President Obama signs bill to turn all federal expenditures into open data. Implementation will be phased into a year-by-year approach.

 

 

On May 9, President Barack Obama signed into law the first federal open data bill that requires all federal agencies to publish expenditures publicly online and in a standardized machine-readable format.

 On May 9, President Barack Obama signed into law the first federal open data bill that requires all federal agencies to publish expenditures publicly online and in a standardized machine-readable format.

His signature represents a historic milestone for the open data movement and is a feat that’s required years of advocacy from bipartisan proponents. Titled the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014, the bill is the most aggressive open data legislation ever enacted. Its wide scope and narrow guidelines will compel agencies to report spending to USASpending.gov, a federal open data portal, so expenditures can be compared across jurisdictions — a service previously unheard of digitally or otherwise at the federal level.

Implementation will be phased into a year-by-year approach. In the first year, the White House Office of Management and Budget will draft expenditure reporting guidelines while organizing a pilot program for testing. Three years from the bill’s passage, all agencies must comply with the new open data standards.

Advocates of the DATA Act, including Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) — who introduced the initial version of the DATA Act in June 2011 — celebrated when the White House confirmed the president would sign the bill at the end of April.

Hudson Hollister, the executive director at the Data Transparency Coalition (DTC), was overjoyed with the passage, as it was one of his coalition’s primary objectives since the coalition was founded in 2012.
“The DATA Act is the first open data act the country has ever seen — which is awesome,” Hollister said. “It requires the government to transform its spending from disconnected documents into open data.”
For transparency advocates, Hollister said he saw the president’s signature as the most significant action taken since the Freedom of Information Act was passed in 1966 — a law ensuring public access to all government non-classified information.

“For the open data industry, which our coalition represents, and for supporters of government transparency, President Obama’s signature is going to be his enduring legacy,” Hollister said.
However, he noted that the bill's passage has not been equally endorsed by all of the White House administration’s staff. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), tasked to oversee much of the bill’s implementation, has been hesitant to embrace the bill since it was first proposed, Hollister said. While the OMB sees value in the act, reluctance formed when considering tasks related to implementation.

Hollister said he observed that the OMB’s reluctance stems from fears the act will be either too complicated to execute or be too labor intensive. Both concerns he empathized with, but dismissed them as unwarranted in light of the gains that can be achieved and the fact that processes will remain fairly unchanged.
“The DATA Act to many exterior observers might look like [it's too complicated to institute]," Hollister said. "But I think it’s not that. It doesn’t require new reporting requirements. Instead, it just requires some kind of electronic structure for the reporting requirements that already exist."

As the DATA Act goes forward, here are three takeaways about what the bill means for transparency, as well as an interactive timeline of the act's introduction through signing and beyond.

1. The DATA Act Requires Understandable, Comparable Budgets

Assuming all goes to plan, the most apparent benefit of the DATA Act will be its requirement to funnel federal government spending reports into a single repository, USASpending.gov, and within a single reporting standard. Before, no entity in the government had the authority to impose government-wide data standards. Now, the Treasury Department and the White House Office of Management and Budget have been tasked to do this at the national level. For agencies, this may include quite a bit of work to start, but will allow them to communicate financial data in an easy and interoperable way.

2. The DATA Act Cuts Waste, Fraud and Abuse

Tracking can be difficult when thousands of pieces of financial data are moving in many different ways and formats. Proponents argue that this complexity can lead to confusion, and confusion can breed fraudulent or wasteful spending. With the DATA Act’s common data format, automation and analytics can be used to quickly audit for accuracy, waste, fraud and abuse.

3. The DATA Act Gives Public Access and Accountability

The DATA Act will clarify government spending with sharper details on the following: congressional appropriations; to Treasury accounts, where appropriations are held; and for actual expenditures the money pays for. This information was previously obscured in summarized texts or could be reached only by special request.

Samsung Simband aims to take a big step in wearable health

James Martin/CNET

Today, there's the Samsung Gear Fit. But it seems that if you listened to Samsung president Young Sohn, that's merely a temporary patch for what the future of wearable health tech will really bring.
Samsung's health event, called "Voice of the Body," happened today. And at it, Sohn, discussed a three phase evolution of health tech, starting with phones, then moving to wearable devices, and finally ending up at wearable sensors. We're currently in the middle phase.

