Opposition to Sidewalk Labs in Toronto • Hacker News Board

Re: Opposition to Sidewalk Labs in Toronto

#21

Post by swozey » Sat, May 18, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

toufka wrote: post #6

ilaksh wrote: post #4

To me the most of the ways that I can think of a city being smart are not related to surveillance. If there is some system that is supposed to benefit the public then its designs should be public and subject to public approval. What would be reasonable would be something like open source designs and protocols and maybe an electronic bidding system for projects. But it sounds like its one company embedding whatever sp…

Pretty harsh: > Last year, the firm's own privacy adviser Dr Ann Cavoukian resigned. "I imagined us creating a smart city of privacy, as opposed to a smart city of surveillance", she said bluntly in her resignation letter.

Her background is impressive. It's refreshing to see ethics. Also, this quote;

> Former Blackberry co-CEO Jim Balsillie called the project “a colonizing experiment in surveillance capitalism.”

https://globalnews.ca/news/4579265/ann-cavoukian-resigns-sid...

Re: Opposition to Sidewalk Labs in Toronto

#22

Post by underdown » Sat, May 18, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #15

njepa wrote: post #2

It looks like every (mostly useless) waterfront, science city or business park I have ever been to. Is there something new here, or is it like with many things these days that people's perception have diverged from reality?

the most innovative thing i've seen talked about is an a hidden utility corridor running to all the buildings for trash pickup. Which can't actually be an original idea, can it?

In a sense isn't that what every alleyway in the world is?

Re: Opposition to Sidewalk Labs in Toronto

#23

Post by njepa » Sat, May 18, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #16

njepa wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think surveillance could be part of a smart city. But for that to be smart it would have to solve the inherent problems with surveillance. An actual smart city project would proudly announce what it did to solve these challenges. I don't see anything on their website that does this, rather it talks about how developers can enjoy access to ubiquitous connectivity [0]. This is in stark contrast to other successful in…

> solve the inherent problems with surveillance Which problems?

A simple search can summarize better than I can. There are many sources, including papers and books, for this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_issues_in_smart_c...

Re: Opposition to Sidewalk Labs in Toronto

#24

Post by hammock » Sat, May 18, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

PorterDuff wrote: post #3

I think that Google should build company housing at their main facilities, give their people somewhere to live, and watch them 24/7 like lab rats. You could accomplish an interesting experiment plus deal with the problem of giving new hires a place to live.

That works if the only places you visit are work and home.

Re: Opposition to Sidewalk Labs in Toronto

#25

Post by scarejunba » Sat, May 18, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #13

"a smart city built from the internet up " I really don't understand the appeal of statement.

* Real time additional self-driving buses responding to demand spikes.

* Rubbish bins full? The city knows and sends help.

* Demand pricing parking in a region

I can think of a dozen ideas in seconds.

Re: Opposition to Sidewalk Labs in Toronto

#26

Post by matz1 » Sat, May 18, 2019, 5:00 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #24

PorterDuff wrote: post #3

I think that Google should build company housing at their main facilities, give their people somewhere to live, and watch them 24/7 like lab rats. You could accomplish an interesting experiment plus deal with the problem of giving new hires a place to live.

That works if the only places you visit are work and home.

Living in company housing means I can't visit anywhere else?

Re: Opposition to Sidewalk Labs in Toronto

#27

Post by rory096 » Sat, May 18, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

60654 wrote: post #10

The opposition to this is not just from the privacy perspective, there's also the issue of data ownership, and giving all this data away to Google for free. And once it's owned, both cities and citizens lose all control and oversight - you can't get yourself removed from the dataset, impose restrictions on how this personal data will be used, etc. There are some good quotes in this older Reuters story ( https://www.r…

This article has poor fact-checking. For example, the quote by the Queen's University professor is not accurate (or, charitably, outdated as of the time of publishing).

>The proposal amounts to “permanent surveillance” and “massive data scraping” under the guise of fighting climate change, he said.

>“They are conducting an experiment in real time, in the real world: the privatization of our cities on a large scale. They will have intellectual property rights over all of this (data).”

In October 2018 Sidewalk proposed a third party "Civic Data Trust" that would own and maintain the data. Its blog post on the subject reiterates repeatedly that the data cannot and should not be owned by Sidewalk:

>No one has a right to own information collected from Quayside’s physical environment — including Sidewalk Labs. Instead, this “urban data” should be under the control of an independent Civic Data Trust.

>No one should own urban data — it should be made freely and publicly available.

>We believe all data needs protection, but the extent to which urban data specifically may be collected in Quayside is what’s new and different here. Existing laws on urban data do not address ownership. And urban data is only regulated when it contains personally identifiable information. Even then, these rules are often not followed in the public realm. We seek to build on them.

https://www.sidewalklabs.com/blog/an-update-on-data-governan...

Re: Opposition to Sidewalk Labs in Toronto

#28

Post by overkill28 » Sat, May 18, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

Putting aside privacy for a moment, does anyone know what they're actually building? As far as I know they've sold the city on a bunch of vague "smart tech" promises without any concrete details.

I have no idea what Sidewalk Labs business plan is, but it seems like a traditional business executive (Dan Doctoroff) is trying to use Google's brand to get access to cities so he can build large developments without actually knowing anything about technology.

Re: Opposition to Sidewalk Labs in Toronto

#29

Post by Fricken » Sat, May 18, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

People are very superstitious, and quite hysterical. Google isn't building a city, they're building a neighbourhood in one small section of Toronto that most Torontonians never went to anyhow, and are under no obligation to go to after it has been rebuilt.

Postwar Urban development is fucking monotonous and largely the same everywhere. We should experiment and try different things. If you don't like it, fine. Get together with a few thousand like-minded people and build your own neighbourhood, the way you like it.

Re: Opposition to Sidewalk Labs in Toronto

#30

Post by njepa » Sat, May 18, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #15

njepa wrote: post #2

It looks like every (mostly useless) waterfront, science city or business park I have ever been to. Is there something new here, or is it like with many things these days that people's perception have diverged from reality?

the most innovative thing i've seen talked about is an a hidden utility corridor running to all the buildings for trash pickup. Which can't actually be an original idea, can it?

You can probably find it in some '60s future somewhere. Why would you build a perfectly fine tunnel and use that for irregular traffic, when you can hide the traffic and have the street for mixed use [-1]? We have had trash chutes [0] and AVAC [1] for centuries in Sweden (not always connected unfortunately). My local garbage truck have one of those robotic arms, and I don't live anywhere fancy. So I can't say I get it.

[-1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_street [0] https://translate.google.com/translate?langpair=en&sl=sv&tl=... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_vacuum_collection [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sopbil_skelleftea.jp...