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Sidewalk Labs' Smart City Plans Face Legal Challenge

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday April 23 2019, @06:07AM   
from the what's-wrong-with-the-dumb-ones dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for ErnestGoesToSpace

A Canadian civil liberties group is taking aim at all three tiers of government for allegedly allowing Sidewalk Labs to make decisions about citizens' privacy in Toronto.

A civil liberties group in Canada is suing three tiers of government over potential privacy issues posed by Sidewalk Labs's plan to develop a 12-acre smart city in Toronto, which will be approved or denied later this summer. The lawsuit aims to nullify the partnership that Sidewalk Labs, Google's sibling company, has with the taxpayer-funded organization Waterfront Toronto. (Waterfront Toronto was created jointly by the federal, provincial, and municipal governments.) The Canadian Civil Liberties Association claims that Waterfront Toronto, let alone Sidewalk Labs, doesn't have the jurisdiction to make rules about people's privacy.

The government "sold out our constitutional rights to freedom from surveillance and sold it to the global surveillance mammoth of behavioral data collection: Google," said Michael Bryant, the executive director and general counsel of the CCLA, in a press conference. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association joined with Toronto resident Lester Brown, who lives next to the Quayside neighborhood that Sidewalk Labs is proposing to develop, in suing the government. "Canada, Toronto, you are the lab rats in Google's Sidewalk Lab," Bryant said. "Our job at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is to say to all three levels of government that Canadians should not be Google's lab rat. This lab needs to be shut down and reset."

Source: https://www.fastcompany.com/90336151/sidewalk-labss-smart-city-plans-face-legal-challenge

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Original Submission

• Lack of info in general (Score: 3, Informative) by dw861 on Wednesday April 24 2019, @03:08AM

  by dw861 (1561) on Wednesday April 24 2019, @03:08AM (#834196) Journal

  If you try and find details of this plan, you won't find any. Anywhere.

  This is the sum total available to the public:
  https://sidewalktoronto.ca/ [sidewalktoronto.ca]

  In fact, a March 14 Globe and Mail editorial stated:

  At a recent editorial board meeting with The Globe and Mail, the firm’s CEO, Dan Doctoroff, talked about his passion for sustainability and “innovation". He dismissed widely held fears that Alphabet, which is also the parent company of Google, was focused on making money off of the data gathered from the neighborhood’s future residents and visitors.

  His intentions, and those of Alphabet CEO Larry Page, were benign, if not downright altruistic, he said.

  There was no prospectus passed around, no architect’s renderings, no fact sheets. The only persuasive material on offer was Mr. Doctoroff’s word.

  You can read the entire thing here:
  https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-globe-editorial-what-does-sidewalk-labs-really-want-from-toronto/ [theglobeandmail.com]

  However, back in February, we learned in the CBC that

  Dan Doctoroff says Sidewalk Labs is proposing to capture some "incremental revenues" that would be generated from its proposed investment in infrastructure. According to media reports, those revenues include a share of property taxes and development fees that usually go to the city. It would also reportedly like a share of an increase in land values.

  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/sidewalk-labs-waterfront-toronto-dan-doctoroff-metro-morning-interview-1.5025892 [www.cbc.ca]
   

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