Eyes and Apps on the Streets:
From Surveillance to
Sousveillance Using Smartphones
Vania Ceccato 1
Abstract
This article explores the concept of surveillance by assessing the nature of data gathered by users of a smartphone-based tool (app) developed in Sweden to assist citizens in reporting incidents in public spaces. This article first illustrates spatial and temporal patterns of records gathered over 9 months in Stockholm County using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to exemplify the process of sousveillance via app. Then, the experiences of user group members, collected using an app-based survey, are analyzed. Findings show that the incident reporting app is more often used to report an incident and less often to prevent it. Preexistent social networks in neighborhoods are fundamental for widespread adoption of the app, often used as a tool in Neighborhood Watch schemes in high- crime areas. Although the potentialities of using app data are open, these results call for more in- depth evaluations of smartphone data for safety interventions.
Keywords
guardianship, location-based services (LBS), crowdsourced data, crime, safety
Since Jacobs’s seminal work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961, we have heard the powerful key concept of “eyes on the street” countless times. Jacobs (1961) wrote that in order for a street to be a safe place, “there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street” (p. 35). But the era of smartphones and location-based services (LBS) has changed the way that the individuals interact with a city. Now, “eyes” are complemented by
“apps,” giving expression to new ways of depicting what happens in public space and perhaps redefining the role of guardians in surveillance. Compared with the traditional eyes on the street, the new exercise of social control invites a number of senses other than sight, such as touch and sound. An incident that happens on the street is still local (attached to a physical place with a pair of coordinates) but can now be seen by faraway eyes, literally by the whole world. Jacobs’ sense of “natural proprie- tors of the street” acquires a different meaning, as those who set a record on the (m)app are not only
1