My name is Ann Cavoukian, and I resigned in protest
from the Sidewalk Labs 'smart city' project.
Ann Cavoukian is the former privacy commissioner of Ontario.
She was hired by Sidewalk Labs to develop a privacy framework
for their 'smart city' project on Toronto's Waterfront.
Sidewalk Labs is an Alphabet company
and they are creating 'smart cities'
and they bid on the 'smart city' that was
being proposed in Toronto
and they succeeded at that.
So when they approached me
they approached me because they said
they wanted me to embed 'privacy by design'
into the 'smart city' they wanted to create for Toronto.
There was going to be tech everywhere, 24/7
sensors and
cameras and
everything to capture all the activities in the 'smart city'
in the city that was taking place, so that they could
help you get from point A to point B and get you information.
But you can imagine
if you have all these sensors and this tech on 24/7
it's going to collect a lot of personal information
which the citizens aren't going to want.
So I wanted to embed 'privacy by design' into the whole 'smart city'
in order to prevent the privacy harms from arising.
Ann presented Sidewalk Labs with a list of recommendations
to ensure privacy as a foundation for the proposal.
So my main suggestion after I studied this for a while
was
we had to embed privacy into everything.
We had to de-identify data at source.
And what I meant was
whenever the camera or the sensor or whatever tech picks up some
occurence
people driving, people walking on the street, whatever
whenever it picks up any data, the minute it picks up the data
you strip it of all personal identifiers.
You strip it of the licence plate numbers on the cars, etc.
so that you will still have a massive amount of data
but none of it will be privacy invasive because there won't be any
personally identifiable data associated with it.
No personal identifiers.
See, that's what privacy is all about. You can have a ton of data.
If it's not linked to personal identifiers
that can be associated with an individual
then you have data, but there's no privacy risk.
So that's why I insisted upon all data being collected
being de-identified at source.
And it was great. Sidewalk Labs went along with that at the beginning.
But Sidewalk Labs would be the only entity to have control over the data
a fact that didn't sit well with some privacy experts and civic leaders
who criticized their plans.
So in response to this
Sidewalk Labs decides to create an urban data trust
which will consist of all of the parties involved
in creating the 'smart city.'
Not just Sidewalk Labs, but Waterfront Toronto
the provincial government, federal government
and all of the companies
who are going to be delivering the tech
the IT companies, etc., to pull this together.
That would have been fine, but when they announced it
at a board meeting, they said:
'And of course, we will encourage all the companies
to de-identify data at source
but we have no control over what they do.'
In effect, we can't make them do that.
And the minute they said that, I knew that it was over
because once you say it's voluntary, it's not going to happen.
Everyone wants personally identifiable data.
And that's what was so upsetting to me
that
they, on their own, decided to do this
knowing how upsetting it would be to me and that
in my view, privacy would go down the drain.
So
I couldn't tolerate that.
The next morning, I resigned.
The project pressed forward
but continued to face concerns from citizens and city officials.
Then in May 2020, in the midst of the pandemic
Sidewalk Labs abandoned development of the 'smart city.'
Well, you know, it was part of the COVID world, and they said:
'We just don't think this is going to proceed. Everything has changed.'
It was nonsense.
They just didn't know how they were going to do this
in a way that protected privacy and delivered services.
And remember, Waterfront Toronto was the body that
was running all of this.
And all of a sudden Waterfront Toronto is saying:
'No, no, we're with Ann Cavoukian on this.
You must de-identify data at source.'
And they're saying:
'How are we going to do that with these companies?'
I think it just became such a mess for them
that they felt it was easier just to back out.
'Smart cities' will eventually be built in Canada
but Ann urges us to decide carefully if we want
a city of surveillance or a city of privacy.
I'm on the international council of 'smart cities,' and I could tell you
all of the 'smart cities' coming out in the Far East, Dubai, etc.
they're all smart cities of surveillance.
They know exactly what you're doing, where you're going, and
it would be a nightmare for me to live in a city like that.
And one of the things I had said to Sidewalk Labs early on is
let's develop a model: smart city of privacy
that we can then offer to others.
Bill Gates wants to build a 'smart city' in Florida.
We can approach him and say, 'Look.
We've got the perfect model for this, and it protects privacy.
It's a total win-win.'
I think we can still do that.
We have to
insist upon privacy being embedded into the 'smart cities.'
Otherwise it will be a 'smart city' of surveillance
and everything you do, all of your activities
will be tracked, surveilled
the data exchanged with third parties unknown
that you haven't consented to.
Nightmare.
We want to live in freedom.
Privacy forms the foundation of our freedom.
We have to do this. We can do this.
We just need the will to do it.