Digital surveillance capitalism and cities: data, democracy and activism

As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, momentous sociotechnical transformations are reconfiguring urban systems worldwide. While “smart city” innovations integrating networked sensors, computing platforms, and artificial intelligence hold promise to optimize infrastructure and services, an emerging body of critical scholarship suggests their rapid development may unintentionally concentrate control and threaten democratic values (Sadowski, 2020; Couldry & Mejias, 2019).

Central to this discourse is the concept of “surveillance capitalism,” defined by Zuboff (2019) as the unplanned repurposing of digital technologies to provide behavioral data for prediction and profit. As municipalities increasingly outsource digital infrastructure to a handful of technology conglomerates, such as Google, citizens effectively relinquish sovereignty over data derived from daily activities within public spaces (Sadowski, 2020). While efficiency gains appear interesting, centralized aggregation of locational traces, communications metadata, and financial transactions into proprietary data stores enables behavioral modification at scale with scant transparency or oversight (Brunton & Nissenbaum, 2011).

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the proliferation of artificial intelligence technologies, platforms such as OpenAI, Sora, LLMs, Facial recognition, and Deep Fake have become mainstream. The era of surveillance capitalism, where our cities have become feudal data mines controlled by a corporatist oligarchy of tech giants, such as Google, Amazon, TikTok, Facebook, OpenAI, and their ilk. Our personal data—locations, messages, searches, and transactions—have become private property to be extracted, processed, and sold for behavioral prediction and social control. As citizens, there is little transparency in the digital systems governing urban environments. Smart city technologies, from predictive policing to traffic optimization, operate through opaque proprietary algorithms designed to maximize corporate revenue, not public goods. Our cities’ legacy of representative democracy is being supplanted by digital authoritarianism engineered for profit (Zuboff, 2019).

In response to these challenges, this comment proposes a subversive path toward reclaiming our cities from the vladdata class of cyber-lordists. It begins by seizing the means of computation—building autonomous data infrastructure and technologies aligned with true democratic principles of transparency, individual privacy, and collective self-governance. Moreover, the cities must become cryptographic rebel bases, leveraging the inalienable rights of free knowledge, community Wi-Fi meshes, and grassroots civic tech to challenge the feudalism of rented data and corporatized smart cities. In the words of Henry David Thoreau: “That government is best which governs least.” It is time for surveillance capitalists to govern cities far less.

A logical starting point is asserting “data dignity”—the notion that individuals maintain sovereignty and self-determination over information intrinsically linked to their identities (Brunton & Nissenbaum, 2011). Promising technical approaches include differential privacy methods shown to obscure sensitive attributes while allowing verified analytics and Secure Multi-Party Computation enabling distributed data processing without centralized repositories (Catrina & de Hoogh, 2010).

Complementing these are grassroots tools that help citizens selectively obfuscate their digital footprints. The Tor network and anonymity extensions allow obscured browsing and communication (Dingledine et al., 2004), while research prototypes like “TrackMeNot” inject false search queries to undermine behavioral profiling (Howe & Nissenbaum, 2009). By upholding an “exit to community” and collective self-governance, even over personal analytics, such technical countermeasures work in concert with legal frameworks that recognize individual due process rights over algorithmic systems.

At the crux of surveillance, capitalism is the legal fiction that our personal data can be claimed as a corporate asset to be commercially extracted and processed without our consent. Tech giants rely on deliberately vague user agreements and overbroad intellectual property laws to lay possession of our words, locations, behaviors, and relationships merely to use their services (Couldry & Mejias, 2019). This privatized form of identity extraction and metadata surveillance not only violates our civil liberties but deprives citizens of control over how our urban environments are measured and optimized. The smart city algorithms shaping traffic flows, energy grids, and predictive policing are trained on datasets of our aggregated personal information without accountability or visibility into their individual and societal impacts. The citizens are sentenced to abide in cities that are algorithmically designed to modify behavior for ad sales or tax revenue, not human thriving.

