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Canada Group Sues Government over Google's Sidewalk Labs

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117 pointscolinprince65 comments

I've long become aware of the fact that everything promoted with the adjective "smart" is usually somehow dystopian, because it usually acts in the interest of someone else. In other words, we should really have more things which are "dumb" enough that we can control them, not things which are so "smart" that we can't.

For me it's the difference between connected smart and autonomously smart.

An example might be something like Google Glass and how augmented reality is being considered as a product offering. All of the scenarios are along the lines of "And you will be able to spot your Uber from a distance whilst getting discreet notifications from your contacts" which are inherently all connected services, offering data enrichment to third parties with a side effect of some convenience to you.

Compared to an augmented reality story that if it were fully autonomous and independent would require an abundance of sensors and near real-time processing such that it could do things like edge highlight for the sight impaired, colour correction for those impairments, or as enhancements of human capabilities like being able to see in parts of the spectrum not visible to the human eye.

The obsession with connected and data is leading to the Futurama episode where they connect to the internet and fight through adverts and it is firmly dystopian, whereas autonomy could lead us towards Geordi La Forge's visor.

And I'm already thinking how in the UK the Hive API went down a few weeks ago and resulted in no-one being able to adjust their thermostat.

I think in the same line of logic we have to recognize that maybe we can do without some smart things, and we should seriously evaluate / question if they really provide much actual value. It can seem like there is value there, but the end result might be far different than we think.

In Minnesota red light cameras and such automated ticketing systems were determined to be illegal (for the state):

https://www.thenewspaper.com/news/16/1688.asp

The result? Minnesota isn't experiencing some sort of Mad Max like traffic apocalypses, things seem pretty normal and I don't know of any dramatic disparity between places that use such cameras and those who do not. Meanwhile corruption and other issues cloud the traffic camera world... it's a product that arguably encourages / benefits bad actors, and possibly nobody else despite what we might otherwise think it does.

Sometimes despite what we might want, we just don't need smart stuff and using it just allows for bad actors and little else. There's lots of talk about home smart speakers but then on HN we see all sorts of discussions of people who bought them and admit, they really don't get a great deal of utility from them... so perhaps we've just paid for a product that actually provides google or amazon more utility than we ever get...

As Frank Herbert said:

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

In Dune the result was that mankind eventually did away with "thinking machines" as it was clear the risk was greater than the reward.

>In Minnesota red light cameras and such automated ticketing systems were determined to be illegal (for the state):

>The result? Minnesota isn't experiencing some sort of Mad Max like traffic apocalypses, things seem pretty normal and I don't know of any dramatic disparity between places that use such cameras and those who do not. Meanwhile corruption and other issues cloud the traffic camera world... it's a product that arguably encourages / benefits bad actors, and possibly nobody else despite what we might otherwise think it does.

There are so many areas of law and law enforcement that are like this. Turns out if you just let people do whatever most people will do what society considers reasonable because at scale what people do determines what society considers reasonable.

Don't want to get into a political debate, but this is a lot of the principles of modern anarchism (sometimes called "AnCom"). I am unsure of the feasability of such a society, but it is interesting to read about theories and ideas if anyone wants to learn more.

The history of law enforcement certainly seems to be a long line of misguided actions with results we might not expect / incentives that are not good.

> There are so many areas of law and law enforcement that are like this. Turns out if you just let people do whatever most people will do what society considers reasonable because at scale what people do determines what society considers reasonable.

This is part of the core argument for libertarianism - and has been my experience in life. Generally every time I head someone should "there ought to be a law against that" there probably shouldn't be one without considerable thought on the matter.

> and we should seriously evaluate / question if they really provide much actual value. It can seem like there is value there, but the end result might be far different than we think.

Also, who is getting the value. With many public-private "partnerships" like this, it doesn't seem like the general public is getting value out of it; rather, it's the parties involved in making the business deal. The government can be wined-and-dined with sales pitches, and then pat themselves on the back for "making the public safer". The companies get a lucrative deal from the government.

