Personal And Ethical Implications Of A Government's Smart State Plan

People affected by this proposal

Lau, Y. (2015). Cybercrime in cloud: Risks and responses in Hong Kong, Singapore. In Ko, R., & Choo, K.(Eds.). (2015). The Cloud Security Ecosystem: Technical, Legal, Business and Management Issues. Waltham, MA: Syngress.

This chapter discusses some of the approaches to cybercrime that are taken by both the Hong Kong and Singapore governments. But, any approach to cybercrime comes with risks to information security and privacy.

Tasks:

Assume that an Australian State Government has reviewed the Singapore Government’s Smart Nation Plan and has decided to implement their own Smart State Plan. This will initially consist of a network of smart sensors and cameras at traffic lights, bus stops, rubbish bins, etc. in their CBD to monitor citizens behaviour and address street crime.

1. Discuss what you see as the personal and ethical implications for your privacy of the proposed Government’s Smart Sensor Network by looking at:

a. The types or categories of people affected by this proposal,

b. What behavioural changes you might expect to see from normal citizens,

c. Would you expect to see changes in individual behaviours, such as choice of activities, changes in time schedules, etc.

The next part of the Government’s plan is to deploy a Smart WiFi Network which will consist of a series of sensor boxes to act as WiFi hotspots throughout the city. This would allow the introduction of a heterogeneous network where smart phones and other devices could seamless switch between mobile data and WiFi.

2. Discuss what you see as the personal and ethical implications for your privacy of the proposed Government’s Smart WiFi Network by looking at:

a. The types or categories of people affected by this proposal,

b. What behavioural changes you might expect to see from normal citizens using their mobile devices in the CBD,

c. Would you expect to see changes in individual behaviours, such as choice of activities, changes in time schedules, etc.

d. What are the implications for you If you had sensitive information on your mobile device that you did not want to share?

The Smart State Plan will also enrol all citizens with a Digital Identity to ensure that they can correctly be identified and access services provided by the state both electronically and physically.

3. If you were visiting the State Capital after the Smart State Plan has rolled out, do you think that the use of a digital identity would assist you to maintain your privacy while using your mobile phone or devices during your visit? Discuss the reasons for your answer.

4. What steps do you think that you could take to ensure the security and privacy of your digital identity while operating your mobile device(s) in this environment? Discuss each step that you would take along with its advantages and disadvantages.

1. After making detail review of the Singapore Government’s Smart nation plan by the Australian State Government they have planned to design their own smart state plan. This specific sensor design is widely used in the traffic purposes such as in bus stops, rubbish bins, traffic lights (Elias, Peterman & Frittelli, 2016). In order to address the crime taking place in the streets the government has planned to design this smart nation plan for their citizens. While following this smart sensor the citizens are allowed to follow personal and ethical implications for maintaining the privacy.

By this specific proposal mainly the working people are affected. As these kinds of sensors are widely used in the traffic purposes thus all those people who travel by road are either negatively or positively impacted by this digital design. The sensing system is comprises of different components such as stabilizers, detect, track, groups, traffic parameters, classify and vehicle trajectories. The overall road side traffic movements are securely controlled with the help of the smart traffic signals (Stojmenovic & Wen, 2014). However, the rural people who are not at all familiar with the digital technology will be mostly affected negatively. As, they are not aware of these technologies on the other hand the rate of road accidents can be controlled by this proposal.

Again this technology will let the citizens know about the bus timings on the bus stoppage thus even in unknown location also they can travel by road without any hesitation. With the installation of additional cameras the roles of the employees will become easier. With the increasing work efficiency they can track and monitor and track the entire traffic process. High level coordination in the major travel corridors within the city also helps the people who are travelling by road on busy times also.

Smart sensor network system also can affect the behavior of the citizens also. Without any kind of fixed infrastructure the network setup can also be carried out. The complete lifestyle of every individual may also change with the proposal. The health and wellness of the citizens change with the smart sensing system (Stojmenovic, & Wen, 2014). People can leave their unhealthy habits through these advanced technologies. The overall security of any operational system increases also with the successful design and implementation of sensor network. Digitized lifestyle influences the cognitive, social, behavioral and emotional implication also.

Technical implications can transfer the overall system control and ownership of the behaviors. The operational efficiency of the human increases a lot with the sensor networks. On the other hand, technologies make people more dependent and as a result they have almost forget their human capabilities and become absolutely dependent on the technologies for different purposes (Jing, et al., 2014).  Due to extreme usage of the sensor network the rate of unwanted technical hacking tendency among the humans have also been increased a lot. Though, the sensor network gives high security but still if all the components are not considered then the tendency of information hijack among the human also keep on increasing a lot.

