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Sidewalk Toronto Has Only One Beneficiary, and It Is not Toronto

posted by chromas on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the privatize-the-public dept.

canopic jug writes:

The Globe and Mail has an editorial about the many disadvantages of the upcoming Sidewalk Toronto surveillance project. If one sets aside the repeated conflation of copyright, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets under a single, misleading moniker, the editorial covers how much control over public resources and public spaces is being relinquished to private companies without transparency or accountability, especially in regards to surveillance data collected.

With politicians rushing to show Canada's innovation chops, "smart cities" have emerged as their new frontier. Most consequential of these is a high-profile agreement between Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet. A year ago, Canadians were treated to an announcement involving the leaders of all three levels of government gushing and fawning about an enlightened urban partnership with a foreign company whose business model is built exclusively on the principle of mass surveillance.

The most insightful comments during the public announcement came when Eric Schmidt, Google's former executive chair, said they had realized their long-running dream for "someone to give us a city and put us in charge." He also thanked Canadian taxpayers for paying, creating and transferring the core artificial-intelligence technology he credits for Alphabet's success, making it the world's third most valuable corporation. The Google parent's past and future growth are based on the intellectual property (IP) they own and the data they control.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @07:20PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @07:20PM (#745600)

    And a lot of times, the guns do come out. Look at Big Paul Castellano. I knew him. Terrible thing that happened to him!

    Big Paul Castellano [wikipedia.org]:

    Constantino Paul "Big Paul" Castellano, also known as "The Howard Hughes of the Mob" and "Big Paulie", was an American mafia boss who succeeded Carlo Gambino as head of the Gambino crime family in New York, the nation's largest Cosa Nostra family at the time. The unsanctioned assassination of Castellano in 1985 by John Gotti sparked years of instability for the Gambino family.

    Then you said:

    They're basically the same as you or me.

    They are quite UNLIKE me or anyone I know.

    That you think they are basically the same as YOU, says a lot about YOUR character!

    You could have called the police or the FBI, stood up for what was right, but instead decided to go along with them. Condoning and supporting their activities. SAD!

  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @07:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @07:40PM (#745609)

    I'm sure there are bad people on both sides!

  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday October 07 2018, @10:16PM

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 07 2018, @10:16PM (#745655) Journal

    Then you said:

    They're basically the same as you or me.

    They are quite UNLIKE me or anyone I know.

    Please don't feed the trolls.