The next step, unveiled by VP Ram Fish, is Simband, another health band, but not a smartwatch: its focus is entirely on health tracking, collecting lots of data to share with medical researchers, doctors, and for personal health use. Simband is designed to be open and modular, and comes studded with a ton of medical sensors.
The Simband is designed to work with a variety of medical needs and with many sensor technologies, and to eventually work with SAMI, Samsung's cloud-based solution for collecting and analyzing sensor-based health data.

James Martin/CNET

Unlike something comparatively primitive like the current Samsung Gear 2 and Gear Fit heart-rate watches, the Simband has multiple sensors. It uses optical, electrical, and physical methods of collecting heart rate, blood flow, temperature, CO2 and oxygen levels, and even simulated blood pressure, all to display real-time electrocardiograph information of it all. Even the optical sensors on the Simband seem improved, with multiple wavelength LEDs at once. Samsung admits its measurement technology needs to be more accurate. We at CNET agree.

The design looks a bit like most recent Gear watches. There are differences: the battery's hot-swappable for easy night charging while wearing to enable 24/7 tracking. Inside, an ARM-based processor handles processing of the various sensors. The Simband has both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, so it can share data to local devices or directly to Samsung's cloud.

The goal of Simband is to offer open APIs for medical use, and to test the Simband at hospitals and medical institutions. The University of California, San Francisco is already working with Samsung and the Simband. Right now, Simband is a concept device, a reference for future wearable health sensor-laden tech, but it could be a leaping-off point for future Samsung wearables, too.

James Martin/CNET

So who is Simband for? You, the consumer, don't need to worry yet. The Simband seems squarely focused on Big Health and medical institutions for now, as new ways are discovered to make the best use of different arrays of sensors. The idea seems to be to use it to help prevent disease and deliver better health profiles: one app, called TicTrac and demonstrated on-stage at Samsung's event, used the Simband's multiple sensors to quickly gather a health rating.

Maybe the Simband could help predict illnesses before they strike, or get people to fix their bad habits early. That could be great for anyone. Of course, preventative medical tech could save hospitals and health insurance companies a ton of money, too.

The bigger question is how these sensors will evolve, how Samsung's cloud will use the data, and how other researchers and companies will be able to develop tools for Simband. The medical industry is a large beast, and Samsung's desire to create a new open platform is an ambitious one, to say the least. And, odds are Samsung won't be the only company to try to lay claim to an open health platform.

Simband looks a first step toward acknowledging how big a hill wearable health tech still has left to climb.

The FCC’s proposed rules could destroy net neutrality and equal access to the Internet.

If you want a glimpse into what the speed of your Internet connection might look like under the newly proposed Open Internet rules, take yourself back to the last uncomfortable hour of a long plane flight. You know the feeling. You’re back in economy class wondering if seats have actually gotten smaller these past few years (they probably have), and amazed when you glance up front and see how appealing business class has become. That’s what the Internet could look like soon.

With all the talk about fast lanes and paid prioritization recently, the Federal Communication Commission’s proposed rules could lead us down a path where regular and premium service levels make Internet service look a lot more like air travel. Some advocates are worried that a section of the rules allowing carriers to negotiate individually with content providers for service as long as it is “commercially reasonable” could allow ISPs to charge different websites for faster or higher-quality content delivery. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has said that this won’t lead to fast lanes and slow lanes online, but it’s hard to see how the current proposal would adequately protect against this type of behavior. So as the debate over the potential impact of these rules continues for the next few months, it’s helpful to consider how premium service can inherently lead to degraded service for everyone else.

Just take a look at the airline industry: Tiered service has been common in air travel for years, with airlines offering special amenities and improved service for those who can afford to pay more, while everyone else gets crammed into regular seats. Although almost everyone would prefer to travel more comfortably and wait in faster security and boarding lines, it’s often challenging for airlines to convince people to pay the premium for first class: It can cost up to ten times more to fly business instead of economy on a trans-Atlantic flight, and both seats get you to the same destination. So while airlines try to make first class more appealing with new amenities and personalized attention, they simultaneously have an incentive against improving the quality of “regular” service as a way to protect their higher-end business.