Behavioral changes may expect by this proposal

Though, due to implementation of advanced technologies the behavior of the human changes a lot but still from the social and emotional perspectives the behavior must not be changed accordingly. With the sensor network different changes may occur in terms of activity changes, time changes, communication changes etc. As technology increases the human efficiency thus the time management and choice of activities for the human also changes a lot with the changing time period (Knockel, Senft & Deibert, 2016).  Behavioral changes are not expected from human but still in some cases the behavior might change. Smart technology can change the behavior of any human being belongs to the rural geographical boundaries. The behavioral change may also impact the activities selection and time schedule change. 

The activities are as follows:

• Proper understanding of behavioral mobility
• Storing of the capacities at certain location for the upcoming future
• Better estimation of the demands and data collection travel activities
• Location oriented and user oriented traditional  information collection process

After investigating the social factors of smart sensors it has been found that, due to the changing activities the total change in time details changes a lot with the changing time period. It is determined that, as the working efficiency and speed of the activities enhances a lot with the smart sensor network thus the time management plan developed by the human also changes a lot.  As the smart sensors are used in the traffic signals and bus stops also thus the citizens become bound to follow the traffic rules (Tankard, 2015). If any of the traffic rule is missed or avoided then according to the traffic law and regulations then citizens may be penalized as well. The citizens will come to know details about the current situation of the roads, traffics conditions also and according to that they can manage their time also.  Due to the location oriented sensing the time management of the humans also changes.

With the development of the advanced technologies the daily lives of each and every citizen changes a lot (Harris & Patten, 2015). The people who are widely affected with the wifi technology are categorized in the below section:

The behaviors of the users have changes a lot with the implication of the wifi internet based connection. In many location the government also offers free wifi connections, due to this reason the cost investment rate that is generally allotted by the users are becoming lesser day by day. Many wifi connection providers and vendors are there who offer these kinds of services to the consumers. Base on the connection effectiveness and efficiency the users do adopt or take the subscriptions of the most valuable connection providers (Rodday, Schmidt & Pras, 2016). As much as the users will be able to get valuable information from the wifi connection and internet services that much commercial revenue and competitive advantages the service providers will get from the services. The wifi hotspot is comprises of series of sensor boxes and as a result the smart phone users will be able to use the service offered by the vendors. The heterogeneous network connections offered by the companies are mainly turning on the users towards internet dependent.

Changes are expected to see individual behaviors

With the implementation of the wifi connection the activities adopted by the users will also change a lot from the previous times. Technical efficiency will increase the business efficiency of the business organizations and also of the common citizens.  In order to complete all the activities of the daily lives within the estimated time period it is the responsibility of the users to allot time for each of the daily activities. With the wifi connection the time that was previously spend for searching any information has been consumed (Sivaraman et al., 2015). There was also time limitation which implies that beyond the specific time limitation none of the information can be accessed by the users. These issues has been completely resolves as y using the wifi connection regardless of location and time the users will be able to access information from the required resource. 

Wifi connection also gives security to the users and as a result the users feel free to use the internet connection both for their personal and professional usage.  In traditional days if anyone wishes to know something new about some new topic then they had to go through primary research approach by the application of survey and questionnaires. In addition to this, another important approach that was widely used by the users is interview (Sadeghi, Wachsmann, & Waidner, 2015).  In those approaches the users had to spend huge times on the other hand with the positive application of the wifi connections the time requirements become lesser than the traditional days. In order to gain any information beyond their knowledge level through the help of wifi connection the users will be use their wireless devices and within a short time period they will access their desired information.

With the help of proper wifi connection the users will be able to access information from the resources regardless of their geographical location and time as well. In order to access the wifi the users are also needed to have proper authentication. Without user authorization and authorization none of the users will be able to access information from the server. In order to protect confidential data or information stored in the wireless devices of the users it is necessary for the users to use proper security aspects in terms of encryption technology and application as well. In case of encryption technology a key is used by both the senders and the receiver and that key must not be shared by any of the third party users (Harris & Patten, 2015). Through the wifi connection if any user wills to transfer any information to someone else then, he or she must keep this on mind that the information is not transferring to anyone else connected to the wifi. With the help of the application firewall the transmission channel will also be secured from the external hijackers. If the users do not want to share any sensitive information to anyone else then the users are required to use these applications in terms of encryption mechanism and application firewall.  Apart from this, another mechanism that can be applied by the users for securing the information from the external users includes physical security and technical security. It is the role of the owners to use the most suitable security mechanism to keep the sensitive information secured from the external attackers (Jones & Chin, 2015). Apart from this, another important thing that must be a major concern for the users is proper knowledge regarding technology. 

