Smart Sensors, Wi-Fi Hotspots, And Digital Identity In Smart Cities Essay.

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.   

Smart Sensors in Smart Cities

The smart sensor is a special type of device which gathers input from its physical environment and use the built-in components to calculate the desired output depending on the input taken (Suryadevara et al. 2015). Smart sensors are able to collect high quality environmental data with less noise. This types of devices are used to monitor various types of environments and the control mechanism of the environment. This smart sensor is highly used in smart cities in present days. In a smart city, the data is collected from the citizens and from their personal devices to analyse the data, and it is used to manage traffic and transport system, waste management system, water supply management system and other community services. Assuming that the Australian Government has proposed a Smart State Plan following the Smart Nation Plan of Singapore Government some ethical issues can arise with it (Wey and Hsu 2014). First when this new idea is implemented there will be various types of issues with the normal citizens of Australia. There will be two types of people who will be affected by this program. The old citizens of Australia will be affected by this program as they are not so aware of the new technologies in the world. They might need a long time to be an active part of this system. Other types of the peoples are the poor peoples of Australia. To use this type of services smart electronic devices are also needed. They might not have the sufficient money to buy the required electronic gadget. In this case, I think it is not a proper way to implement this system. The system should be implemented in a way that everyone can use the facilities because there needs to be a compatible device to use the smart sensors. The Smart State Plan will have some good implementations. It can be expected that the citizens of Australia will have a massive behavioural change in them. After implementing the Smart State Plan successfully, they might be more sensitive than before. People should follow the proper signalling and speed limit of the roads. They might use the dustbin properly which will help to keep the city clean and the main benefit of the Smart State Plan that will be achieved as the low rate of crime than before. From my personal implication, it is good to see that people will be more sensitive than before. Following the proper traffic signals peoples can avoid accidents, and for me, the most satisfying part will be the lower crime rate after the implementation of the Smart State Plan, but there can be some personal privacy issues with it (Zhang et al. 2015). The cameras of the city will be able to monitor my movements and my habits which is not a good thing for me. Also, the smart sensors of dustbin are able to track my dumping history which is a very awkward thing for me. The Smart State Plan of the Australian Government can bring change in the individual behaviour of the citizens. It can be expected that the citizens of Australia will be more punctual after implementing this system. This system will also make the city safer at late nights. In this case from my side, I think punctuality is necessary for every people, and this system will make the Australian citizens more punctual as the transportation system will be punctual at the time (Siergiejczyk, Pa? and Rosi?ski 2014). People might hang out at late nights without any worries as they will be secured by the smart sensor network. From my point of view, this Smart State Plan will give many benefits to its citizens but will have many ethical issues with it. The first issue arises with the privacy of the citizens. The smart sensors will collect the data from the citizens and from the external environment. The main question is the safety of this data collected by the smart sensors (De Gante, Aslan and Matrawy 2014). The security of this data is in doubt as this might can be hacked. Successful hacking of those data can expose the vulnerability of any individual citizen to the hackers (Moore et al. 2014). In this network, my personal details might be uploaded in the near future which is not a good thing for me. My personal info might be collected over the network which can do several damages to me if the information hacked by any hacker. Another ethical issue is that the settings of the smart sensors and the cameras can be altered physically any time and this can be the cause of a massive disruption in the city, and the hackers can take advantage of the situation and can damage to the citizens (Meijer, Makinwa and Pertijs 2014). Also, it is not sure that this smart sensors hardware will always give the perfect output. It may give wrong information which can lead to problems for the citizens. Personally, for me, this smart sensor network can give a big advantage to a city and to its citizens, but these networks need to be implemented perfectly without any internal network flaws and also it needs to secure enough that it cannot be hacked easily by the hackers.

