More details wanted on neighbourhood of future
Toronto waterfront neighbourhood planned by Google
TORONTO — Andrew Clement hopes privacy-conscious Torontonians won’t have to fear visiting the proposed Quayside neighbourhood.
It was about six months ago that the tri-government organization Waterfront Toronto announced it had chosen Sidewalk Labs, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, to envision a brand new area of the city built from scratch with innovative technologies and infrastructure, including roads designed for driverless cars.
But critics say the public still knows very little about the company’s intentions at the halfway point of a promised year of “extensive community and stakeholder consultation,” and privacy and data concerns about the implications of living in a hightech neighbourhood are unclear.
Clement, a professor emeritus with the University of Toronto and co-founder of the school’s Identity, Privacy and Security Institute, says the lack of information released thus far “invites speculation and skepticism” and has only stoked data security and surveillance fears, particularly since the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in March. He says that episode revealed how the sharing of personal data could have unintended consequences down the road.
“We shouldn’t develop a neighbourhood that runs on the same model as Facebook or Google where it has interesting things to offer, but you have to swallow your privacy concerns in order to use it.”
During public consultation meetings about six weeks ago, Sidewalk Labs’ head of legal, Alyssa Harvey Dawson, was noncommittal when asked whether the project’s data — including information about citizens in public spaces — would be retained within the country, saying only “security is going to be paramount.” A Waterfront Toronto executive later said the U.S. company “hadn’t foreseen” that so-called data residency would be a critical “non-negotiable.”
More meetings are scheduled for Thursday, where Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto are set to reveal “a more detailed look at the work underway.”
In advance of the meeting, Sidewalk Labs released a document outlining the progress so far on developing its data policy. In terms of privacy, the company says it will disclose information on how and why personal data is collected and used, and will seek “meaningful consent” from individuals. It also says it will not sell personal information to third parties or exploit it for advertising purposes.
But Tech Reset Canada cofounder Bianca Wylie says without concrete details about the building plans for the neighbourhood, the data document isn’t helpful.
“You need specificivity in order to assess this stuff. So halfway in and no products, no design, no business model, even putting this stuff out to discuss without specifics is not that helpful,” Wylie says.