Smart things, like these cameras, gives the companies that operate them a blackbox to work with that impacts the public but is not accessible to the public. So now, a company that has a vested interest in themselves, has the government go-ahead to cast a net to make money from the public. What a great deal, right?

Even if companies and government promise they won't do anything malicious or unjust, how can we actually trust their word when the ability for a company to skew things in their favor is such a low barrier?

If I ask a valet, "You won't joyride my car?", and they say, "No", how much of a guarantee is it that they won't joyride? Maybe they don't do anything obvious that would throw off a red flag, like significantly deplete the fuel or run up the odometer, but they decide to redline the car to hear it VROOM or drag race it in a short stretch of a street. These little 'nothings' add up over time, or at least give the incentives to get bigger and bolder over time if nobody notices.

Who is to say a company with smart things, like these cameras, wouldn't decrease the capture time by a few milliseconds on their highest revenue intersection, or release an "erroneous update" that lowers the red light capture tolerances?

It's better to be less trusting of these "smart" business dealings than to openly invite the possibility for abuse right through the door.

I was just sitting at an intersection last night. A fire truck came by with sirens and two vehicles had to move slightly into the lane to get out of the way.

The camera flashed for both of their cars. Nice way to get punished for helping.

That assumes your interests are non-aligned with the people who create the tech. In most situations where you are voluntarily choosing to pay money for a product, your interests are aligned, because you will stop choosing to pay money if you feel your interests have been harmed.

For some values of voluntary. You need to take into account marketing and other dishonest business practices perverting the transaction, and the fact that the market offers you a pretty binary choice: either accept the benefit with all the garbage, or don't have it at all. The alignment of interests is minimized to be just above the point below which people wouldn't buy.

I agree, we should be spending money with companies that have aligned their interests with ours, and refraining from spending money with companies that haven't aligned with our interests.

However, there's a problem with free services. Internet was largely free in the past and now it's still largely free - but now users are the product themselves. Interests are no longer aligned.

People happily pay premium prices for apple products, and they're interests are clearly not aligned. For instance, apple fights against the right to repair. I think this extends to a lot of companies.

Apple's consistently fought for privacy, though, and against ads and crapware. That's a good example: because you're paying a premium price for the product, they won't jeopardize those profits through contracts with other parties.

With the right-to-repair, your interests are definitely not aligned - each time you repair an iPhone, that's money you give to someone else that you're not giving to Apple. It's good to be aware of these situations - you'll never avoid all of them - but at least you can predict in which ways companies might try to screw you over and decide if you're okay with that.

The only reliable promise is someone else's self-interest.

It's never that simple unless you're buying something as simple as potatoes or a hammer.

With an iPhone I may find myself aligned on 5 points, and not aligned on 4, so perhaps I buy as being the least worst available. The iPhone, or other brand, with all 9 things I care about may never have been sold, even though technically and commercially feasible.

In the case of phones, no maker seems to care a jot about right to repair any more. So it's not deciding I'm OK being screwed over that way, but a choice of screwed that way or no phone.

The fact that their interests are not perfectly aligned does not mean they are not aligned. Apple is able to fight rights to repair because people love their products so much that they don't care. They have the leverage to be misaligned in one little area, because they are so overwhelmingly aligned everywhere else.

Only problem is, profit margins for hardware are tiny and the company will gladly sell your soul for an extra 1%.

"not aligned" or "unaligned"

non-English speaking down-voters I see ;)

That's the biggest problem of our time in that ownership of tech is being transferred from the user to the corporation in various ways and Google is on the front-line of that... mainly because they built their business on advertising and therefore data mining. That's their forte so everything they do is centered around the objective of data mining. And really Google needs to be slowed down for this reason... and that's only going to happen through government intervention.

One new big trend could wipe out there advantage like it did with microsoft.