Implication of Smart WiFi Network on privacy

3. Steps to be taken to ensure the security and privacy of the digital identity 

It is the role of the state to maintain the safety of the citizens from the external attackers. Though, due to the extreme increment of crimes and criminals it has become a responsibility of the state authority to design some security policy and procedures to keep the security of the citizens. However, the identity security is another important thing which has become a major concern to the state council of any location.  Besides paper based identity the digital identity such as biometric registration has become another concern to the state council. Even of the paper registration of any user is stolen by the hackers or misused by the hackers then with the help of the digital identity the actual criminal can be identified (Knockel, Senft & Deibert, 2016). The biometric registration or authentication can be defined with the help of face detection, iris scanner, fingerprint scanning etc. If these biometric scanning mechanism are used by the state councils then, the identify swapping issues that the countries are majorly facing nowadays will become less than the previous. The steps are to be followed by the users are as follows:

Each step that are to be taken

This is the initial approach or mechanism that is widely used by the council for making unique identity of different person.  PAN card, voter card, driving license are the papers has different unique id. Through these unique identities one person can be differentiated from another person (Sadeghi, Wachsmann, & Waidner, 2015).  Thus, verification of the unique identify before the development of the digital identity is very much important thing.

The handmade papers are not at all secured and these papers can be easily misused by the any one. Nowadays, in the digitized era the papers can be easily misused by the external users.

The paper made identity of any person can be changed by the criminals and also can be misused for different crime purposes. However, the digital identities can never be changed because the digital identities are developed based on the Irish scanning, fingerprint scanning, face scanning etc. These are such identity details which can never be changes by any user.

If during the scanning phase any of the security measures are missed then the total system will fail be a failure.

Digital identity of customers are always at stake due to the fact that imposters are waiting to gain access to the digital account of  genuine users and act on behalf of the genuine account holders. Financial activities are processed by imposters on behalf of genuine clients leading to the factgenuine clients are affected adversely due to imposters. In case imposters are able to steal identities of genuine clients, they gain access to their portal leading to the fact that they can act on behalf of them and access banking details. Digital identity has been acting as a new source of loop hole for imposters in order to get unauthenticated access to the portal. Despite the fact that security measures are available but imposters find ways to gain access to the client portal. Major steps that are taken by clients to prevent imposter access to their portal are as follows: -

Use of Digital Identity to maintain privacy

During the creation of account, password that is set must be made strong enough to be decrypted. Strong reference must be set initially as clients can set a strong and efficient password. In case the password is strong enough, imposters cannot get access to the bank account and personal details and data of clients stays protected. Reference list that is set by back end operator is likely to consist more than 8 alphabet, at least one numeric digit and at least one symbol to increase the robustness of the password. This helps in securing data that are present in accounts of genuine clients

Authorized websites must be the only sites that can be accessed from portals. Unauthorized sites must be blocked in order to keep genuine accounts protected from imposters. A website is documented to be authorized only if it has an “s” encrypted in it. This is a symbol of authorization of the website. It is recommended to check URL of the websites before accessing the same. Websites without proper authorization must be avoided in order to keep applications protected.    

Sharing of personal data in internet and social platform has adverse effect on the clients who are sharing their data on their social platforms. Imposters who want to gain access to data follow clients on social media. This helps the imposters to gain required data of the clients. After gaining data of clients imposters can use them against genuine clients. This allow imposters to get regular updates of the stalked personnel’s. Hence it is advised not to update regular information of whereabouts unless it is very important in nature.

Lucrative messages and emails must be handled with utmost care as it denotes the fact that processing of data on clicking wrong and malicious websites can cause adverse effect. Major problem in this kind of malicious email are that it is very difficult to understand which emails are malicious and which mails are genuine. In case mails are not genuine in nature, imposters get complete access to portal and account and harm the clients.

Two factor verification system is one of the most secured way of staying secured and protected. This process includes portraying password to the application to keep it secured. After approval of correct password, clients need to answer few pre answered questionnaire, leading to the fact that the database become more secured. In case imposters crack the initial stage of deploying password, they get stuck in the questionnaire section as questions are pre answered and in case imposters are unable to answer the questions correctly, they are stopped before the gateway of the website.

Steps to ensure the security and privacy of your digital identity

Installing firewall is one of the most popular prosecution steps that are taken by organization in order to keep the server protected and secured. Firewall prevents malicious codes to attack application and also protects server from unauthorized interference of imposters. By applying firewall, one can protect their servers from unauthenticated imposters.

Introducing captcha is one of the most important aspect of preventing imposters and robots to access websites of the organization. This also ensures the fact that it prevents imposters to gain access to personal portals in order to mitigate unauthorized access to portal of genuine clients.

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