From Amsterdam to Dubai, smart cities promise a bright and sustainable future. Think GPS systems that turn street lights green for oncoming ambulances and irrigation systems that monitor soil quality and weather to conserve water.
However, the technology behind them can have serious implications for our privacy and civil rights. In 2016, San Diego rolled out street lights equipped with surveillance cameras to monitor traffic, but police have since used their footage during investigations. In the spring of 2020, they were even turned on Black Lives Matter protests. The city council is now considering new regulations to govern their use.
In 2017, Dr. Ann Cavoukian agreed to work as an advisor on a now-abandoned project, in which Google’s sister company Sidewalk Labs planned to equip Toronto’s waterfront with robots to move waste to disposal facilities, heated pavements to melt snow and myriad ways to collect data in preparation for the use of autonomous vehicles. She resigned in 2018 over concerns that other companies associated with the project could not guarantee privacy.
Cavoukian, who also served as Canada’s information and privacy commissioner from 1997 to 2014, went on to create “privacy by design,” a framework for embedding safeguards in smart city technology at the point of development. She sat down with Coda Story to talk about how we can create modern urban environments with privacy baked into them.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Coda Story: What is privacy by design?
Dr. Ann Cavoukian: We can develop smart cities that will do amazing things and preserve our privacy. It shouldn’t be the zero-sum model of either or, which so many people lead with. They say, “Well, you want a smart city, you’ve got to give up privacy.” The hell you do. Privacy is the foundation of our freedom. You don’t give that up for a smart city or smart tech. You do both.
I was the Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, in Canada, for many years. What I know from that time is that privacy laws do not apply if there’s no personally identifiable data. We make it a win-win. That’s what the concept of privacy by design, which I created, is all about. Make it a win-win. Data utility and total privacy. We can do both.
What does privacy by design look like in the context of a smart city?
A while back, I was retained by Sidewalk Labs, when they were going to build SmartCity Toronto. That fell apart, and I can explain why…
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