Sidewalk Labs is the Google/Alphabet division that did a deal with the City of Toronto to turn part of the downtown into a private surveillance-city where people who opted out of data-collection would be punished for their privacy choices.
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From the start, the company acted in deceptive and disreputable ways, and suffered waves of resignations of its high-profile privacy board and denunciations from the indigenous leaders it consulted with (and then roundly ignored).
pluralistic.net/2020/02/27/plu…
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pluralistic.net/2020/02/27/plu…
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It became increasingly clear that even if "smart cities" were a good idea, Sidewalk Labs wasn't. The company became a lightning rod for criticism, but the city kept greenlighting new phases of the project.
Now, the project is dead.
theglobeandmail.com/business/techn…
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Now, the project is dead.
theglobeandmail.com/business/techn…
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CEO Dan Doctoroff (no relation) attributed the cancellation to a collapse of the financial case for building it, which is just another example of why your city's key infrastructure should not be built and operated by private firms - they'll always leave you in the lurch.
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Imagine if Sidewalk had walked away from the project AFTER it was built, spitefully bricking the city on its way out the door.
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