And as airlines have struggled financially in recent years, it appears they may even be actively degrading economy class options. According to an October 2013 Wall Street Journal article, in a reversal of a half century trend of gradually improved seating, airlines have spent the last decade trimming first legroom and now seat width in order to squeeze more seats into economy class. This allows them to expand higher-fare sections—particularly new mid-range options like economy plus which offer added legroom for a fee—without reducing the number of ticketed passengers on the plane.

What’s more, this tactic has the added benefit of increasing the appeal of premium options while still maintaining the premium price. As the article notes, “[p]ressure in economy cabins also lets airlines upsell coach passengers.” This nuance is critical because it illustrates the incentives for airlines not only to make more seats available by reducing their size, but to increase the disparity between economy and premium seats to make the premium seats even more attractive to flyers.

Now, do you see what would happen if we enter a world of “fast lanes” and “slow lanes” on the Internet? Some argue that it’s not a big deal for a big company to pay for a “fast lane,” but the precedent would open the floodgates for many new types of discrimination online. And it will make the remaining Internet capacity on the network worse for those who cannot pay the fee.

Under the proposed FCC rules, Internet service providers would have to carry all traffic at some minimum service level (we’ll call that economy class). So to sell seats in the fast lane (first class), it must be sufficiently attractive to content companies so that they would actually be willing to pay more. This means faster speeds and better quality of service, but it also requires making sure that the regular lanes don’t improve at a pace that would threaten the premium business.

In other words, there is a risk that ISPs, in an effort to either make the fast lane more appealing, will be encouraged to unnecessarily limit capacity for everyone except those in the fast lane. Or they might squeeze additional customers into the regular lane to make more room for premium customers – effectively degrading regular service during peak congestion times. And, the more attractive the fast lane becomes, the more an ISP can charge for carriage in that lane.

There’s an important distinction in this analogy as well. For airlines, degrading service requires physically shrinking the size of seats. On the Internet, since bandwidth consumption is growing steadily, an ISP simply could choose not to improve the capacity of the network and the quality of your Internet experience would still gradually decline.

Which brings us back to the Commission’s proposed rules that were released for public comment earlier this month.

The new rules are based on a presumption that business arrangements for prioritization of certain types of content would be valid, though, as we’ve noted, there are mixed messages coming from the FCC about whether fast lanes would actually be permitted. Unfortunately, the legal theory on which the agency is relying to implement these rules necessitates discrimination, which is why the rules must permit some degree of individualized negotiation and bargaining.

Changing the rules themselves would require a different source of authority – what advocates refer to as authority under “Title II” of the Telecommunications Act. Some also argue that either way, the rules adequately protect against slow lanes because of the “minimum level of service” requirement – a term of art that will be defined precisely during the comment period on the proposed rules. Leaving aside the challenge of actually determining what a minimum level of service might look like, if the framework is based on a presumption in favor of paid prioritization, it’s difficult to envision how it can actually protect against an Internet full of bandwidth haves and have-nots.

Whether we’re on track for fast lanes and slow lanes or merely fast lanes and adequate lanes, Internet users should be concerned about what’s in the proposal and should question whether they want a divided Internet. This kind of Internet is not the type envisioned by advocates of network neutrality, which is based on the fundamental principle of nondiscrimination and has been integral to creating the space for innovation, public debate, and free expression online that Americans enjoy today.

Five Reasons To Get Excited About 5G

At this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, one of the hottest topics of discussion was the future of 5G — a next-generation mobile communications network that would offer exponential gains in both speed and capacity over existing 4G networks. If 2G networks were for voice, 3G networks for voice and data, and 4G networks for broadband Internet connectivity, what exactly do you get when you deliver a 5G network?

When asked to answer that question in Barcelona, the heads of Europe’s top mobile operators — the likes of Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Orange and Nokia – couldn’t even define what 5G was, but were nonetheless committed to spending billions of dollars to make 5G a reality in Europe. The same timetable exists in Asia, where Japan and South Korea also plan to invest billions to build the next 5G networks by 2020.

So here are five examples of innovations that 5G might make possible.