Something that's been bugging me, is when did "smart" become an adjective for machines in the first place, and what were the circumstances around this new use of the word? Before "smart phones" and "smart houses" or "smart watches", what devices were termed 'smart'?

As far as I can figure, it started with "smart bomb" in the early 70s. A term which at this point is so normalized we might not think twice about it, but which I suspect of being propaganda. Here is a 1972 NYTs article suggesting that the term is Pentagon propaganda: https://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/26/archives/smart-bombs-and-...

> "To one who has bombed and been bombed, recent Pentagon propaganda about our new “smart” bombs is dumb and repetitious (not to say, indecent)."

"Smart" is about as bullshit as how things are labeled "Green". Anyone could throw those words around as marketing ploys. It's a gimmick.

Of course politicians will be interested in some "smart" solution, because it implies the current way is "dumb", and nobody wants to be "dumb". "Smart" =/= "Better". In various ways, proposed "smart" solutions are actually worse or have new consequences, making them not so smart of decisions in the first place.

This kind of stuff is a new lure companies use to fish for money.

Interesting, Japanese designer Oki Sato also thinks we should have more things that are stupid [1].

[1] https://youtu.be/c3TPbj2_Xjg?t=311

People claiming to represent “the community” in local politics are definitely not acting in my interests, and are usually acting against them. A neighborhood run by a tech company sounds awesome compared to the status quo of governance by people who attend midday public hearings and sue developers as their retirement hobby.

An alternative model like this, at small scale, is a low-risk way to enrich the competitive landscape for places to live.

It's an annoying problem. Imagine how useful something like an alexa will be in 20 years. It might even become a handicap not to have one as a life/work aid. It would be unfortunate if the choice remained between full privacy invasion or massive utility. Then again we all already carry alexas in our pockets.

Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain.

I think this is the official announcement by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association:

https://ccla.org/ccla-commences-proceedings-waterfront-toron...

The gist is this (from Boing Boing's article):

"“You can argue that you consent when you put Alexa in your home or connect your electronics to your online accounts,” Michael Bryant, executive director of the CCLA, told me over the phone. “It’s another thing to say you consent when you walk from one block in Toronto to the next.”"

A whole neighborhood run by Google? That's even more dystonian than many Black Mirror episodes.

I’m genuinely not sure if you intended sarcasm?

It’s not really anything new. Over the last couple hundred years there’s a long history of towns and neighborhoods run by companies.

See:

- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town

- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_village

In the U.S, at least you can argue that the company has some limited responsibility to uphold rights; in a company town, it is generally the case that the company town can not prevent you from expressing yourself by removing you from the place with trespassing statute [0].

As a former Torontonian, I have no faith that the council or the public will prevent abuse by Google until it gets really out of hand.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

>Over the last couple hundred years there’s a long history of towns and neighborhoods run by companies.

And how do the vast majority of those end up? Utopian?

I know that Weed, California was a company town historically. There has been some recent conflict regarding who owns the water in the town, as the company sold the water to the town for a dollar a year for a contract of 50 years that expired in 2016.

Personally, I think Google would be much more competent at designing a good city than the government. Privacy fears are way overblown.

It's popular right now to hate on big US companies, but this project always sounded promising to me, and I really hope they get to finish it. Maybe they would come up with technical innovations that could improve other cities.

> Personally, I think Google would be much more competent at designing a good city than the government.

They couldn't even keep fiber wires in the ground for two years before getting bored and losing their attention span. I don't want to see what they would do with more complicated infrastructure.

I picture one of those Our Incredible Journey-type posts, capped with "and all city utilities and emergency services will be shut down at the end of the month".

Not to mention they failed to lay the fiber competently.

The fact that anybody could say that privacy fears are overblown given what we know today is absolutely surreal.

So what harm have all these privacy invasions caused? Frankly, I think they make me better off.

- Google or YouTube search history helps show me more relevant search results. Ditto for Chrome browser history.

