Justice Min.: Guard ‘smart cities’ privacy

The Justice Ministry’s privacy authority issued on Sunday guidance to cities across the country which are moving toward the “smart city” model of digitizing many services and security.

With the government requiring the move toward digitizing services and providing substantial incentives, the authority is reminding cities of the pitfalls they must address during the transition process.

As cities begin to collect more personal information about their residents, the authority said they must have mechanisms in place to guard against the abuse of the information, to inform residents when their information is collected and to grant residents access to the collected information about them.

Regarding an expansion of CCTV security cameras, the authority said that the expansion must be limited to certain parameters.

Not only are there areas where cities may not install security cameras, but where they do install them, they must again inform citizens of the presence of the cameras and avoid misuses of any of the footage.