 

1. The first-ever 5G Olympics

Now that the Olympic Flame in Sochi has finally been extinguished, it’s interesting to consider the types of innovations that might appear at future Olympics. Both Pyeongchang (host of the 2018 Winter Olympics) and Tokyo (host of the 2020 Summer Olympics) are in nations that are at the forefront of 5G innovation in Asia, so it makes sense that they will attempt to showcase 5G innovation throughout the Olympics. When Tokyo hosted the 1964 Summer Olympics, for example, the city became the first-ever to broadcast the Olympics overseas via satellite and in color.

For the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, here are just some of the ideas that might be made possible by 5G networks: one-second downloads of massive Olympic video clips; super-high-definition screens for broadcasting events; holograms of Olympic athletes; and mobile 3D images of venues and competitors. There are also hopes of creating “instant translation” glasses that would enable visitors from all over the globe to read anything written in Japanese within seconds. It might also be possible to offer “facial recognition” glasses in which Olympic visitors could spot fellow countrymen in a crowd, and instantly receive personal details about them to facilitate an introduction. As anyone who has ever missed a connection knows, seconds matter. New high-speed 5G networks would give you back those seconds.

 

2. The Internet of Everything, finally

Okay, it seems like we hear about the Internet of Things every year at CES in Vegas, but nothing ever comes of it. But the logic behind the Internet of Things is inexorable – Cisco predicts that by 2018, worldwide mobile data traffic will have increased 11x from current levels, with much of that traffic driven by billions of devices talking to other devices wirelessly. To make that M2M (machine-to-machine) communication possible you need fast, high-capacity networks. New 5G networks promise speeds that are 100x faster than anything that exists today.

At its most basic level, the “Internet of Everything” means that any device can talk to any other device. This can either be a relatively basic application – such as your refrigerator telling your smartphone that you’re out of milk – or something much more sophisticated. One big application that has been talked about (perhaps too much) is the “Smart City,” in which devices and sensors are installed on every element of a city’s infrastructure and constantly monitor the city. A sensor on a bridge, for example, might detect abnormal traffic patterns, and that information could be used to create alternate transportation routes.

 

 

3. Connected car networks

The Google driverless car was just the beginning. In order to support a large number of driverless vehicles on highways, you need 5G networks and all the extra capacity they deliver. And those 5G networks need to be qualitatively different from 4G networks, capable of handling and distinguishing between a variety of different uses: infotainment, communication, traffic navigation and device syncing. When your car is attempting to change lanes to avoid a collision, you don’t want your network being used by a child in the backseat, downloading a cartoon movie or making a hands-free mobile call.

Some mobile companies are even talking about a connected vehicle cloud – a massive network of connected car data that makes all types of new services available at faster speeds. In Barcelona, for example, Volvo unveiled the concept of a “Roam Delivery” network that could deliver groceries or packages to consumers wherever their car happens to be parked. A digital code would enable the delivery agent to access your car’s trunk, and you’d never have to worry about missing the UPS or FedEx delivery person again.

  

 

4. Next generation mobile healthcare devices

We’re now entering an age where real-time health data from mobile devices is becoming the norm rather than the exception. Building on the success of devices from FitBit and Nike, it now seems like every new digital device — including smartphones and smartwatches – will come embedded with some sort of health-tracking service. In Barcelona, for example, Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy S5 with a built-in heart rate monitor to complement three upcoming fitness devices.

Speaking at the Mobile World Congress, Vice President of the EU Commission Neelie Kroes suggested that m-health would emerge as one of the biggest applications of new 5G networks. As wearable device use increases, it will lead to new types of “sentient” health devices that are aware of real-time changes in your health — and capable of relaying that information to health providers and loved ones. It might also lead to innovations like “remote surgery.” Healthcare would essentially become mobile, rather than being tethered to fixed spaces such as hospitals and clinics.

  

5. Smarter ways to power our mobile devices

One of the quirkier devices unveiled at the Mobile World Congress was the Tethercell, a device that essentially transforms any battery-powered device into a Bluetooth-enabled device. You take out one AA battery from your device, and insert the Tethercell, which has room for a AAA battery and a Bluetooth chip. Tetherboard, which makes the Tethercell, calls it “the world’s first app-enabled smart battery.” What that means is that you can control battery-powered devices at will from a distance. One example is a parent shutting down a child’s loud musical toy from the next room when it’s nap time. Another example is getting an alert when a battery-powered device is about to run out of juice.

