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Google's Smart City Dream Is Turning Into a Privacy Nightmare (engadget.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the agree-to-the-terms-to-continue dept.

schwit1 shares a report from Engadget: Sidewalk Labs, an Alphabet division focused on smart cities, is caught in a battle over information privacy. The team has lost its lead expert and consultant, Ann Cavoukian, over a proposed data trust that would approve and manage the collection of information inside Quayside, a conceptual smart neighborhood in Toronto. Cavoukian, the former information and privacy commissioner for Ontario, disagrees with the current plan because it would give the trust power to approve data collection that isn't anonymized or "de-identified" at the source. "I had a really hard time with that," she told Engadget. "I just couldn't... I couldn't live with that."

Cavoukian isn't the first privacy expert to abandon the Quayside project. Saadia Muzaffar, founder of TechGirls Canada, left the Digital Strategy Advisory Panel earlier this month. In a resignation letter, she said Waterfront Toronto had shown "apathy and [an] utter lack of leadership regarding shaky public trust and social license." The advisory panel was attended "in good faith," she said, but showed "a blatant disregard for resident concerns about data." These disagreements will add to the concerns of Torontonians. Sidewalk Labs still has time to address these issues and create a master plan that will be accepted by everyone. If the company continues to lose public trust, though, there's a good chance residents and government officials will make up their minds and reject the plan before reading the first page.

9 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. And we can only hope they drop it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    There is nothing a "privacy policy" can do to stop data from being collected.

    1. Re:And we can only hope they drop it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And "anonymization", isn't... not when the adversary has as much data as Google does about every person living in a first world country. It can re-associate identities with anonymized datasets.

      There are entire industries built around doing that. It is easily within Google's abilities.

      The ONLY safe thing is to have no data collected.

    2. Re:And we can only hope they drop it by epyT-R · · Score: 2

      no.. laws let the state selectively come down hard on the hands of political enemies (or littlepeople) they find in the cookie jar. Their friends will be exempt.

  2. An ad company by AHuxley · · Score: 2

    is always going to let the needs of the paying ad brands be the only consideration.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  3. of course it is by TWX · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The only real chance for privacy is if the systems are self-contained on the property and data isn't exfiltrated to offsite servers. Even then, there are security risks if the system has bugs that make it vulnerable.

    Given that Google's business is user data, there's no practical way to have privacy in a Google-driven home.

    I expect similar problems for Google self-driving cars unless laws mandate that voice tech and general listening has to be handled in-car, and even then there are issues.

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    1. Re:of course it is by bmimatt · · Score: 3

      Precisely.
      I do not understand what kind of gullible moron would think, even for a second, there wouldn't be serious privacy implications stemming from the arguably largest data collection company being the de-facto owner of the project. It's mind-blowing Toronto people would fall for this.

    2. Re:of course it is by Voyager529 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's mind-blowing Toronto people would fall for this.

      They're not.

      From the summary:

      " The advisory panel was attended "in good faith," she said, but showed "a blatant disregard for resident concerns about data."

  4. Governments will acquiesce to corporations by chiguy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If the company continues to lose public trust, though, there's a good chance residents and government officials will make up their minds and reject the plan before reading the first page.

    I'm not sure where the author gets this conclusion, re: "good chance...governments officials will... reject the plan..." Governments and politicians will side with corporations over residents when they smell the money and hear the big promises of more money. Privacy is not something most governments care about.

    --
    passetspike!
  5. Bad headline by TimMD909 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "... turning Into a Privacy Nightmare..."

    Really now? When was it anything else?