UTM professor sounds privacy alarm over Sidewalk Labs project

It’s being marketed as a development built from the internet up, a space where technology will offer modern-day convenience and efficiencies. But Sidewalk Labs, proposed by Google parent company Alphabet, is raising concerns about data collection and privacy.

Assistant Professor Lilian Radovac, a critical cultural historian at U of T Mississauga, is sounding the alarm about what she refers to as an all-in-one ID that could be an intrusion of the for-profit sector into government-administered services.

Alphabet’s plans to introduce Digital Identification Credentials to its Toronto waterfront development is buried in its Digital Innovation Appendix, released in November following its 1,500-page Master Innovation and Development Plan released in June.

Radovac says the section about the digital ID credentials immediately caught her eye. It was listed at the end of the document, she explains, and is essentially an identification system that proposes to connect several things that have not been connected before. The footnotes reference a white paper from Interac Corporation that could see health care and banking married under the system.

She says that, along with potential connections to other public services, raised “alarm bells.”

“It’s the introduction of the private sector into the province of government,” Radovac says, adding that the idea of a system being directly or indirectly linked to the private sector is cause for immediate concern.

That connection between public and private could provide some benefit in the United States, but it’s problematic in a Canadian context where health care is considered universal, Radovac explains.

While creating a national health card could have benefits, especially when it comes to transferring information from one province to another, Radovac says it depends on who is running the system and how. There’s also the question of patient privacy and trust.

In the United States, Google’s collection of health data through its “Project Nightingale” program has triggered a federal inquiry. That project is a partnership between Google and Ascension, one of the country’s largest non-profit health systems. The data storage and processing project, leaked to the media, has raised privacy fears.

Radovac says Google is not the only major tech company trying to get a toehold in health care. There have been reports that Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are also pushing into the area of health.

The threat of private sector encroachment is a red flag for Radovac. The primary purpose of these companies, after all, is to make a profit.

“The only people they are responsible to are their shareholders and investors,” Radovac says. “What does that mean for public services?”

A government can be voted out, she continues, but the public can’t vote Google out of office, and while people can decline to use their services, it’s difficult to do when they have a monopoly.

Alphabet’s waterfront proposal mentions other smart cities already in operation, including Barcelona. Radovac says Barcelona is probably the most advanced city to adopt smart technology. Their system is rooted in a democratic and public-oriented ethic with a strong belief in social justice and equality, she explains, noting that’s a very different model from the North American private sector.

For Radovac, there are a number of “big and important” questions about the Sidewalk Labs proposal that need answers. Those include talking about who oversees the platform, is the technology proprietary, what is the impact on the most vulnerable populations, what is connected and, more importantly, why those systems are connected. She also questions how much government officials, who are responsible for looking out for the interests of residents, understand the potential risks.

By sounding the alarm, she says she hopes it will encourage people to think of the potential consequences and become as informed as they can be about the project.

“Just because (systems) can be connected doesn’t mean (they) should be,” says Radovac.