Smart cities and surveillance: why democracies must not lose control

The dominance of private companies in urban technology makes surveillance possible even in democratic systems like Switzerland, warns digital surveillance expert Jasmin Dall’Agnola. That is why citizens and governments must remain vigilant.  

Imagine you are living in a city where every part of your life is monitored: cameras on every street corner, your online activities tracked, and even your financial transactions scrutinised through a social credit system. What is the first place that comes to mind?

For many, the answer comes almost instinctively: China, Russia, North Korea. During my fieldwork in the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan in 2022External link, I experienced this kind of surveillance firsthand. I was followed in public spaces, monitored online, and at one point had to reboot my iPhone 13 due to suspected spyware.

But today, surveillanceExternal link is no longer confined to authoritarian regimes; it operates through platforms, apps, cloud systems, sensors and CCTV infrastructures that together make up what we call “smart cities”. The dynamics I experienced in Central Asia are not absent in democratic societies, they simply take different forms, and are often enabled by – or through – private corporations.

Switzerland, often seen as a stronghold of democratic values and privacy protections, is not immune to encroaching surveillance. While the country’s legal framework appears robust on paperExternal link, gaps remain. Data protection lawsExternal link are comparatively business-friendlyExternal link, enforcement powers are limitedExternal link, and many emerging technologies, such as AI systemsExternal link, are still only loosely regulated.

Jasmin Dall’Agnola is a lecturer at the Department of Political Science (IPZ) at the University of Zurich. Her research focuses on how states and technology companies use internet and smart city technologies to normalise mass surveillance, and how citizens perceive, negotiate, and respond to these forms of digital power both in democratic and authoritarian countries. Her work has received multiple awards and has been funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Big Tech’s control over data

Companies like GoogleExternal link, Meta, and major telecom providers collect vast amounts of personal data. This data is used for advertising, and has also been used for political manipulation and surveillance. The Cambridge Analytica scandal, for instance, showed how personal data from social media could be used in attempts to manipulate elections. Laws such as the US CLOUD Act allow US authorities to request data held by US Cloud providers like Microsoft or Google, even when that data is stored outside the United States, including in SwitzerlandExternal link.

Big Tech companies and their CEOs wield enormous power over data and public discourse without being meaningfully accountable to democratic institutions. This concentration of power does not just raise surveillance concerns, it directly affects how democratic decisions are shaped and who has influence over them.

This is where Switzerland, like many other democracies, faces a deeper structural challenge: technological dependency. Much of the digital infrastructure underpinning Swiss smart cities, cloud services, software platformsExternal link and AI tools is controlled by a small number of global technology companies, mainly based in the United StatesExternal link or ChinaExternal link. For example, despite potential cybersecurity risks and ambitions to create a sovereign “Swiss cloud,” the federal governmentExternal link outsourced key cloud services to foreign providers including Amazon, Microsoft, and Alibaba in 2022.

Greater vigilance over urban infrastructure

In this sense, the issue is not only surveillance, but data sovereignty. If Swiss public institutions rely on infrastructure they do not fully control, their ability to govern data and to protect their citizens becomes constrained. Responding to this challenge raises a deeper question about how to regain control over the technologies on which our smart cities increasingly depend.

One way to address this is to strengthen local technological capacities. Across EuropeExternal link and beyond, governments and companies are increasingly trying to regain control over smart city infrastructure dominated by global tech firms. In Switzerland, this is already happening in different ways. For example, AlpineAIExternal link is building secure AI systems for sensitive environments such as public administrations and hospitals. The Swiss messaging platform ThreemaExternal link offers full end-to-end encrypted communication, does not rely on monetising user data, and even allows organisations such as the Swiss ArmyExternal link to run the system on their own infrastructure. At the hardware level, the Swiss company SyntharaExternal link develops energy-efficient chips based on open-source architectures, helping to reduce dependence on dominant global providers. These examples show that responding to the growing power of Big Tech and the threat of surveillance is not only a question of regulation, but also of innovation: building alternative infrastructure that is more secure, transparent, and better aligned with democratic principles.

Individual action

Surveillance in smart cities is not only imposed from above by the state or Big Tech firms, it is also reproduced through our own digital habits. And even the most robust regulations and localised infrastructure cannot fully address the problem of surveillance in smart cities if our everyday practices of data sharing remain unchanged.

As citizens, we are not merely passive subjects of monitoring. We actively participate in it. We share personal information on social media, track our bodies through fitness apps, fertility trackers and other wearable devices, and trade data for convenience on a daily basis.

This does not mean that we have to withdraw from our smart lifestyle. But it does mean engaging with it more consciously. Small decisions matter: reading data policies when it counts, rejecting cookies, adjusting privacy settings, or choosing paid services that do not rely entirely on data extraction. These are modest steps, but they are not insignificant. They shape the environment in which surveillance is either normalised or resisted in smart cities.

Smart city technologies can offer real benefits, from more efficient public services to improved urban planning. But their use must be accompanied by clear safeguards. Democracies need to ensure transparency in how data is collected and processed, enforce robust data protection, and hold both public institutions and private companies accountable. Without this, surveillance risks becoming normalised, not through force, but through convenience, shifting power away from democratic oversight and into the hands of actors that are not democratically accountable.

If our imagination of surveillance remains fixed elsewhere, we risk overlooking how it is quietly evolving at home. In smart cities, surveillance is advancing, and democracies must ensure they do not lose control over it.

Edited by Gabe Bullard/ds