- Google Android's location tracking means I can look back at my timeline and see where I've been on any day. I can see which countries and cities and restaurants I've been to. That's neat, kind of like an automatic diary.

- Facebook keeps track of my likes and interests and shows posts and ads that are more relevant to me. How is that worse than getting generic posts and ads?

The only bad effects I can think of are if Google or Facebook starts leaking all my data, and it being personally identifiable. Luckily, as a profit-seeking company, they have tremendous incentive not to do this (especially with so many privacy obsessed people keeping them honest).

Think bigger-picture. Not only do you have to trust these corporations with your data, but also the data of your family, friends and community. Not only now, but through future changes in political climate, regimes, and cultural shifts. You have to trust every employee who has or has ever had access to that data.

You may not feel that the targetting of political opponents (or, forfend, ethnicities) using such data is likely or realistic, but there is recent historical precedent even in the US.

"The only bad effects I can think of are if Google or Facebook starts leaking all my data, and it being personally identifiable"

What's the worse that could happen in that case, multiplied across your entire community or nation? It does not even have to be personally identifiable to do damage. It could, for instance, correlate your clothing and hair style preferences with likely political affiliation, to start.

Let me know if you find any of this incredible, and I can find sources.

Ps: I dont understand your being down-voted. Your question is a reasonable one.

Part of op's point is that this exercise only works when you "think bigger-picture", but in practice it hasn't been panning out. Things have already been leaked, and what has the material damage been? Doesn't seem like much so far, especially weighed against the benefits.

I personally don't agree, but I believe that was op's point. I think the low probability dystopian possibilities are severe enough to outweigh the casual benefits.

<< I think the low probability dystopian possibilities are severe enough to outweigh the casual benefits. >>

I agree, although perhaps I am hypocritical, because I use gmail and google maps. I have jettisoned FB though.

<<Things have already been leaked, and what has the material damage been?>>

I think you're probably right, that this was their main point. To address it, I'll just briefly point to

(Edit: I may not have directly addressed their point here, but I dont think personally that I need to actually see something bad happen on US soil to assume it can't or won't happen if there is no principle to prevent it)

- the myriad oppressive regimes and violent drug cartels that use even publicly-available information to target political opponents.

- the ability of even casual users to create advertisements targeting (or excluding) ever-smaller circles of identifiable traits

- vast and secret subpoena powers by the US government and her allies

- severe political polarization centered on the US, in which the government and its powers flip poles every few years: what is okay for "our guy" to do (e.g. secret assassination lists, secret trials, rendition) will be available for "their guy" in a short while.

- AI being to identify ever-accurate and surprising correlations between lifestyle choices and political views.

Hopefully, nothing bad will happen.

Information about can be used against you in many different ways: you can get higher prices in online stores (if, for instance, online store gets data that you are a rich person).

You can get higher insurance price if you insurer knows "something" about you or you can be denied insurance at all if they suspect that you are, say, an addict (and this does not have to be true, some "clever" AI will just qualify you as an 34% addict and good luck if such nonsense data, derived by some SF "move fast, break things" startup, will be interpreted in a sensible way by the insurer).

From the information Google/FB has they can derive that someone has a mistress and those who will learn that might try to blackmail such person. Or someone is looking for a new job and informed person can sell this konwledge to one's current employer.

This is non-responsive to GP's point, though. This is all hypothetical. Where's the actual, concrete, demonstrated harm?

"Someone in the future might do something untoward" is not concrete.

GP's point was that they could only think of bad things happening if these companies leaked personally identifiable data. If I have not successfully addressed that specific point, demonstrating that there are worse things, then I do not know how to.

Facebook used to have "potentially treasonous" [0] as a user attribute that advertisers, etc could use to target users. This is only the beginning. I have no doubt that more conservative regimes have used their legal systems to compel Facebook to hand over all information on all gay users, for example.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2018/07/20/faceboo...

Do you have another source? That link 404s.

Goodness, I am a dunce and miscopied on my phone. Forgive me!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2018/07/20/faceboo...

