
Google’s smart city dream is turning into a privacy nightmare - new_guy
https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/26/sidewalk-labs-ann-cavoukian-smart-city/
======
bsimpson
If you cut out the editorializing and just focus on the example presented, it
seems totally reasonable:

1\. As a private company, they don't believe they should be responsible with
setting public policy. They want a separate board to be set up for that.

2\. By default, everything should be private.

3\. They're proposing that if an applicant has a compelling reason to access
raw data, they need to have it approved by the governing board, and raw data
is automatically destroyed after a short interval.

They gave the example of video feeds, which are both common in public spaces
and are not anonymous (even if you blur faces). If they're being thoughtful
and responsible, they need some mechanism to handle desirable exceptions. This
sounds like a proposal to do so.

In the article, the person who resigned is presented as a respected expert on
the subject. Maybe that person has more context that didn't make it into the
article. But the facts presented - "group designing public space is proposing
policy to handle aspects that can't easily be made anonymous" \- don't warrant
the clickbait title or the editorialization.

Sounds like Sidewalk is doing it's diligence - thinking about the things a
group designing a "city of the future" _should_ be thinking about.

~~~
wpdev_63
The problem with #3 is that they _already_ doing that with the fisa courts and
it's a shit show. In our current system, they rubber stamp every warrant that
is presented to the court with no oversight[0].

[0]:[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/president-obama-
called...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/president-obama-called-fisa-
court-transparent-despite-it-being-shrouded-secrecy)

~~~
aroberge
Toronto, the city mentioned in the article, is in Canada. "Fisa courts" are a
U.S. entity which has nothing to do with what is being done in Canada.

~~~
travelbuffoon
Until the data gets sent to US servers.

~~~
amphibian87
^This. "5 eyes" Canada, US, UK, NZ, and AUS

~~~
8note
and so even if the fisa courts said no, the data would still arrive

------
9712263
To be honest, I don't quite understand what smart city even means. This term
is so board and include so much different aspect of life that I am not sure
what it includes. It is a cool marketing term, but does not explain too much
what is happening.

So, I have read some of the use cases. One of them is putting a sensor in a
garbage bin, so that the sensor could take picture of the garbage and
determine where they should go. I don't think this is smart. Japan has already
been very efficient on garbage collection, because Japanese people just
separate different type of garbage themselves, and fine people who don't. A
policy could just fix this in a cost effective way, not some sensor. But the
spirit here is placing a camera to see what it could do.

Some other project like improving the accuracy of water meter to detect water
usage and pinpoint leaks. They admit it already exists, and only improvement
is required.

I could conclude that it is a debate about who could put an IoT or sensor in
the public area. Google just wants to place those IoT in the city to see what
they could do with it. Basically a web crawler in physical world. The
government may also want to create a hype so that people would approve
infrastructure funding to improve existing infrastructure people don't think
it's that smart.

Am I missing something here?

~~~
gotocake
I just assumed it would be a more Orwellian version of the old “Company
Towns.” In addition it would be a big laboratory to test what people will
accept and how much personal information can be gleaned from those sensors and
related analysis.

------
userbinator
To me, the word "smart" applied to anything but a human has now gained a
negative connotation: "it's smarter than _you_ and can work _against_ you."
Plenty of dystopian science fiction to support that view too, but scary that
now it's actually becoming reality.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I think there's two ways things can be smart without being invasive. Either it
can be smart, but not personalized, such as monitoring general traffic flow
and making changes to accommodate (some express lanes on highways, for
example, switch direction based on the time of day), or it can be
personalized, but private to you. Most smarthome devices wouldn't be a problem
if they remained entirely onsite in your possession. Obviously the former is a
way a city could be smart, but the latter is really not.