That may not seem like much, but it hints at a solution to a problem being created by the proliferation of billions of mobile devices in society – the need for more spectrum, more capacity and more power. So it makes sense that some of the most interesting ideas about 5G concern ways to make our mobile devices more efficient and effective. Concepts like “Green 5G Mobile Networks” acknowledge that spectrum is a limited resource, and that we need to think about smarter ways to power our mobile devices.

***

At the end of the day, the reason why Europe and Asia are committing so much attention to 5G is because of the potential to drive future economic growth. At a news conference in Barcelona, Neelie Kroes, vice president of the European Commission, even talked about the ability to reduce rampant youth unemployment across Europe by deploying new 5G networks. It’s not so much that 5G infrastructure build-out would create new jobs — think of this as a type of New Deal for technologists — it’s that 5G would create entirely new markets and economic opportunities driven by mobile in industries ranging from healthcare to automotive to infrastructure.

"Apple sets precedent on Big Business using Green Power"

Apple is buying up a hydro-electric project in Oregon, hoping to lock into an environmentally sustainable way of powering its massive data centers.

The project, built by Earth By Design (EBD), a Oregon-based developer of green energy, uses small Kaplan turbines built adjacent to a local irrigation canal. The idea is to generate power without the large-scale environmental disruptions associated with monster dams. Terms of the agreement — including what Apple is paying for the system — have not been disclosed.

According to a regulatory filing, the project will generate 5 megawatts of power, enough electricity to power a small town, but a fraction of what Apple’s Prineville, Oregon, data center will ultimately require. As users increasingly store their data and photos in the iCloud, Apple has been forced to rapidly ramp up the number of servers it runs in the iCloud. IN the past few years, the company has developed new data centers in Prineville, Maiden, North Carolina, and Reno, Nevada.

Apple took ownership of the EBD project late last year, but news of the deal wasn’t reported until a local paper, the Bend Bulletin reported it over the weekend. According to the Bulletin, the dam diverts water from a nearby canal “for approximately half a mile before running it through a hydroelectric turbine and discharging it back into the canal.”

Over the past few years, Apple has gone from being a laggard to a leader in finding green ways to power its data centers. According to Greenpeace analyst Gary Cook, technology companies have turned to solar and wind to power their data centers, but Apple is breaking new ground. “This is certainly the first time I’ve seen this being this done by a private company and not a utility,” he says.
Cook agrees that this type of small-scale hydro project is better for the environment than something like a Hoover Dam. “This project appears to be very much in line with best practice hydro generation, it’s smaller-scale, but it’s sustainable,” he says.

Apple didn’t have any comment on the deal, but a company spokesman referred us to a company environmental report, which says that, in Oregon, Apple will “purchase power from local wind, solar, and micro-hydro resources. The micro-hydro projects will generate power from water flowing through irrigation canals, which are already part of the agricultural framework of Oregon.” EBD declined to comment for this story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apple’s Turn-Around

Three years ago, Apple’s Data centers received pretty bad marks from the environmentalists at Greenpeace. The big problem: Apple was powering its legions of cloud computers with dirty energy, supplied by coal-burning companies such as North Carolina’s Duke Energy.
Since then, Apple has done a lot to scrub its image. Greenpeace now considers it one of the best examples of an environmentally responsible data center operator.
“It shows that companies who are motivated can look at what resources are around then and figure out how to get renewable energy,” says Greenpeace’s Cook.

Traffic App Predicts Green Lights

Ever feel like red lights last forever? A new app tells you how long you'll have to wait to see green.

A new smartphone app called EnLighten is telling drivers how long they might be waiting at traffic lights. Inventor Matt Ginsberg’s novel creation predicts when a red light will turn green.

The app uses GPS technology to gather location data and analyze traffic information. It can also calculate a car’s velocity using its accelerometer. In many cities, traffic light timing changes depending on real-time traffic, so the app generates a prediction based on a combination of factors.

Ginsberg’s goal is to have the app running in 50 cities by year’s end. So far, Portland and Eugene, Ore.; Pasadena, Arcadia and San Jose, Calif.; Salt Lake City and Provo, Utah; Garland, Texas; and Las Vegas, Nev., are on board.

