they'll start using it for actually what
the techn is meant to do like can
farmers use 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's radioactivity in water all
of those things are possible it comes
from people and their passion to do
something about a concern and I 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 is a this
is a very big sensor kit which contains
three sensors one for measuring carbon
mon monoxide one for nitrogen dioxide
and one for particulate matter we're
going to attach these to prems and walk
around the city and there is an app
which is connected to the website where
the data is in real time measured we're
basically giving people a sense of what
data they're collecting and then letting
them decide what they want to do with
the data so you're trying to kind of
enlist individual par s to stick that on
the back of their buggy yeah and become
a walking pollution sensor basically yes
because B 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's there's 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 a sort of
sensible conversation with people about
what 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 now I don't I
don't mean to put you on the spot with
this question what if an agency like the
NSA or the gchq approached you and said
you've got all this information about um
people walking down these streets in a
certain way we we want all of it where
do the ethics lie in in in handing that
information over from from the from the
community to to a what can you be
subpoena for example into into fully
disclosing lamp post data I aren't able
to comment on the legalities of of what
we could or couldn't be legally enforced
to do but what I would say is that I
think what you've described as a really
good reason why a city needs a project a
project like Bristol is open and I would
much rather be in a position where we've
got some sort of policy some sort of
statement some sort of governance of our
own that we could use to say well no
we're not we're not going to do that
because this is our policy do you think
that people actually want this
people are 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
or get 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 a lot of people
Wanton in I don't think many people
currently even understand what they
would be getting with a smart City
because it would be kind of a when
people think about that and they see
examples of it so far un unlike
Bristol's open they kind of see as being
a sort of US versus them and all this
new kind of smart technology and they're
being quite it being quite mystified and
guys you quite abstracted and so this
kind of gives some more of an Ingress
Point into that if the smart bit is an
enabler of all of those other good
things that make a city you know 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 it means
that experiments don't always get it
right the first time
h
[Music]