“War Rooms” of the Street: Surveillance Practices in Transportation Control Centers

Abstract

This article investigates the surveillance dimensions of “intelligent transportation systems” in the United States, with a particular focus on the mediation of data by engineers in transportation control centers. These communication systems lend themselves to surveillance by means of “function creep” beyond their primary intended purposes and through the everyday collection and manipulation of data to manage mobilities. In the U.S., dominant system protocols privilege vehicular throughput and discipline those who deviate from that norm.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant no. SES 0423672. Special thanks to my research assistant, Jennifer Murray, for assisting with interviews and to David Murakami Wood and James Rule for providing helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. I am additionally indebted to Shoshana Magnet and Kelly Gates for their support.

Notes

1. Michael Zimmer (2005) expands upon the discussion of privacy threats introduced by such systems, arguing convincingly that such systems challenge the “contextual integrity” of personal data in public places.

2. It is important to note that not all surveillance should be viewed as negative. As David Lyon (2001) has argued, the control dimensions of surveillance can be interpreted as “care” or watching out for those in need, such as children, the elderly, or stranded motorists. Obviously, classifying surveillance practices along the control-care continuum is a highly subjective exercise, whereby even the most obvious examples of care-based surveillance can be viewed as paternalistic and controlling from the perspective of those scrutinized, or from the perspective of scholars studying the scrutiny, as the case may be.

3. Additionally, some news networks broadcast traffic reports from state-level ITS control centers. When they do so, they typically display CCTV feeds of traffic conditions, and not footage of the centers themselves.

4. The term capture is a loaded one that I use here in accordance with how the systems are described by my informants. Although it is common to refer to information systems as oriented toward data “capture” (e.g., Agre, 1994), it would be more accurate to focus on the act of data “creation” that occurs with such systems. They restructure social practices and categories in an active way that is elided by the somewhat positivistic term capture.

5. The system for emergency vehicle preemption (where green lights are triggered for emergency vehicles) is perceived similarly as a threat to the synchronization of traffic signals.

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