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Ginsberg eventually hopes to sell the technology to carmakers, so it can be incorporated directly into cars, preserving smartphone battery life and allowing for further integration into the car’s other systems. He hopes his app will make sitting at red lights less of an ordeal for drivers.

Using the app means drivers don't have to constantly stare at the light waiting for it to change, Ginsberg told NewScientist.  "It also doesn't seem as long because you can see the progress," he added.

EnLighten  was exhibited at the 2014Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

Will Streetlamps Become Information Hubs for Cities?

New technology makes it possible to turn ordinary streetlamps into data-gathering networks. But is it too much of a good thing

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey recently announced a pilot project, which started in October 2013, that is testing 171 smart LEDs that will act as sophisticated lighting controls and security cameras in one of the airport’s terminals. The cameras are intended to monitor foot traffic in certain areas, as well as keep an eye on unattended baggage.

North America has more than 1 billion street lights. Known as high-intensity discharge lights, they consume lots of energy, contain mercury vapor and most of them are owned by municipalities. Because of energy and maintenance costs, cities have begun turning to LED technology, which lasts longer than ordinary street lights, consumes less energy and doesn’t contain as many hazardous byproducts. San Diego, Detroit, Las Cruces, N.M., and Sequim, Wash., are some of the latest cities to install LED lights.

But LEDs can do more than just save costs. They also can be a platform for a host of technologies that can monitor what is going on in the vicinity of the light pole. Link these so-called intelligent street lights into a network, and you have the makings of a smart city, say experts.

“We’re marrying the Internet with advanced Web services and low-cost miniature electronics, and delivering it as a new service to cities,” said Hugh Martin, CEO of Sensity Systems. Intelligent street lamps can monitor weather, pollution, seismic activity, act as security systems and monitor traffic and parking, according to Martin.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey recently announced a pilot project, which started in October 2013, that is testing 171 smart LEDs that will act as sophisticated lighting controls and security cameras in one of the airport’s terminals. The cameras are intended to monitor foot traffic in certain areas, as well as keep an eye on unattended baggage. They are also expected to be used for security purposes. Las Vegas is also installing intelligent LED lights that can not only broadcast music, but also record sounds in the vicinity.

Manufacturers of intelligent street lights have emphasized that cities have an opportunity to jumpstart themselves as smart urban centers. Packed with sensors and cameras, this cutting edge technology is capable of controlling the energy costs of street lights, which can consume as much as one-third of a municipality’s energy costs. They can also help tell drivers where parking spaces are available, monitor pollution and could act as information hubs for consumers looking for the latest sales at local retail outlets in the vicinity of the light poles. “There’s a lot of interest among cities in these intelligent lights,” said Martin.

Intelligent LEDS are part of a broader trend in smart city technologies that has taken hold globally. Cities in Spain, Brazil and Southeast Asia have begun to adapt networks of sensor-based technology to monitor and manage everything from water usage to transportation. By 2020, cities around the world are expected to spend $20 billion on sensor technology, according to Navigant Research, a Chicago-based consulting firm.

Retrofitting street lights with LEDs can cost from $200 to $2,000, according to Martin. But they save up to 70 percent of the energy used for traditional lighting. They also last for more than 10 years, compared to just a few years for today's current lighting technology. Network costs are another $150, but Martin says that overall, the payback on smart streetlights is 2-3 years. And then there's the benefits that come with all the sensors that can be added on.

But not everyone is thrilled with the capabilities of smart LEDs. Streetlights that can capture nearby conversations, read license plates and record video of people, conjure up visions of Big Brother for privacy advocates. Fred H. Cate, director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University, told The New York Times that the potential for misuse with this kind of technology was “terrifying.”

At Newark’s Liberty International Airport, video footage taken from the LED cameras will be used by the Port Authority for monitoring and security purposes, and would only be shared with other law enforcement agencies that are conducting authorized investigations. Security is one of the key attributes of smart street lights, according to Martin.

How the technology is implemented can make the difference between public acceptance or rejection of it, said Alan Shark, executive director of the Public Technology Institute, an organization that advises local governments on the use of technology. “Transparency is really important,” said Shark. “The public wants a safe environment, but local officials need to make the public aware they are in a surveillance area."

Just as important is how long cities plan to store any security or surveillance data captured by the smart LEDs. “Six months? Maybe. Anything longer than that raises a red flag,” says Shark.