Sidewalk Labs says its 'smart' neighbourhood will respect your privacy but proof is in the details

Sidewalk Labs which has proposed the construction of an ambitious, technology-driven neighbourhood on Toronto's eastern waterfront held its second public roundtable on Thursday night. It was an opportunity, in part, to address concerns about data and privacy.

But the company, which is owned by Google's parent company Alphabet and bills itself as an "urban innovation organization,"still offered little in the way of specifics about what exactly it has planned, and thosedetails are not expected until summer at the earliest.

Sidewalk Labs has partnered withWaterfront Toronto, a government agency,on a smart-cities project along theeastern waterfront of Lake Ontario in Toronto's downtown. The project, dubbed Quayside,will transforma12-acre parcel of L-shaped landinto atest bed for smart city technology one that could include everything from intelligent traffic camerasto garbage cans and recycling bins that keep track of when and how often they're used.

But questions about privacy have emerged. Chief among them are concerns aboutthe extent of the data that will be collected, whom it might be shared with, whether the data will be stored in Canadaand the possibility that evenanonymizeddata could still be linked back to individuals.

Commitment to protect privacy but few details

Thursday night, Sidewalk Labs offered little in the way of answers to those concerns, only abstract commitments to collectonly as much data as is necessary and to putpeople's rights and needsfirst in principle.

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Representatives from the New York-based companyacknowledged frustrations with the lack of detail.

Halfway through a year-long consultation period, the company insistsit is on track, and that a lack of specifics is to be expected at this stage. Because no other smart cities exist on the scale that Sidewalk Labs has imagined, the companysays it's still figuring things out and taking the time to get things right.

Alyssa Harvey Dawson, the company's legal counsel, told the crowd that the lack of specifics about how exactly the company will protect residents' privacy was "not because we don't care, but because we care so much."

Sidewalk Labs will present its final plan to the city by the end of the year and the company says that citizens will get more specifics before then.

'Meaningful consent' and no data sold to advertisers

In the mean time, the company has taken a number of recent steps that suggest it is trying to take privacy concerns seriously. A third-partygroup will be advising the company on data use though itwill only offer recommendations that won't be binding.

And earlier this week, the company released its "Responsible Data Use Policy Framework" not the policy itself, but an outline of principles and commitments that the company says will inform the policy's eventual creation, which will evolve over time.

"One of the challenges that collectively we face in this process is thinking about privacy and responsible data use in the abstract," Micah Lasher, the company's head of policy and communications, told CBC News.

"It's very hard to come up with policies that govern a project as complicated as this without concrete examples of how they would apply."

The documentcontains a list broad principles that few wouldtake issue with such as how Sidewalk Labs will seek "meaningful consent" before itcollects personal information;will be as transparent as possible about how data will be used;and won't sell personal information to third parties or make it available for advertising purposes (what will happen to non-personally identifiable information is less clear).

But while it is usefulto have suchcommitments written out, they say nothing about Sidewalk Labs' actual plans for Quayside the specific site to which these principles will have to be applied.

Thursday's meeting could have been a chance to explore the applications of these principles further. Instead, the company merely reiterated the policy framework ithad alreadyreleasedbefore turningthe floor over to the audience for questions.

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Rit Aggarwala, the company's head of urban systems, deflected when asked about how the company plans to make money off the neighbourhood.

"It's so early days we haven't really thought about the specifics of the business model yet," Aggarwala told the audience during the second of two Q&A sessions.

Ditto for how the company plans to handle the sharing of data with police and government agencies. Lasher, the company's policy head, couldn't say one way or another whether the company has met with Toronto police to discuss how they might benefit from the data collected in the Quayside project.

"We have lots of people that are engaged with lots of different government agencies," Lasher said. "I couldn't tell you offhand."

Specifics still to come

Without specifics, it's difficult for citizensbut also advocacy groups, lawyers, academicsand journalists to meaningfully consider how the principles Sidewalk Labs laid out Thursday are applied in practice.

Sidewalk Labs says that citizens will hear more about its plans before the public consultation process is through and before a final plan is delivered to the city towardthe end of the year. But there is a legitimate concern that mere weeks or months may not be enough time for citizens to engage with what is being proposed and, importantly, for Sidewalk Labs to take feedback into account.

Facebook's recent troublesaround data privacy provide a timely, cautionary tale of the potential disconnect between principle and practice. Facebookhas long painted itself as a benevolent company that, like Sidewalk Labs, puts the privacy ofuserdata first and yet the Cambridge Analytica scandal undermined that image.

Similarly, Facebook's mission to help its users forge more meaningful connections seems to be contradicted by some of the activities the platform has facilitated. The socialplatform has been used to spread hateful messages that some say have helpedfuelviolence against RohingyaMuslims in Myanmar.

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That and other examples illustratewhy it's difficult to have discussions about the impactof a product let alone a neighbourhood on principles alone.

Facebook's principles even if envisioned with the best of intentions have frequently been at odds with how Facebook hasfunctioned in practice.

"We didn't take a broad enough view of what our responsibility is, and that was a huge mistake," Zuckerberghas said in response to criticism.

And in the absence of more information fromSidewalk Labs, it's difficult to say whether it'staken a broadenough view of its responsibility, either.