Smart Buildings: A New Threat To Data Privacy?

Of all smart things, we’re talking about smart buildings now? If this is the question on your mind, I totally get it. I feel your skepticism. However, I assure you. Smart buildings are a thing, and are becoming more of a thing by the day. The less we know about them, the more they influence us without our knowledge. Spoiler alert: smart buildings do not walk and talk. Okay, okay! Bad jokes aside, they do snoop into your data and behaviour these days.

Ever since COVID-19 hit, we’ve seen a significant drop in the usage of office spaces. Home office and flexible working options have been becoming more and more mainstream. Unoccupied properties are a real concern for the landlords. In light of the current situation, a couple of investment banks in France are reportedly using under-desk sensors to ‘help’ employees as they ramp-up office returns. The sensors apparently collect ‘just’ enough data to report on an app, which tables are free, so that incoming employees can choose tables flexibly. They can thereby use office space more efficiently. All this sounds practical and useful. But still, if you can’t shake an uneasy feeling reading this, I’m with you on that one. What’s triggering this? And what has this to do with smart building technology of the future.

This essay is supported by Generatebg

Internet of Things (IoT)

Internet of Things is a concept that tries to inter-connect everyday products, machines, and equipment in order to analyse data from them and make smarter decisions as the end result. IoT is advertised as an approach to solve one’s own problems using one’s own or cheaply available data. In a more practical sense, this has led to the addition of processing chips to everyday appliances and products like refrigerator, cooking stove, ceiling lights, toilets seats, dog-collars, beach-sandals, and what not. The big picture here is, if one can collect data on how and when the device is used, the device and / or its usage can be better optimized as per the needs. At least, that’s what is said on paper. A lot of organisations are investing in IoT technology. Last I checked, organisations primarily invested into projects that had a lot of ‘profit’ potential. Anyway, what has IoT tech to do with smart buildings?

What Are Smart Buildings?

Smart Buildings are nothing but an instantiation of IoT tech. In essence, instead of adding processing chips to your sandals, processing chips and sensors are added to the buildings you enter. This has already been going on for a while, and is nothing new. For instance, water taps that use proximity sensors to turn water on / off, surveillance technology in mall stores, etc., are examples of smart building tech. If that’s all there is to it, what’s there to worry about?

Hold your horses! Those are examples from the past. Smart building tech is rapidly ramping up, and smart building tech of the future could look really different. This could be in the form of heat signature-based safety technology, proximity-sensor / camera-based monitoring / surveillance technology, or even user input data driven suggestive technology.

So, What’s the Concern About?

The tech of the last kind, the data-driven suggestive technology could end up being particularly flagrant. This is because, the data provided by the occupants / users of the building could be used in ‘controlling’ how they behave in the building. This could be in the form of implicit suggestions or hard implementation of rules and regulations. For instance, the sensor-based tech that the two French banks use can quickly be converted to rule based suggestive systems that require employees to act and respond in a pre-defined and controlled manner. The implications and consequences of such technology is not yet known.

With big social media giants like Meta and Amazon employing data driven strategies and technologies to maximise profit at the cost of consumer wellness, there are significant chances that smart building tech takes the same route.

How to Go About Smart Building Tech in the Future?

Although there is a big concern about the morality and interests involved in the implementation of smart building tech, there is no denying the fact that latest technologies also bring significant benefits with them. Such technologies would also likely improve health and safety standards, emergency situation measures, etc., among others. So, I’d argue that witch-hunting such technological progress is not a great solution.

On the other hand, if profit-driven landlords and organisations are allowed to run free with their reign over such tech, significant data privacy breaches and misuse could occur. Therefore, one of the preemptive measures seems to be to ensure that there are tech-literate people who are employed in committees that govern / regulate implementations of such tech in future buildings and projects. As often is the case with such concerns, a polarized position ‘seems’ to be the best option, but in reality, most certainly not! The solution is probably somewhere in the middle, and probably cannot be a one-time implementation. It would ideally be a status-maintaining solution that expands and grows dynamically and flexibly over time. This article doesn’t provide any outright solution, but hey, it’s at least trying to start the discussion on this topic.

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Further reading that might interest you: How to Bear Responsibility for Artificial Intelligence and How to Better Understand Drone Warfare.