Is Your Data Being Collected? These Signs Will Tell You Where

As cities incorporate digital technologies into their landscapes, they face the challenge of informing people of the many sensors, cameras, and other smart technologies that surround them. Few people have the patience to read through the lengthy privacy notice on a website or smartphone app. So how can a city let them know how they’re being monitored?

Sidewalk Labs, the Google sister company that applies technology to urban problems, is taking a shot. Through a project called Digital Transparency in the Public Realm, or DTPR, the company is demonstrating a set of icons, to be displayed in public spaces, that shows where and what kinds of data are being collected. The icons are being tested as part Sidewalk Labs’ flagship project in Toronto, where it plans to redevelop a 12-acre stretch of the city’s waterfront. The signs would be displayed at each location where data would be collected—streets, parks, businesses, and courtyards.

Data collection is a core feature of the project, called Sidewalk Toronto, and the source of much of the controversy surrounding it. In 2017, Waterfront Toronto, the organization in charge of administering the redevelopment of the city’s eastern waterfront, awarded Sidewalk Labs the contract to develop the waterfront site. The project has ambitious goals: It says it could create 44,000 direct jobs by 2040 and has the potential to be the largest “climate-positive” community—removing more CO2 from the atmosphere than it produces—in North America. It will make use of new urban technology like modular street pavers and underground freight delivery. Sensors, cameras, and Wi-Fi hotspots will monitor and control traffic flows, building temperature, and crosswalk signals.