For years, Gwen Shaffer has been leading Long Beach, Calif. residents on “data walks,” pointing out public Wi-Fi routers, security cameras, smart water meters, and parking kiosks. The goal, according to the professor of journalism and public relations at California State University, Long Beach, was to learn how residents felt about the ways in which their city collected data on them.
Gwen Shaffer Gwen Shaffer is a professor of journalism and public relations at California State University, Long Beach. She is the principal investigator on a National Science Foundation–funded project aimed at providing Long Beach residents with greater agency over the personal data their city collects.
She also identified a critical gap in smart city design today: While cities may disclose how they collect data, they rarely offer ways to opt out. Shaffer spoke with IEEE Spectrum about the experience of leading data walks, and about her research team’s efforts to give citizens more control over the data collected by public technologies.
What was the inspiration for your data walks?
Gwen Shaffer: I began facilitating data walks in 2021. I was studying residents’ comfort levels with city-deployed technologies that collect personally identifiable information. My first career as a political reporter has influenced my research approach. I feel strongly about conducting applied rather than theoretical research. And I always go into a study with the goal of helping to solve a real-world challenge and inform policy.
How did you organize the walks?
Shaffer: We posted data privacy labels with a QR code that residents can scan and find out how their data are being used. Downtown, they’re in Spanish and English. In Cambodia Town, we did them in Khmer and English.
What happened during the walks?
Shaffer: I’ll give you one example. In a couple of the city-owned parking garages, there are automated license-plate readers at the entrance. So when I did the data walks, I talked to our participants about how they feel about those scanners. Because once they have your license plate, if you’ve parked for fewer than two hours, you can breeze right through. You don’t owe money.
Responses were contextual and sometimes contradictory. There were residents who said, “Oh, yeah. That’s so convenient. It’s a time saver.” So I think that shows how residents are willing to make trade-offs. Intellectually, they hate the idea of the privacy violation, but they also love convenience.
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