To counter this, a Citizen-driven movement is needed to assert “data dignity”—the inalienable right for individuals and communities to exert sovereignty over their data and metadata. This means empowering everyday citizens with user-friendly tools for encrypting communications, obfuscating data trails, and revoking data ownership claims by corporations (Brunton & Nissenbaum, 2011). Differential privacy, noise injection, and zero-knowledge proofs can selectively obscure sensitive data attributes while enabling secure data sharing for public services. It also necessitates cultivating new legal frameworks around data rights and algorithmic justice from the individual due process over automated decision systems to community data trusts that pool metadata for communally governed urban analytics. Preventing private data extractivists from continuing to prospect and mine our cities without our consent is imperative.

To truly wrestle urban digital infrastructures away from monopolistic tech giants, Building Internet-native models of communal self-governance and shared resource pooling is essential. Rather than corporate data silos and closed AI systems, It is crucial to establish public digital commons operating as accountable civic utilities under participatory stewardship. Some promising prototypes in this spirit include guifi.net—a commons-based, citizen-owned Internet access network spanning over 34,000 nodes across Spain. The Catalan community combined democratic governance procedures with open specifications and crowdsourced infrastructure to create one of the largest mesh telecom providers in the world (Roger et al., 2015). They have demonstrated that we need neither government nor corporate control over physical and virtual public spaces. Another model is Solid, the pioneering decentralized web architecture created by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. It enables user-centric data storage where individuals can seamlessly share personal data across apps and services without being surveilled by data-hungry platform monopolists like Facebook. “Data is currently trapped in silos,” Berners-Lee notes. “It protects privacy by moving data out of centralized servers into distributed data pods that the users control” (Burgess, 2017). A logical next step would be extending Solid from single users to group data pods for city-scale data commons.

Similarly, it would be possible to construct public software repositories and platform cooperatives, thereby enabling municipalities to collaborate in the development of open-source algorithms, applications, and civic cloud services that are committed to the principles of privacy, transparency, and democratic accountability. The process of urbanization of technology capital has evolved into phases that focus on city governance, service operation, and space ownership. This has led to shifts in urban sovereignty (Sadowski, 2020). Techno-political platforms for urban democracy in Madrid and Barcelona are constructed and operated as open, commons-based processes for learning, reflection, and adaptation, which promote citizen engagement and activism (Smith & Martín, 2020). Urban technologists, activists, and residents could openly inspect codebases for embedded biases or misaligned values before deployment, thus preventing the emergence of smart city dystopias planned by unilateral state or corporate actors.

The fundamental principle is subsidiarity, which allows for data governance and workflows to be conducted at the most localized level feasible, overseen by those most affected. Centralized urban data infrastructures present a threat to self-determination. Therefore, it is necessary to construct a unified cyber-commune for the city, grounded in cryptographic encryption keys and immutable blockchain consensus over cooperatively cultivated digital commons.

While grassroots technical protections and alternative network architectures advance data self-determination, a complementary stream of “counter-surveillance” directly challenges proprietary overcollection and opacity. Initiatives like the OpenAI Safety Gym aim to evaluate whether AI systems behave as intended through techniques like adversarial testing, sensitivity analysis, and constitutional AI constraints (Birhane, 2022).

The practice of “algorithmic audits” is employed by several individuals and groups to identify potential harms, such as racial bias in predictive policing algorithms (Eubanks, 2018). Another form of legal activism, “hacktivism,” seeks to influence legislators to recognize property rights over metadata through collective action notifications (Ezrachi & Stucke, 2016). Only by undertaking a systematic reverse engineering of “black box” decision systems can the hidden harms be rectified.

As we build alternative digital infrastructures, the corporate “Technocapitalist” class will persist in their efforts to establish neo-feudal dominion over our cities through predictive control and algorithmic authority. We must strategically challenge their quest for urban data supremacy by digitally “breaking all their windows.”

