The growth of smart doorbells may lead to unintended consequences, even changing the rules of engagement around election canvassing, writes Prof Mary Corcoran of the Department of Sociology.

    The proliferation of 'smart' doorbells in Irish towns and cities seems to have happened almost by stealth and it raises a number of important issues for us as a society. Innocuous as it may seem, a smart doorbell is no longer simply a means of letting us know there's someone at the door. Instead, it is a means of securitisation that heightens local-level surveillance and may lead to unintended consequences.

    Election canvassers have began to notice how the 'smart' doorbell is changing the rules of engagement, specifically for this kind of political communication. A person with a ‘smart’ doorbell which is generally connected to a smart phone can screen callers and decide not to answer at all, or to answer remotely. This removes the opportunity of an encounter with whomever is calling to the door. In the case of a canvasser, that opportunity is lost.

    Not only does the device enable people to avoid an encounter, it also captures all activity within its purview creating a surveillance data log. The caller cannot opt out of this surveillance gaze. Not surprisingly, a 'smart' doorbell affects the demeanour and the role of the canvasser. One campaign manager briefed canvassers to avoid talking in the vicinity of the front door as comments could be recorded and, if possible, to engage with the ‘smart’ doorbell by leaving a cheery voice message.

    Part of the fun of canvassing is the banter generated with householders and fellow canvassers as you gather "war stories" on the campaign trail. But the ‘smart’ doorbell has a chilling effect. In the view of the doorbell, you finds yourself remaining silent, attempting to look professional or at least "not suspicious" and readying oneself to speak into the little black box if afforded the chance (most people don’t answer the ring remotely).

    The internet was designed as a communication network between people, but its transformation into "a control network embedded directly into the physical world" is potentially "more consequential than the shift from an industrial society to a digital information society", explains Laura DeNardis in her book The Internet In Everything. The tech-driven economy is in the business of embedding itself in every possible arena of daily life creating subtle shifts in behavioural patterns and social norms.

    Door knockers and bells initially had a social function. They alerted the householder to the arrival of service personnel delivering goods and/or collecting payment for same (purveyors of milk, eggs, vegetables, etc). They elicited excitement when expected visitors arrived. Proselytisers, charity collectors and other eclectic characters might stop at one's door. As children, we called around to each other’s houses and, when truly bored, would knock on doors or ring doorbells as a prank, and then run speedily away.

    The humble doorbell is at the interface of the private life of the home and the public life of the street, community and neighbourhood beyond. When the doorbell rings, one expects the householder, if present, to answer the door.

    In the early 2000s, we undertook a study of social relations in suburban Dublin and did face-to-face interviews with 800 randomly selected people across four localities. The willingness of those householders to answer the doorbell, listen to our pitch, engage with the project, sit down with a stranger and provide a detailed overview of life in suburbia greatly enriched our research. It strikes me that a similar project today would face much greater difficulty of access in the age of the 'smart' doorbell.

    In the past, the doorstep and the street were very much perceived as part of the public realm, enabling chance encounters that help to build social connection and mitigate social isolation. Now, the street is being re-fashioned as a place not for chance encounters, but a space of surveillance from which the outside world may be reframed in criminogenic rather than social terms.

    A recent US study looked at companion social networking app offered by Amazon Ring to its customers, where they can share video and texts recorded by their 'smart' doorbells with others living nearby. Detailed analysis of one such forum in Los Angeles showed that users tend to frame video subjects as strangers - "criminal and suspicious" - and the app may be used in predominately white neighbourhoods as a racial gatekeeping tool.

    We need to be vigilant about the ever-present potential of technology to find new ways of monetising the data that we produce. A handful of tech companies have amassed a level of power unprecedented in history, power which is being deployed to create the foundational framework for a surveillance economy.

    The public have unwittingly become agents of this process as sensors are embedded in a widening range of objects, bodies and places monitoring and recording data which itself can potentially be extracted and put to other uses. The 'smart' doorbell is indicative of this trend. As Shoshana Zuboff and others have pointed out, these developments constitute serious threats to our democratic norms and values, human autonomy and human sovereignty.

    The ‘smart’ doorbell is likely to be adopted by more and more householders as a part of their home securitisation. However, such securitisation implies a turning inwards and a retreat from the public sphere which ultimately will undermine our capacity to connect meaningfully with others.

    This piece originally appeared on RTÉ Brainstorm