Ethical Issues with Smart Sensors Implementation

Wi-Fi covered city is one step towards the digitisation of the city. It is another way of connecting the whole city. Wi-Fi hotspots can give the internet access to all the portions of the city, even that portions where the network is not available (Seufert et al. 2016). The Government of Australia is now ready to connect the whole city with the internet using the smart Wi-Fi network. This network will be a heterogeneous type of network. A heterogeneous type of network can consist of different types of an operating system which makes the network independent of the operating system (Singh, Dhillon and Andrews 2013). Using this type of network almost every people can get access to the internet. Still, there are some citizens who will be affected by this Wi-Fi hotspot proposal. For using the Wi-Fi hotspot service peoples need to use the electronic device which can catch the Wi-Fi signals. Many peoples lack this type of electronic devices, or they might not be capable of buying these type of devices. Covering the whole city with Wi-Fi hotspot means in near future majority of the task might be taking place over the internet. It is indicating that for this the peoples who were not able to buy or use an electronic device will be affected by the Wi-Fi hotspot program. From my side, making the whole city Wi-Fi enabled is a very good futuristic step taken by the Government, but the Government should also do something to include the peoples also who will be not able to use Wi-Fi hotspot service due to some barriers. It might be seen that after the successful implementation of the Wi-Fi hotspot networks average usage of the mobile among the normal citizens will be increased in the CBD are of Australia. Afterwards, the Wi-Fi network installation the citizens might prefer to perform maximum tasks over the internet (Fischer et al. 2015). The internet awareness should be increased among the citizens. It might be seen that the numbers of online shopping increased in the city and people might like to enjoy various services sitting in their home. The Wi-Fi service might bring a good service to the citizens but as per my opinions it is restricting the face to face interaction. Citizens of Australia will be dependent on their electronic devices more. Besides many good things, this public Wi-Fi hotspot program brings many types of security and data issues. There are numerous security cases of public Wi-Fi hotspots where the hackers used the vulnerability of the network and performed various cybercrimes (Raju and Nair 2015). As an example, if I use a public Wi-Fi network and me login in my bank account through the public network, then the username and password can be saved in this network. A hacker can easily enter in this network and can act as me on the network by the IP and MAC spoofing technique (Vijayakumar et al. 2014). Therefore the network might give the access of my saved username and passwords of my bank to the hacker. Therefore the hacker can easily log into my bank account. This is not only applicable for the bank account, the hacker can hack my social media accounts and can hack the data history stored in my device. To ensure my security over the public Wi-Fi network, I must not share my personal account information over a public network. I can use a public network for login in my personal account. In such emergency cases where I need to login in some of my personal accounts over the public network, I should ensure that no passwords or username is saved on the network. It will be better to use a VPN while using this type of public networks (Mahalingaiah 2013). Also, like the smartphones, the Wi-Fi hotspots have a tracking module installed in it. Using the hotspot networks, the Government can track my movements which is a potential security issue of mine. The tracking method of the public Wi-Fi can lead to third-party issues like stalking. To use the service often this type of network wants the personal information of the user which can be shared with advertisers for sending the annoying ads (Goldstein et al. 2014). This hotspot can use my personal data illegally to see my browsing details, can sell my data to some third party organization and the data can be hacked by the hackers. To avoid this type of cases, I can encrypt my device which I am connecting to the public network. This will help me to ensure my privacy. Another thing I should do to ensure my safety over the public network is that I can use private browsing while using public networks, can use two-step authentication and I can set notification alert whenever my account will be accessed.

Wi-Fi Hotspots in Smart Cities

The Digital Identity is a set of an entity or some kind of information which is used for verification purpose by a digital device. The digital identity can be used to verifying the identity of an organisation, device, application and of a person. The digital identity allows verifying a device, organization and persons over the web without any human assistance (Williams et al. 2013). In most of the cases, the digital identity system is used by the Government to verify its citizen. The digital identity system can be used to the online activity of a person on the internet. Thus sometime it might be also referred to as online identity. After implementing the Smart State Plan by the Australian Government, the digital identity system is also introduced as an integral part of this program. The digital identity system has many advantages for the citizens and also has many disadvantages. From my side of view, I think there might be many privacy-related issues that can arise while using the digital identity using my mobile phone. For the issues, I think the digital identity will fail to maintain my privacy while I am visiting the state capital of Australia. I think there is the sufficient number of reasons for which the digital identity program might fail to ensure my privacy and the reasons are discussed below.