One crucial tactic is the use of encryption and obfuscation applications to scramble, misdirect, or withhold personal data trails from proprietary smart city systems and surveillance capitalism apparatuses. Tools such as Tor anonymous browsing, Signal encrypted messaging, and TrackMeNot search query obfuscation can effectively impede the ability of metadata mining corporations to collect and analyze user data (Nissenbaum et al., 2009). Ad misinformation and noise injection attacks on urban AI models could undermine their reliability for exploitative revenue models.

Another vector is the utilization of our digital-native expertise to counter anti-discipline. This entails systematic evasion, reverse engineering, and exposure to the privatized algorithms deployed in our communities. Grassroots “algo squatting” groups, such as the Civic AI Auditors, have already revealed instances of racial bias in Amazon’s workforce analytics and opacity in Palantir’s predictive policing systems (Birhane, 2022). Algorithmic and coded bias in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to perpetuate discrimination, reinforce stereotypes, and violate individual privacy (Makanadar et al., 2024). Bias in AI systems can result from the gathering or processing of data, leading to prejudiced decisions based on demographic features like race, sex, zip code, and other characteristics (Ntoutsi et al., 2020). Closed-source algorithms must be treated as a vector for public harm to be audited and resisted.

Furthermore, legal hack-ins and data labor strikes could be mounted by claiming ownership rights over aggregated personal data, which is monetized in corporate products. This data could be withheld from usage except under public benefit terms. Groups such as Driver’s Seat Cooperative are demonstrating how gig workers can form data trusts to collectively negotiate better conditions by leveraging their data as property. Our data is a civic biodata and must not be rendered by private code/seed.

Finally, we need a new generation of hacktivists embedded across universities, community coding centers, local governments, and tech corporations. Whistleblowers and ethical refusals from the inside, civic hackers constantly probing from the outside, and law scholars building legal regimes for algorithmic due process and machine rights. It is necessary to foster the growth of a rebel alliance across society to spark an insurrection against the enslavement of humanity by algorithms.

The liberation of cities from the stranglehold of surveillance capitalism demands more than just technical interventions or tactical disruptions. It necessitates a profound cultural and technological paradigm shift—the cultivation of urban spaces that foster spontaneous community participation, the free exchange of knowledge, and the systematic subversion of prescribed data flows. This vision draws inspiration from the concept of “permanent revolution,” where each generation of civic activists develops innovative solutions to navigate the evolving landscapes of control. Insurgent praxis lies in the strategic deployment of “glitch urban games”—tactical interventions that scramble the logistics of smart city systems, undermining their efficiency and exposing inherent biases and, for example, repurposing traffic lights to incentivize pedestrians to reshape green corridors according to community preferences, rather than prioritizing vehicular traffic. Alternatively, hosting LAN key-sign parties in public housing projects enables residents to establish roots in self-sovereign identity and collectively determine their data-sharing principles. By creatively interpreting and exploiting zoning laws, space can be liberated for community-driven maker spaces and experimental hubs.

Technologically, this approach involves proliferating encrypted communication channels to counter data monopolies and developing distributed reputational scoring systems supported by federated trust networks. These tools aim to promote cooperative behavior and collective self-governance, empowering residents to redefine urban norms and engage in meaningful dialogue continually. Cultural artifacts, such as subversive memes and ludic interventions, become vital instruments for challenging existing power structures and catalyzing community participation.

While bold, these tactics must be carefully considered for their legality and scalability. The paper acknowledges the potential risks and limitations of “guerrilla” or “insurgent” approaches and advocates for a balanced strategy that combines technological innovation with more profound engagement with social, political, and economic drivers of change. Each neighborhood node becomes an opportunity for residents to reimagine and reclaim their shared urban environments, unbounded by the dictates of corporate algorithms or bureaucratic inertia. A more equitable and participatory urban landscape can be cultivated by embracing technological empowerment rather than submission. However, the paper recognizes that technology alone is not a panacea and calls for a holistic approach that addresses the interplay of cultural, structural, and institutional factors.

