For many years, Gwen Shaffer led residents of Long Beach, California, on “data crawls,” pointing out WiFi routerssafety camerassmart water meters and parking kiosks. The goal, according to the professor journalism and public relations in California State University, Long Beachwas to study How did the residents feel? about how their city collected data about them.
It also revealed a serious gap in smart city design today: While cities may disclose how they collect data, they rarely offer ways to opt out. Shaffer spoke with IEEE spectrum about experiences with data crawls and her research team's efforts to give citizens more control over data collected through publicly available technologies.
What inspired your data research?
Gwen Shaffer: I started collecting data in 2021. I studied residents' comfort levels with the city's technology that collects personal information. My first career as a political reporter influenced my research approach. I am strongly committed to conducting applied rather than theoretical research. And I always do research with the goal of helping solve a real problem and inform policy.
How did you organize your walks?
Shaffer: We have posted data privacy labels with QR code residents can scan and see how their data is being used. Spanish and English are spoken in the city center. IN Cambodia citywe did them in Khmer and English.
What happened during the walks?
Shaffer: I'll give you one example. A couple of city garages have automated license plate readers at the entrance. So when I was doing the data analysis, I talked to our participants about how they felt about these scanners. Because once they get yours license plateif you've parked for less than two hours, you can easily walk through. You don't owe money.
The responses were contextual and sometimes contradictory. There were residents who said: “Oh, yes. It's so convenient. It saves time.” I think this shows how willing residents are to compromise. Intellectually, they hate the idea of privacy being violated, but they also love convenience.
What surprised you most?
Shaffer: One participant said: “When I go to the airport, I can refuse to have my face scanned and still be able to board the plane. But if I want to participate in so many events in the city and not have my data collected, I have no choice.”
Was cyber attack on the city in November 2023. Even though we had no prompts on this, people raised this issue themselves in almost every focus group. One said, “I would never connect to public Wi-Fi, especially after the City of Long Beach website was hacked.”
What application is your team developing?
Shaffer: Residents want agency. This is what prompted my research team to contact privacy engineers at Carnegie Mellon Universityin Pittsburgh. Norman Sade and his team developed what they called Internet of things assistant. So I told them about our project and offered to adapt their application to urban technologies. Our plan is to give residents the opportunity to exercise their rights under California Consumer Privacy Act with this application. So that they can say: ““Passport Parking” applicationdelete all the data you have already collected about me. And don’t collect any more in the future.”
This article will appear in the December 2025 print issue under the title “Gwen Shaffer.”
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