Link to paperAbstract:
This article describes findings from user testing of Long Beach’s Digital Rights Platform. The Platform uses physical signage and an online portal to provide residents with a clear understanding of how local government applies predictive and diagnostic analytics to personal data. Grounded in theoretical frameworks of trust, surveillance studies, contextual integrity, and information economics, the Digital Rights Platform advances two critical and closely intersecting priorities for the City of Long Beach: implementation of its Data Privacy Guidelines and its vision to use residents’ data in non-discriminatory ways. We conducted user testing of the initial deployment of the Digital Rights Platform with 77 residents who each participated in data walks and two focus group discussions—one prior to and one following each walk—between March 2, 2024 and March 9, 2024. The analysis focuses on residents’ attitudes toward smart city technologies, how they situate data collection by these platforms and devices, and how deployment of a Digital Rights Platform influences—or doesn’t influence—levels of trust toward surveillance technologies deployed by the City of Long Beach.
The findings from our March 2024 user testing events suggest that residents highly value access to information about the City's data privacy practices, but that it is unrealistic to expect residents to routinely read data privacy labels and scan QR codes when interacting with civic technologies in the public realm. Our analysis also finds that residents do not distinguish between data collection by City-deployed technologies/platforms and those deployed by corporations and social media sites (despite that local government does not commodify residents' personal information). In fact, residents said they perceive City data collection as part of a larger surveillant culture. Another key finding is that study volunteer are aware that they routinely trade privacy for convenience and "public safety" benefits. Finally, study participants expressed concern that non-English speakers and older residents are excluded from the benefits of the Digital Rights Platform.
Our findings will inform the next phase of our research. Specifically, we plan to collaborate with privacy engineers to develop a mobile privacy assistant that makes it simple for residents to set privacy preferences, and to request that third-party actors delete currently held data about them (a right granted under the California Consumer Privacy Act).
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