Ultimately, the objective is to counter the dominance of surveillance capitalism by developing novel strategies to circumvent its control mechanisms. This approach fosters a society characterized by resilience, adaptability, and a spirit of perpetual revolution—one in which each generation of activists innovates to navigate the evolving landscapes of data-driven subjugation. Only through such a sustained grassroots insurgency can we hope to secure the digital self-determination and communal sovereignty necessary to liberate our cities from the shackles of surveillance capitalism.

The technologies and cultural paradigms emerging from our playful urban insurrections against surveillance capitalism contain the seeds of an entirely new socio-economic model for cities—one grounded in decentralized community governance, privacy-preserving computation, and economic cooperativism. Central to the strategy is the transition from corporate data landlords to individuals and communities owning their own data and digital infrastructure as sovereign stakeholders. Personal data stores and collective data trusts are represented by crypto tokens, with urban services provided by blockchain-based decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) rather than monopolistic tech giants (Arrunada, 2018). Property titles, business licenses, voting credentials—all could exist as non-fungible tokens managed by decentralized city protocols, eliminating the administrative gatekeepers of bureaucratic institutions. Smart contracts automate e-governance functions like participatory budgeting, gig labor pricing, and urban resource allocation based on community stakeholder consensus rather than privatized, opaque algorithms serving corporate interests. However, we must be cautious of placing undue faith in any single technological solution, recognizing the need for a more holistic approach that addresses deeper social, political, and institutional changes.

DAOs could pool stakeholder funds into data union cooperatives to crowdsource urban analytics, mobility services, renewable energy microgrids, and other public utilities—all operated transparently on open blockchain networks instead of exploited for rent extraction by Big Tech. Blockchain identities and zero-knowledge proofs enable selective data sharing for services without compromising privacy (Zyskind et al., (2015)). With this decentralized digital infrastructure, cities essentially become “crypto economic state machines”—sovereign community networks with programmable governance codified on decentralized public ledgers, self-executing without ceding authority to self-interested corporate algorithms or compromised legacy institutions. Citizens transform into crypto-commoners who collectively cultivate and steward their urban environments. Crucially, these systems could utilize proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms to realign economic incentives—disincentivizing data extractivism while rewarding community members for verifiably behaving in the best interests of others through efficiency gains, resource sharing, environmental regeneration, and other public goods. In essence, it is a radical re-architecting of the market mechanism itself to encode ecological sustainability and distributive justice rather than infinite growth and wealth concentration.

Of course, significant challenges exist in bootstrapping these crypto-city ecosystems, from establishing Web3 literacy to onboarding physical world assets to byzantine fault-tolerant social scalability. However, the emancipatory potential of such self-sovereign community data economies represents an authentic path beyond digital feudalism and privatized smart cities. We will not find freedom by appealing for mercy from feudal cyber-barons like Zuckerberg or Pichai. Their legacy cities merely reformulate the foundations of oligarchic control. Our future lies in a mass exodus into the uncharted territory of decentralized crypto-urbanism and blockchain governance (Merrell, 2022). It is time to evacuate the cloud plantations and reclaim the open skies of democratic independence. Are we ready to build our crypto-cities from the code up?

However, there are valid concerns that over-reliance on blockchain and cryptocurrency could create new forms of exclusion and techno-solutionism, undermining the very principles of democratic self-governance. Therefore, it is crucial that the development of “crypto-city” models be accompanied by robust empirical evaluation, inclusive design processes, and deep engagement with broader social, economic, and political reforms. The emancipatory potential of self-sovereign community data economies represents one promising trajectory but must be pursued in tandem with other tactical and cultural interventions outlined in this paper.

