Thread by @doctorow

Google is planning to turn a vast swathe of Toronto into a high-tech "smart city" through its Sidewalk Labs division. They've been incredibly misleading and opaque about their plans, and yet the city keeps greenlighting through successive phases.

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The latest phase is the publication of the Digital Strategy Advisory Panel's report, a wide-ranging critical report from technologists and tech experts on Google's plan to instrument the city and extract its data.

quaysideto.ca/wp-content/upl…

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It's pretty sharp stuff. @mgeist's introductory letter gives a taste of things.

quaysideto.ca/blog/dsap-rele…

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But far more pointed is @AndrewClement's Appendix D, a kind of minority report that makes it abundantly clear that Google has totally disqualified itself from this project.

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Question One: Does Sidewalk have a strong track record as an urban innovator appropriate for Toronto?

Short answer: No

(Sidewalk lied, omitted other projects that were terrible, and literally followed a grifter's playbook called "BOLD")

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Question Two: Can Sidewalk Labs’ core claims be relied on?

Sidewalk "consulted" with 21,000 Torontonians, but it hasn't shown that it's willing to take any of that consultation advice to heart ("corporate self-defense").

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Sidewalk claims it's not "tech for tech's sake," but the whole plan reeks of it.

Sidewalk claimed it's not about extracting data, but the plan is totally about extracting data.

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Question Three: What does experience with Sidewalk to date in this project indicate about its reliability as a partner? In particular, has Sidewalk respected its contracts and other commitments?

Nope. For example, it held its expert panel to NDAs after promising it wouldn't.

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Question Four: Can Sidewalk be treated as independent of its parent Alphabet/Google and its wider enterprise?

Obviously not! "In business strategy, financing & overall managerial control, there are clear indications that Sidewalk is unlikely to diverge from Alphabet/Google."

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"Nearly all Alphabet revenues are earned by Google and they have the same CEO, Sundar Pichai, and same CFO, Ruth Porat"

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Question Five: What are the risks of partnering with an Alphabet enterprise?

"It has been fined a combined $9.5 billion since 2017 by EU antitrust regulators while facing further significant government investigations for its anti-competitive behaviour."

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"It will be challenging to make a positive determination absent public evidence of a thorough, independent risk-benefit analysis of the prospective partnership or other contractual relationship."

/eof