Safe Cities and Civic Triggers: Huawei’s Surveillance Systems in Ghana

• In Event: Surveillance Technologies in Democracies and Autocracies

Abstract

This paper explores the internationalization of Chinese-sourced surveillance technologies, and the impact that those technologies have on democratic development. Specifically, this paper explores the daily functions and civic reactions to one of Huawei’s “Safe City” systems in Ghana, and asks a set of interrelated questions: When Safe Cities are deployed in low-and middle-income democracies, what kind of civic and procedural responses do they evoke? What happens when surveillance systems that were designed for consumption in China interact with policing and national security institutions in emerging democratic societies? And most importantly, do Safe City platforms facilitate democratic backsliding and the spread of digital authoritarianism? Counterintuitively, this paper argues that under certain conditions, Huawei’s Safe City systems function as a civic trigger that activates a number of democratic processes. The paper develops this argument through a sustained investigation and comparison of three civic and procedural spaces within Ghanaian society that had to adapt and respond to Huawei’s Safe City system: the legislature, civil society, and the citizenry.

Author

• Isaac Henry Lawther, University of Toronto