Blockchain technology can enhance the expansion of smart cities by facilitating interactions and transactions within the public sector at a regional level (Davlyatov, 2023). Blockchain technology provides one pathway to creating digital commons, but exploring diverse approaches to community-controlled digital infrastructure is crucial. Ostrom’s (1990) work on governing the commons provides a valuable framework for collective management of shared resources, including data and digital infrastructure. One promising model is the platform cooperative, as Scholz (2016) described. These user-owned and democratically controlled digital platforms offer an alternative to extractive corporate platforms. Another approach is developing public interest technology, as advocated by the New America Foundation (2021). This involves creating digital tools and infrastructure explicitly designed to serve the public good, often through collaborations between technologists, policymakers, and community organizations.

A long-term vision for decentralizing political-economic arrangements through blockchain technologies is emerging. Early applications include municipal land registries on Ethereum and DAO-powered cooperative energy platforms, offering alternative ownership models (Treiblmaier et al., (2020)). By codifying governance, redistributing value incentives, and fostering collaboration, such frameworks could lead to post-capitalist “crypto-cities.” However, realizing decentralized, community-governed “crypto-cities” involves significant technological, social, and institutional challenges. The complexity of managing decentralized technical infrastructures, ensuring security and scalability, and integrating virtual models with physical urban realities presents obstacles. Hybrid models that balance decentralization with centralization might provide transitional solutions. Socially, the digital divide remains a concern, as self-sovereign identity systems require digital literacy, potentially deepening inequalities. Institutionally, shifting away from centralized smart cities will challenge existing power structures and demand new forms of collective decision-making. A phased approach, starting with pilot projects, would help establish these systems’ technological, social, and institutional foundations. Subsidiarity, participatory budgeting, and nested governance can ensure local communities retain decision-making power while continuous adaptation ensures resilience.

As Yeung (2019) warns, accessibility, scalability, and equity remain hurdles. De Filippi and Wright (2018) emphasize that blockchain governance often excludes those with low technical literacy, risking the rise of “crypto-elites.” Scalability remains a concern, as projects like Ethereum still struggle with energy demands and clashes with Environmental sustainability goals (Vranken, 2017). Atzori (2015) highlights the tension between blockchain’s transparency and the need for flexibility in urban governance. Addressing these issues will require policy reforms and regulatory frameworks. One policy solution includes algorithmic impact assessments, as Reisman et al. (2018) proposed, which could mitigate biases in AI systems used by cities. New York City’s Automated Decision Systems Task Force provides a valuable model (Lecher, 2019). Urban data trusts, as described by Delacroix and Lawrence (2019), could act as stewards of citizen data, ensuring its use aligns with community interests. The EU’s Data Act (European Commission, 2022) offers a regulatory step in this direction. Reclaiming urban futures from surveillance capitalism requires integrating decentralized digital infrastructure with community-driven governance and structural reforms. Only through a holistic approach can cities become democratic, equitable, and sustainable in the digital age.

Decentralized crypto-cities represent a long-term vision for transcending surveillance capitalism; we cannot ignore the more immediate battleground of smart city technologies being rapidly implemented by both corporate vendors and municipal governments. The “smart city stack” of networked sensors, data platforms, AI/ML models, and automated control systems is quickly becoming the new urban operating system. However, the vast majority of smart city solutions currently rely on centralized, proprietary architectures that concentrate data and control in the hands of a few powerful tech companies like Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, and Palantir. This centralization of urban governance code creates immense risks—from embedded algorithmic biases reinforcing structural inequalities to attack vector vulnerabilities, enabling mass surveillance and disruption (Sadowski, 2020).

There is an urgent need for “recoding” the entire smart city stack towards open standards, decentralized topologies, and community-governed oversight. This could start with promoting open data and model transparency around public sector data exchanges, AI training sets, and automated decision systems. Municipalities should explore replacing data brokers like Palantir with decentralized repositories like data trusts and blockchain-based data marketplaces. On the networking layer, a transition from telecom monopolies towards community-owned connectivity like municipal fiber, mesh wifi cooperatives, and decentralized cloud infrastructure. Projects like Helium’s decentralized wireless network built on crypto-economic incentives point the way (Reyneke et al., 2023). Edge computing frameworks will be vital for keeping more data processed locally rather than funneled into centralized servers.