About (leaked) data falling in the wrong hands:

Dutch municipalities used to register your religion in the early 1900s. Then the Germans invaded and boom. The NAZIs had a list of every jew in the country and the rest is history.

About the incentive you mention: have a look at the facebook privacy incidents. Whether or not this incentive exists, data leaks will happen. The only questions are when, to whom, and what that actor will do with said data.

An oppressive government doesn't need Facebook or Google to figure out your religious leanings.

Check fb stock price, it will tell you investors have short term memory.

It is about what is possible. Because if something is possible, someone will obtain the data in a way it is not legal, or borderline legal.

I'm not really worried about the now, I'm worried about the future. What happens if they start leaning on future politicians - "wouldn't it be a shame if people were to learn about that questionable video you watched 5 years ago?" It's a massive _risk_ even if it hasn't been realised.

Especially on hacker news. It's an odd push towards orthodoxy, authoritarianism and government governance which goes against the hacker ethos. Strange to see many "government knows best" and "multinational corporations know best" arguments. Where did this love of government nanny-state or corporate paternalism come from?

I don’t get it. No proposed design even exists yet, so how can claims of surveillance have legal merit? It is possible to create smart autonomous systems that don’t have PII. They’re suing over assumptions.

Finally a horrible Google product that can be vandalized! Spray cans for the cameras and monitors, glue and isolation foam spray for everything else! Those street cleaning robots wont last very long neither.

"We can do better. Our freedom from unlawful public surveillance is worth fighting for."

Is it though? the talk about privacy often ignores what lack of privacy could potentially mean. A fully covered surveillance state with proper AI and fast respondent police can get rid of entire types of crimes entirely. Burglary, Rubbery, Kidnapping, stranger rape, many types of violent outside crimes.

There is obviously a problem with abuse of power and trust, but that exists with all types of government action, more so with enforcement, would you not give up your privacy so that you don't need to lock your door anymore? letting your kid go play without chaperones?

Not to mention such arguments as the immense convenience of everything being connected and knowing who you are.

> Is it though? the talk about privacy often ignores what lack of privacy could potentially mean. A fully covered surveillance state with proper AI and fast respondent police can get rid of entire types of crimes entirely. Burglary, Rubbery, Kidnapping, stranger rape, many types of violent outside crimes.

You're missing some crimes from your list: being part of a minority political party, disparaging the ruling party, expressing dissent, failing to adhere to formalized social norms, being an "undesirable". I could go on.

No, these are not crimes today. But if the apparatus you describe was in place, they could easily be made crimes and you couldn't stop it. Because the moment you tried, you'd be whisked away.

We have already traded enough freedom for security. We wage war in the name of liberation and freedom and we turn around and do the opposite at home. This trade has diminishing returns and to me the gains are quite low. Just look at China and Russia. Are these the societies we should strive for? And in regards to this particular project... why doesn’t google do this in their own country, let’s see how it would play out in their own backyard.

I think the problem is exactly what you mentioned: abuse. Corruption is a hard, unsolved problem. If we had a solution for corruption, I'd be all for everything being connected. But we don't, not even close. Historically, we know detailed information about people is very useful to anyone in power that has a problem with those people.

They are complaining about Google's proposal to expand light rail in surrounding areas, arguing that the residential land is so precious there and shouldn't be disrupted. Sounds like NIMBY activism.

Nope, you got it all wrong. It wasn’t the idea of Google to build light rail. It was the city’s idea and has been discussed for many years. The problem is that the city lacks funding so google might have been asked to contribute in exchange to all the benefits they get from this Neighborhood.

There is also no residential land right now at this spot. It’s potential residential land that would need to be built, that’s the whole point of the neighborhood but right now it’s the old land of the port, there isn’t any residents.

I’m not sure if you are misleading on purpose or not, but you have twisted reality entirely on this one.

The filed complaint is talking about the area outside the port that would be "affected" by the light rail.

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