I want a smart city to shut off lights that aren't illuminating anything or to
optimize trash collection routes based on efficiency. I don't want a smart
city watching where I, personally, go and suggesting I do things based on
that.

~~~
userbinator
_some express lanes on highways, for example, switch direction based on the
time of day_

 _shut off lights that aren 't illuminating anything_

These are examples of existing technology which most people don't consider
"smart" \--- the word is reserved more for the new technologies that also
contain pervasive data collection.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
You could automate these sorts of processes using data collected live, just in
aggregate. Rather than say, a simple light sensor on a street lamp, you could
note where cars are on the road, and illuminate a series of them ahead of any
given vehicle so they can see in front them. Or a road could dynamically
reconfigure itself based on traffic flow, rearrange lanes around accidents,
etc. These are processes that would require data collection, processing, and
automated control of a equipment along the road.

My point isn't in the specific examples but that there are smart, computerized
features that absolutely could be built that may improve lives or create
efficiency that don't involve personal profiling.

------
tensor
It's curious that there hasn't been any backlash against non-tech companies
for this stuff. E.g. something like airmiles, where your entire purchase
history is sent to advertisers. No one gets up in arms, despite how sensitive
that data is.

That's not to say people shouldn't be concerned with their privacy, but it's a
weird double standard.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
The problem is that if airlines ever takes away your airmiles points because
your bought a leonardo di caprio fake poster from aliexpress I wouldn't miss
them at all. I would just delete their email and move on.

The issue with Google is that they can ban you from all their services for
"trying to act oversmart". I know startups that had their whole
gmail/drive/docs suspended and everything purged because one of their dev had
a banned account. My colleague had his google account banned because he resold
the pixel ([http://fortune.com/2016/11/17/google-pixel-
ban/](http://fortune.com/2016/11/17/google-pixel-ban/))

I had one account banned because they did not allow paypal after they launched
google wallet. And they banned a second account for being "related to first
account"

Because google does not have customer support for gmail/drive they run amok
with the ban hammer. If you don't mind being suspended for all google accounts
for absurd reasons then yes you are right, this is a non-issue.

------
rubatuga
I don’t think it’s possible for a private company to have the public’s
interest at heart, at least in the long term. Especially for Google, who have
shown a lack of respect and privacy for its users.

~~~
vageli
> I don’t think it’s possible for a private company to have the public’s
> interest at heart, at least in the long term. Especially for Google, who
> have shown a lack of respect and privacy for its users.

While I agree in general with this sentiment, do you think non-profit
corporations are in the same boat? Or something like the FDIC?

~~~
prolikewh0a
>do you think non-profit corporations are in the same boat?

There are really bad non-profits, I've worked at them. However, endless search
for endless profit by shareholders, CEO's, and executives is usually the cause
of a loss of morals and ethics. I think it's nearly impossible for very large
corporations making profits to do actual good for society except give us
endless growth with products and services we really don't need. This doesn't
mean a small local bakery taking in profits isn't doing the community good,
but extremely large corporations don't benefit the same way.

~~~
briandear
[https://www.npr.org/2014/10/29/359365276/on-superstorm-
sandy...](https://www.npr.org/2014/10/29/359365276/on-superstorm-sandy-
anniversary-red-cross-under-scrutiny)

The Red Cross is worse than many for profits. If a for-profit doesn’t deliver
the goods, they don’t get paid: they are incentivized to do what their
customers want. The Red Cross is incentivized to bring in donations even at
the expense of their stated purpose. Look at the salary of the Red Cross CEO —
a salary paid by tax deductible donations. Look at the corrupt nonsense
engaged in by many universities. To suggest non-profits have any better or
worse ethics than for profits is a vast over simplification. The Clinton
Foundation even paid for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding as well as private jet
transport by principles. Even Greenpeace’s leader was commuting by airplane.

~~~
drb91
Well, it’s actually quite easy: if you care about profit, your morals are
necessarily compromised. You are right that non-profits have other incentives
as well, but expecting a for profit organization to have morals is inherently
going to disappoint your expectation every time.

------
MrTonyD
I'm pretty much convinced that the greatest threat to true freedom is
pervasive monitoring. It is impossible to resist any powerful force when they
know everything you say and do. They can simply undermine any activity. I
realized this when my buddies were telling me about their work on facial
recognition for WalMart stores. And then read about how WalMart finds reasons
to fire everybody who had contact with union organizers. That is just the tip
of the iceburg, as the powerful will get better and better at both monitoring
and control - without our awareness that we are being controlled.

~~~
brokenmachine
Also the studies on how pervasive monitoring causes self-censorship. Probably
everyone here has had the experience where they've typed out a comment, then
thought about whether they want that on their "permanent record", then decided
not to post. It's insidious.

------
stochastic_monk
The whole point of these devices is data harvesting. The Times op-ed last
September titled These Are Not The Robots We Were Promised [0] covers the
discrepancy between our expectations of personal assistants and the reality
they came to be.