We need to prioritize open source and public auditing by ethical AI teams for smart city software applications. Participatory design processes involving impacted residents must shape solution requirements from the outset. Technologies like federated learning can keep machine learning models encrypted and distributed across devices rather than training on centralized datasets. Federated learning preserves privacy by not transferring data between computers and achieves up to 98% accuracy in anomaly detection, outperforming standard centrally managed systems (Alazzam et al., 2022). At the systemic level, we desperately require new governance frameworks codifying algorithmic due process, prohibitions on certain high-risk use cases like predictive policing, and public interest obligations for automated decision systems impacting communities. Cities like New York and Seattle have begun legislating algorithmic audits and impact assessments, which could serve as models.

Implementing decentralized governance models in urban settings presents many practical challenges beyond technological considerations. Foth (2017) asserts that the success of such models depends not only on the robustness of the underlying technology but also on social, cultural, and institutional factors. One significant challenge is integrating decentralized systems with existing urban infrastructure, legal system and bureaucracies. Cardullo and Kitchin (2019) state that smart city initiatives often struggle to overcome institutional inertia and vested interests. Decentralized governance models would likely face similar, if not greater, resistance from established power structures.

Moreover, the question of democratic legitimacy in decentralized systems remains contentious. De Filippi and Wright (2018) raise concerns about the potential for “tyranny of the minority” in blockchain-based voting systems, where technical expertise could translate into disproportionate influence. Addressing these concerns requires careful consideration of governance structures that balance decentralization with democratic accountability.

If we fail to democratize smart city technologies, the dystopian vision of privatized urban territories run by surveillance capitalist operating systems could become inevitable. The Internet represented a revolutionary decentralization of information flows that catalyzed grassroots empowerment. Data-democracy activism is important to ensure the next iteration of networked urbanism catalyzes a people’s revolution - not a digital fortification of neo-feudal control. The code is settled, but its social vision remains an open fork for all.

The pervasive influence of surveillance capitalism on urban environments presents a critical juncture in the evolution of smart cities. As we have explored, corporate entities’ unchecked extraction and commodification of citizen data pose significant threats to privacy, autonomy, and democratic governance. However, the path forward does not need to be acquiescence to algorithmic authority serving narrow oligopolistic interests.

This comment has outlined several pathways to reclaim data sovereignty and foster more equitable, participatory urban futures. From grassroots initiatives promoting data dignity to developing decentralized digital commons, we see promising alternatives to the current paradigm. The emergence of crypto-cities and blockchain-based governance models offers intriguing possibilities for redefining civic engagement and resource allocation.

As we move forward, two pressing and tangible next steps emerge:

1. 1.

   Prioritize developing and implementing open-source, community-governed intelligent city technologies. Municipalities should invest in pilot projects that leverage decentralized architectures and privacy-preserving computation, focusing on transparency and citizen participation in design processes.

2. 2.

   Establish robust legal and regulatory frameworks for algorithmic accountability in urban governance. This includes mandating algorithmic impact assessments, enforcing data rights, and creating mechanisms for public oversight of automated decision systems.

Looking ahead, the future of urban data governance will likely involve a hybrid approach, balancing the efficiencies of centralized systems with the democratic potential of decentralized models. As these technologies evolve, continuous empirical evaluation and adaptation will be crucial to ensure they serve the public interest. In surveying sociotechnical pathways beyond surveillance capitalism’s colonization of urban cognition, this comment has aimed to spark urgent and necessary dialogue. While specific proposals surely warrant continued experimentation and debates over limitations, the existential question remains—will our cities reconstitute themselves through liberatory grassroots networks as a “permanent revolution” or acquiesce to totalizing algorithmic authority serving narrow oligopolistic interests? Only by continually reclaiming technological design and its encoded social visions can we guarantee autonomy, diversity, and shared prosperity on the emergent urban frontier.