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Theorizing Technologically Mediated Policing in Smart Cities: An Ethnographic Approach to Sensing Infrastructures in Security Practices

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Technology and the City

Part of the book series: Philosophy of Engineering and Technology ((POET,volume 36))

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Abstract

Smart digital infrastructures predicated on myriads of sensors distributed in the environment are often rendered as key to contemporary urban security governance to detect risky or suspicious entities before or during a criminal event takes place. At the same time, they often involve surveillance of urban environments, and thus not only criminals but also large groups of people and entities unrelated to criminal phenomena can end up under close inspection.

This chapter makes its contribution on two levels. For one, it offers a theoretical framework to the research and conceptualization of the role of sensing infrastructures in urban security practices. It shows how insights from Philosophy of Technology and Science and Technology Studies can produce a nuanced understanding of the role of digital technologies in security practices, beyond standard conceptualizations of technology. Moreover, the chapter proposes a geological approach to enrich our repertoire of imagining and researching smart urban ecosystems.

Secondly, the chapter contributes to a higher level of transparency of these practices by presenting the results of ethnographic research performed in a set of police organizations that employ sensing infrastructures and algorithmic profiling in their practices. The chapter draws empirically on research performed in the Dutch police, both at municipal and national levels with some additional material gathered in a constabulary in England. In these organizations, resource allocation decisions are often predicated on automated number plate recognition technology that processes data from an array of smart cameras distributed in the environment. In these ways together, the chapter highlights a set of normative issues with implications for the effectiveness and legitimacy of urban security (surveillance) practices in smart environments.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    To protect the confidentiality of the individual police officers the name of the organizations are anonymized in this study and the names of individual officers were made generic.

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Acknowledgements

The author wants to thank Tsjalling Swierstra, Irma van der Ploeg, and Jason Pridmore as well as the police staff, municipality officials and technology developers for their generous collaboration and support for this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, Leiden University, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Vlad Niculescu-Dincă

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  1. Vlad Niculescu-Dincă
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Correspondence to Vlad Niculescu-Dincă .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Michael Nagenborg  & Margoth González Woge  & 

  2. Ethics and Philosophy of Technology Section, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Taylor Stone

  3. Department of Philosophy, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Pieter E. Vermaas

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Niculescu-Dincă, V. (2021). Theorizing Technologically Mediated Policing in Smart Cities: An Ethnographic Approach to Sensing Infrastructures in Security Practices. In: Nagenborg, M., Stone, T., González Woge, M., Vermaas, P.E. (eds) Technology and the City. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 36. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52313-8_5

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