Toronto’s Smart City Project Not Privacy Friendly: Last year, Canada made headlines with its newest tech-based project. Toronto’s Smart City was proposed as the end-all smart solution to the every-day difficulties of city inhabitants. But, new developments show that privacy might not be as protected as once advertised. Read on to get the full story.
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Toronto’s Smart City Project Not Privacy Friendly
The new Smart City scheme in one of Toronto’s districts called Quayside. In collaboration with Google’s sister company, Sidewalk Labs, the purpose was to build such a city that is dependent on tech in the real world to help resolve its resident’s problems.
Unmistakably, this did not go down so fine with various people. Privacy concerns were at the vanguard of the discussion from the get-go. New developments with the team of Sidewalk Labs have brought data regulation and collection concern back on the table.
Last week, Dr. Ann Cavoukian, a Privacy specialist operating with Sidewalk Labs as a consultant, formally resigned from her post in the organization. She tied her resignation to the inability of the organization to deliver on the privacy measures developed for the Smart City. In an interview with Global News; she proposed concerns over the implementation of privacy-friendly regulations:
“Sidewalk said while they would commit to doing it [abiding by the regulations], the other parties involved in these new entities they’ve created…they couldn’t make them do it […] I have to resign because [Sidewalk Labs] committed to embedding privacy by design into every aspect of [the] operation.”
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Moreover, Dr. Cavoukian is not the only member of the team that lately resigned over the privacy concerns. One more member of the project’s digital strategy advisory panel, Saadia Muzaffar, also resigned over the company’s lack concerns privacy issues raised by teammates. According to Muzaffar:
“The most recent roundtable in August displayed a blatant disregard for resident concerns about data and digital infrastructure.”
What’s So Troubling About Smart Cities?
The concept of Smart City is based on collecting citizen’s data to make new tech-based solutions for their daily problems. The range of this data, though, is alarming. Toronto’s Smart City, for instance, will have cameras, high-tech sensors, and other monitoring mechanisms in physical locations everywhere in the district. This implies that residents of Quayside will have to face both online and offline monitoring. To date, there is no means to handle such large amounts of data while preserving the privacy of the users.
Privacy International says, Smart Cities may look “good on paper,” but they are nothing more than an “increasingly surveilled space.” In fact, many experts already say that Smart Cities are the death of privacy.
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Conclusion -Toronto’s Smart City Project Not Privacy Friendly
So, what’s your take on Toronto’s Smart City? Would you like to live in a district that runs on collecting any bit of data it can on you? Personally, I think that we should be trying to fix the privacy concerns we have online before we shift the problem to our physical lives. As important as technology and progress are; we need to start valuing the people whose problems the tech is supposed to fix more. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
