In review of the Dr. Cavoukian resigning in protest from Sidewalk Labs' 'smart city' project over privacy concerns, it is absolutely a thin line between intelligence and surveillance.
When Sidewalk Labs wanted to make Toronto’s Waterfront into a smart city, Dr. Cavoukian made it very clear that privacy should be embedded as the foundation for this proposal by de-identifying data at source. According to Privacy by Design proposed by Dr. Cavoukian, there are seven foundational principles that are intended to serve as the foundation of one’s privacy practices while developing any systems or businesses (Cavoukian, 2009). However, Sidewalk Labs failed to promise that the data they collected would be erased and unidentifiable, even allowed third parties access to the gathered data (Canon, 2018), which would soon becoming another surveillance cities like in Dubai and China (Wong, 2018).
photo source: https://www.govtech.com/smart-cities/waterfront-toronto-smart-city-plans-raise-privacy-concerns.html
Based on the Privacy by Design Principles, Sidewalk Labs was violating most of them which are:
1. Failure to set privacy as the default setting: During in the board meeting, Sidewalk Labs, Waterfront Toronto, the provincial government, federal government, and all of the associated tech companies failed to agree to the term that de-identification of personal data at source had to be mandatory. Clearly, they were not putting public privacy into their consideration in the development process.
2. Failure to be visible and transparent: The Torontonians would not be notified on what kind of data would be collected by whom. Unknown third parties could gain access to the identifiable information which they would have not given consent to. The visibility on the whole data collection process was extremely low.
3. Failure to design an end-to-end, full lifecycle security: The project was not designed to make privacy as the default setting in the first place, let alone securely collect, use, retain, and destroy at the end of the process. It failed to start a full lifecycle of data protection in the beginning.
4. Failure to be proactive: According to Privacy by Design, a good design does not wait for privacy risks to materialize (Cavoukian, 2009). Sidewalk Labs failed to identify the risks in the first place that they could not foresee the potential risks and harm imposed to the public. As a result, personal details would become a “treasure trove” (Wong, 2018) to those criminals, resulting data leak or identity theft.
5. Failure to embedded privacy into the design: Like mentioned in the previous points, Sidewalk Labs failed to make de-identification of personal data as a mandatory process. They viewed doing such action as a bonus only, but not regarded as an essential part of the project.
6. Failure to be user-centric in general: Above all, the goal of the design prototype is to keep the interest of the public in Toronto uppermost. However, Sidewalk Labs failed to do so even after their consultation with Dr. Cavoukian.
photo source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Seven-fundamental-principles-of-privacy-by-design-35_fig2_339790418
With the increasing concerns, Sidewalk Labs believed that an independent governing body, Civic Data Trust, should be formed to control urban data in Quayside (Dawson, 2018). This government trust would be responsible for managing the data and maintain a public registry, which requests the explanation of data collection reason and how it is beneficial back to the community. However, the question lied upon the formation of Civic Data Trust’s committee. How can we ensure the fairness of the management? Those entrusted would be given a huge authority to manage public data. How can we ensure they are not granting access on bias/preferred individuals?
In addition, according to Dawson (2018), “Urban data is different from data created when individuals agree to provide information through a website, mobile phone, or paper document”. While data needs consent before collection, “urban data” is regarded as public asset. Simply when you are driving in downtown Toronto, your driver plate is captured by surveillance, which would be considered as “urban data”. You have no control over any of this asset being captured. The misuse of “urban data” by government authority could be possible because they would be the one who have control over the “urban data” which supposed to be your own personal data. This goes against Dr. Cavoukian’s principle of visibility and transparency.
In the middle of this controversy, George Brown College partnered with Sidewalk Labs to sign a “letter of intent” on the collaboration of future projects related to smart city (Smith, 2019). On a positive note, this collaboration would be beneficial to building community, enhancing innovation, and providing unique learning experience for the GBC students if it is constructed under Dr. Cavoukian’s Principles of Design. I can imagine the potential of GBC students and staffs locating in the hub of technology with endless possibilities, especially students with co-op can benefit from this opportunity. However, there was mistrust towards Sidewalk Labs in the initial stage. Even myself as a GBC student, there would be some hesitation to associate with the controversial company. If this collaboration had taken place, GBC would have to risk its long-established reputation among fierce criticism.
photo source: https://www.scmp.com/yp/discover/news/hong-kong/article/3066072/hong-kong-protests-what-are-smart-lamp-posts-and-what
Sidewalk Labs ultimately decided to walk away from the plan and claimed that it was due to COVID and economic uncertainty. But is it the sole reason for its failure? I doubt that. The other critical factors driving the collapse of this project are mistrust from the public and low transparency (Berger, 2020). The use of technology and innovation, such as AI analysis, is great to promise safety and convenience. However, it also imposes privacy concerns among the citizens. I am not a conspiracy advocate but coming from a city, Hong Kong, where citizens are under the surveillance cameras of the watchful eye of the “Big Brother”, the citizen lose faith in it because the authority make use of identifiable data for political use. Like Dr. Cavoukian mentioned before, we would like to create a “Smart City of Privacy”, but not a “City of Surveillance” like Dubai or China. Privacy forms the foundation of our freedom. We need more transparency of data access and regain trust from the public for it to succeed.
Reference:
Berger, B. (2020). Sidewalk Labs’ Failure and the Future of Smart Cities. Triple Pundit. Retrieved from https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2020/sidewalk-labs-failure-smart-cities/120616.
Canon, G. (2018). 'City of surveillance': privacy expert quits Toronto's smart-city project. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/23/toronto-smart-city-surveillance-ann-cavoukian-resigns-privacy.
Cavoukian, A. (2009). Privacy by design: The 7 foundational principles. Information and privacy commissioner of Ontario, Canada, 5, 2009.
Cecco, L. (2020). Google affiliate Sidewalk Labs abruptly abandons Toronto smart city project. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/07/google-sidewalk-labs-toronto-smart-city-abandoned.
Dawson, A. H. (2018). An Update on Data Governance for Sidewalk Toronto. Retrieved from Sidewalk Talk: https://medium.com/sidewalk-talk/an-update-on-data-governance-for-sidewalk-toronto-d810245f10f7.
Smith, B. (2019). Sidewalk Labs signs letter of intent to collaborate with George Brown College. IT World Canada. Retrieved from https://www.itworldcanada.com/article/sidewalk-labs-signs-letter-of-intent-to-collaborate-with-george-brown-college/424542.
Wong, N. (2018). Sidewalk Labs urged to scrub 'treasure trove' of personal details from its Toronto smart city. Financial Post. Retrieved from https://financialpost.com/technology/google-urged-to-scrub-personal-details-from-toronto-digital-city
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