• Authentication Theft:A possible issue which can arise in the digital identity program is the authentication issue (Wen,  Guo and Li 2014). A hacker can use the digital identity of another honest person to impersonate and take advantage of the honest background of the person. In this way, an attacker can impersonate me and can use my identity to login in my private accounts.
• Identity misuse:The digital identity system uses a system to verify an individual over the web (Smith and Hutchings 2014). That means the system has all the identity database stored in it. In such type of cases, the system needs to very much secure. Otherwise, the data from the system server can be misused for various reason which can include my digital identity too.
• Identity tampering: Another issue which can arise in the digital identity system is the identity tampering. To establish a secure communication network it needs to ensure that there is no third person sitting in between the server and the receiver. In this case, security issue can arise if the attacker is somehow able to change or tamper the original data while it is being transferred through the network (Toth 2017). A tampered or modified data can also modify my credentials if the target of the attacker is me. Tampering with the original data can give the attacker access to my private information associated with the digital identity.
• Identity Revocation: The digital identity system lacks the use practical use of revocation in their system. This revocation system could have contributed some extra security to the digital identity system. The digital identity system provider could have verified the user credentials after a certain period of time to ensure the data integrity of the digital identity of the user. Lacking this feature means it is creating a loophole in the whole system. The obsolete database can create many problems in digital identity system. The digital identity system needs to revocation every time it is accessing a sensitive data. From my side, the digital identity system should have a validity for certain period of time, and after such period time, the revocation system should initiate to continue its usage. Lacking the revocation system can cause of the identity theft which is leading to privacy issue of a digital identity user.
• Detection of the network: The whole process of the using digital identity needs to ensure that it is totally undetectable by the hacker. It is described as the message should visible in the network, but the hacker will be unable to distinguish between the digital identity messages and random message. In certain times this types of messages are detected by the attackers, and they hack into someone’s personal data and info. This same thing can also happen to me while I am using the digital identity service using my mobile.
• Public Network Vulnerability: Using the digital identity system on a public network is the most unsecured way to use it. A hacker can simply hack into a public network and can monitor the usage of my digital identity (Rodríguez-Núñez and García-Palomares 2014). Therefore from that, he can easily access my personal credentials which are linked to my digital identity.

The digital identity is very much important for some individuals to ensure the full protection of the network while using the mobile device. I have faced many problems while using the mobile phone in this type of network environment. From the issues, I have learned to secure my mobile phone in this type of network. According to me the discussed part in the following section can help me secure my digital identity in the aspect of privacy and security.

• Strong Passwords: To make a very secure password, the password needs to at least 8 characters of length. Avoiding names and phone number in the password, it must be followed. To make the passwords more secure, I have used uppercase letters, lower case letters and special characters (De Carnavalet and Mannan 2014).
• Antivirus Software: The firewall function of an antivirus software helped me to secure my mobile phone from external threats (Rhodes-Ousley 2013).
• Updating the software:It needs to ensure that the software of the mobile should be updated all the time. I always keep my mobile phone software up-to-date because the updated files always have the recent security patches. This type of software includes the operating system of the mobile phone, browser and antivirus software. Updating the software benefits me by protecting me from critical external attacks.
• Security Settings:I always check my social media settings to see who can see my data. In many cases, the software may be updated, but the security settings may be set to default. In my case, I always check my security settings and change it according to my needs. These things need to follow ensure the security of digital identity.
• Posting sensitive data:Sometimes people posts various sensitive data on their social media sites without knowing that this data can be used to hack their mobile phone. Remembering this thing on my mind, I never post sensitive data on my social media sites. Not me only, everyone need to ensure that what they are posting on their social media site must not contain any sensitive data.
• Fake websites:There are several fake websites on the internet, and everyone needs to very much alert when they are browsing the internet (Zahedi, Abbasi and Chen 2015). I receive many e-mails which contain a website link. I never click on those type of links because they can lead me to a fake website and can steal my data rather than I type those URL in my protected browser to check authenticity. This helps me to ensure my privacy in the type of network environment.
• Encrypting devices: Encryption is another great way to ensure my security and privacy. Encrypting devices is a bit lengthy process, but after competition, it gives the most secure way to use my mobile phone (Shrinivasan and Chacko 2014).
• Following https websites:I always follow the https:// websites rather than following https:// websites. Https:// websites are more secure compared to https:// websites and also https:// websites may have some certificate issue. For that my recommendation is not to visit such URLs starting with https://.
• Checking e-mail properly: I always check my e-mail properly in the regular basis. Because this e-mails can contain my login details and my login notifications which arrives at my e-mail id. From this e-mail, I can always track my social media accounts. If there is any suspicious activity, I can track that activity instantly. Instant tracking those type of data gives me a huge advantage that the attacker will not able to complete their activity. Also, the e-mail contains many types of spam e-mail which can contain phishing links. This type of phishing link can lead to us fake website which actually looks like the original website (Higbee, Belani and Greaux 2014). Using this type of fake website the hacker can instantly retrieve my login details. For that, I always verify this type of links before proceeding further. It needs to ensure that everyone should follow the above requirements to ensure their security and privacy in the aspect of digital identity.

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Security and Data Issues with Wi-Fi Hotspots

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