[0]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/09/opinion/sunday/household-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/09/opinion/sunday/household-
robots-alexa-homepod.html)

~~~
briandear
“These devices..”

Except HomePod. Alexa and Google Home harvest data; HomePod does not. The
purpose of HomePod is to sell HomePod, other Apple devices and subscriptions
to Apple Music. The purpose of Alexa and Google Home is to learn about you in
order to sell or exploit that information.

It’s a critical difference. People complain about how Siri isn’t as good as
XYZ, yet simultaneously complain about the privacy implications of the “good”
assistants.

------
qwerty456127
Any "smart city" is going to turn into a privacy nightmare as soon as it goes
beyond the depersonalized level. I.e. it should analyze traffic patterns and
optimize traffic lights but should never know who exactly is and is going
where. Personalized features should not be offered even on voluntary opt-in
basis as this will make the people who don't opt-in a target for prejudice.

------
Tsubasachan
Google isn't really evil, they just do what they can get away with. In the
European Union that isn't a whole lot. In the US there are no limitations. And
god only knows what China will allow.

~~~
kevingadd
"doing whatever they can get away with" feels like a pretty reasonable
definition for at least one type of evil in my book.

~~~
brokenmachine
law-abiding evil.

------
prolikewh0a
People go to work in what are essentially private authoritarian governments,
now they want to fully live under one too? This reads like an Orwell book. The
fact that such a major privacy issue is arising so soon should doom the
project for good.

~~~
kazen44
Also, the fact that people blindly accept that companies somehow still have to
work like authotarian goverments from old ages is mind boggling.

Especially in the US, there is a massive lack of employee discourse inside the
company.

~~~
prolikewh0a
When you have almost 80% of the population living paycheck to paycheck [1]
with practically nobody in that percentage with a significant savings [2], and
workplace laws where you can be fired for literally anything, you can easily
stifle workplace unionization efforts and discourse. People literally cannot
afford to do anything that would benefit them.

This article is about Canada, but it's really becoming a worldwide issue.

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-
paycheck...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck-to-
paycheck.html)

[2] [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/18/few-americans-have-enough-
sa...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/18/few-americans-have-enough-savings-to-
cover-a-1000-emergency.html)

~~~
kazen44
It also seems like a cultural issue to me. Americans seem so opposed to the
idea of labour unions and workplace councils, because it somehow "hurts
companies"?

it is probably for historical reasons of the cold war, but fascinating
nonetheless.

~~~
prolikewh0a
It's definitely somewhat anti-left sentiments built into our culture/society
through means such as mccarthyism and anti-communism, as well as purposeful
lack of education. It's also our media and entertainment. These tactics can be
further learned about in Chomsky's 'Manufacturing Consent'.

------
Spooky23
“Smart” stuff is great, but really requires third party governance and
regulation.

It’s possible, just based on what you can buy for commercial smart building
systems. But it adds cost as you cannot sell devices at a loss and farm
revenue based on selling data.

------
mindcrash
So it's pretty safe to say this vid from The Onion made a few years ago has
become reality.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY)

What a time to be alive.

~~~
pdkl95
The Onion was also prescient about the end game for surveillance based
companies:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o)

(this video is especially interesting in light of Google's recent involvement
in Chinese censorship)

~~~
mindcrash
Holy shit, thats a good one aswell. Bookmarked. Thanks!

------
lamlam
Here's an interesting discussion involving many of the players directly
involved in the project. Ann Cavoukian from the Engadget article is on this.

[https://youtu.be/-2C2_ulRrXE](https://youtu.be/-2C2_ulRrXE)

Actually, what's really interesting is to compare her outlook from earlier
this year [https://youtu.be/oEyBjYNgaMY](https://youtu.be/oEyBjYNgaMY)

------
WalterBright
> An independent trust, the team argues, would be better equipped to make
> these decisions -- even if they allow other companies to collect personally
> identifiable data.

Why should anyone trust an "independent trust"? That trust will be staffed by
humans, subject to all human failings and conflicts of interest.

------
Tempest1981
Don't many cities already have govt cameras with no anonymous-ization? Traffic
cameras feed into CalTrans in California.

For cameras in public places, the video shouldn't be used for profit. But
should the police have access to the raw footage? Amber alerts? Terrorism?

------
jiveturkey
turning into? it was doomed from the start. this kind of issue was completely
predictable.

------
Havoc
A google led smart city project and they were expecting privacy by design?

Either very naive or very stupid...

------
orcs
I read the title and immediately thought: 'duh!'

------
funkythings
Wow, what a surprise with a privacy focused company like Google.

------
mtgx
Turning into? That's assuming Google didn't intend it to be that _by design_.

------
onetimemanytime
That's what Google does. They're spending money trying to find the next
thing...their interests do not align yours.

