Why is the future city “Smart City” that Google aims to become a “privacy nightmare”?
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Google ’s parent company Alphabet ’s affiliated laboratory “ Sidewalk Labs ” was launched in 2015 and has undergone urban reforms to improve “quality of life”. However, in the Sidewalk Labs city planning in Canada, the committee experts are quitting one after another over the privacy stance proposed by Sidewalk Labs.
Google's smart city dream is turning into a privacy nightmare
https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/26/sidewalk-labs-ann-cavoukian-smart-city/
Sidewalk Labs has already started “Sidewalk Toronto”, a smart city in Toronto, Canada, and within a few years, part of the waterfront area in southeastern Toronto was redeveloped to become a community called “Quayside” It will be reborn.
Sidewalk toronto
https://sidewalktoronto.ca/
Even before Sidewalk Labs was involved, development in the area was planned in Toronto. Ann Cavoukian, a member of Ontario's Privacy Committee, advocated ' privacy by design ' that considers privacy throughout the engineering process in the mid-1990s, and urban development is based on privacy by design. I came.
However, Cavoukia announced his resignation from the committee on October 19, 2018. At a meeting with Sidewalk Labs, Cavoukia was informed that 'third-party organizations related to Sidewalk Labs have access to personally identifiable data collected in the project' and resigned the plan as 'unsupportable' That's it. “It was a difficult situation, but I couldn't accept this plan,” Cavoukia told Engadget.
Ann Cavoukian, former Ontario privacy commissioner, resigns from Sidewalk Labs-Toronto | Globalnews.ca
https://globalnews.ca/news/4579265/ann-cavoukian-resigns-sidewalk-labs/
'City of surveillance': privacy expert quits Toronto's smart-city project | World news | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/23/toronto-smart-city-surveillance-ann-cavoukian-resigns-privacy
Since being chosen as a key-side urban planning partner in 2017, Sidewalk Labs has been discussing privacy-by-design with experts including Cavoukia. Some Toronto citizens are concerned about privacy issues because of Google ’s reputation in the advertising business.
However, Sidewalk Labs is proceeding with plans, and in August, building houses using wood instead of iron and concrete, creating new roads for autonomous cars, and using energy The idea is to use sensors to collect the data, stop environmental pollution, reduce traffic and monitor noise.
Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs reveals plan for Quayside in Toronto-Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com/alphabets-sidewalk-labs-reveals-plan-for-quayside-in-toronto-2018-8
On October 16, 2018, a new model for data use was proposed . Among them, Sidewalk Labs said, “No one has the right to own information collected from the key-side physical environment.” “City data should be under the control of an independent citizen data trust. ' According to this proposal, when Sidewalk Labs and other companies use hardware and services that track key-side citizens, they must submit documents to the data trust to assess the impact and take responsibility. not. The submitted data will be made public and some will be self-certified and approved immediately, while others will be carefully considered by experts.
For example, park to install a video camera in (PDF file) If required the approval of the data Trust rather than the self-certification because it contains personal information, 'for the video is improvement of the park,' 'data every 7 days It will be considered conditional that it will be destroyed. In addition, it is necessary to consider the need to place a sign near the camera and to publicly register the location of the camera.
Sidewalk Labs states that all applications are based on privacy-by-design, while data trusts can be approved even if the source is not anonymized. However, Cavoukia argues that all key-side data should be anonymized for citizens' privacy. If data that is not non-anonymized is allowed, the key side becomes “buried money” and it is expected that companies will try to obtain more data using forms that are not anonymized.
According to Cavoukia, Sidewalk Labs said 'citizen data trust clearly has a wide range of authority, including decisions related to non-anonymization of personal data.'
“Think about the consequences of this. If personally identifiable data was provided without being anonymized, we would create a central database of personal information. The data will be used without your consent and will be at risk of hacking and unauthorized access, as we know well, existing encryption is absolutely unreliable and can be broken. 'There is also the risk of exposing the personal data of Waterfront Toronto citizens, why do you take this risk,' says Cavoukian.
Cavoukian, who left the committee, is pressing the Waterfront Toronto government agency that hired Sidewalk Labs to change Sidewalk Labs' ideas and make it anonymous.
In addition, there has been an expert who quit the key side project. Saadia Muzaffar, who founded TechGirls Canada , also resigned from the committee in early October. Muzaffar said Waterfront Toronto was “indifferent and indifferent about social credibility and social licensing ” and the Advisory Board did “sincerely” but “disregarded citizens concerned about data” I was doing. '
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