New research shows that police forces across Canada are building extensive digital surveillance hubs without any public engagement. Smart city projects use very similar technologies with the same dangers, yet here residents and municipalities are increasingly implementing Open Smart City principles to avoid potential harms and strengthen public oversight. The police should not be exempt from democratic accountability and the same principles can be applied to them to rebuild it.
People around the world are recognizing the potential of emerging “smart” technologies—those technologies that use machine learning, artificial intelligence and large-scale data analysis—to provide more efficient and effective services. However, there is also significant potential for them to cause harm around privacy, discrimination, transparency, and the corporate capture of what are publicly and democratically controlled tools of government.
Weiterlesen: Canada’s smart tech future: Open cities or opaque surveillance?
When Sidewalk Lab's shared their vision of a smart city that would be a vital societal endeavour and "meaningful contribution towards tackling affordability and sustainability problems in urban areas" (Cecco, 2020), Torontonians may have listened in awe and anticipation. However, as the project fleshed out, many began to see that there was a thin line between Sidewalk's proposed smart city and a city of surveillance, and that the Quayside Project was leaning concerningly close to the later.
As the Privacy consultant of Sidewalk Labs prior to her departure in October of 2018, Dr Ann Cavoukian made it very clear that there was no wiggle room around enforcing the de-identification of personal data in the Quayside Project from the get-go, to ensure the creation of a smart city of privacy. Dr Cavoukian’s insistence steamed from her expert opinion that data would need to be stripped of personal data (de-identified) at its source to ensure that the personally identifiable data collected was not exploited and that Toronto’s Waterfront did not become another model of the surveillance cities of Dubai and China. (Bloomberg News, 2018)
The Ontario government is delivering a new digital justice solution that will transform how people handle their legal matters at the Superior and Ontario Courts of Justice. The Courts Digital Transformation initiative will be the most significant single step forward in the digital evolution of justice in Canada, replacing outdated paper-based procedures with an online platform to manage cases, documents and schedules.
“Our government’s new digital solution is a game-changer that will provide Ontarians with on-demand access to their legal matters,” said Attorney General Doug Downey. “Building on numerous recent breakthroughs, this central piece of the Justice Accelerated Strategy will provide the tools needed to better meet expectations for how justice can be done in 2021 and beyond.”
Weiterlesen: CA: Ontario Delivering Digital Access to Courts
Open house scheduled for November 16 to showcase CITM’s Smart Mobility R&D Network (SMN) and Smart City IoT Data Repository
SmartCone Technologies, Canada’s leader in IoT (Internet of Things) solutions is proud to announce its technology partnership with the Centre for Integrated Transportation and Mobility (CITM). SmartCone is working to build a database Architecture and Platform that will capture data from all Smart Mobility Networks, both 4G & 5G elements, Intelligent IoT Nodes, C-V2X device, IoT devices and other sensors installed on the Smart Mobility Networks. Currently, there are two Smart Mobility Network sites in operation within the City of Hamilton, a public testbed located on the Mountain in the City of Hamilton, referred to as the “Urban Test Environment” and a private testbed within McMaster Innovation Park, referred to as the “Office Park Test Environment”.
A new “courts digital transformation solution” will make missing court paperwork, long delays in accessing court records and hours wasted in court to schedule trials a thing of the past, the Ontario government announced Friday.
The Ministry of the Attorney General is in the process of procuring a system that Attorney General Doug Downey says will be a “foundational change” for a legal system that has been stuck in the past.
Weiterlesen: CA: Ford government promises a digital transformation for Ontario’s court system