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Data Collection Experiment: Google’s SideWalk Labs In Toronto
Last year Law and Disorder featured a segment on Sidewalk Labs, a data-oriented smart city in Toronto. Sidewalk Labs is a firm owned by Google parent company Alphabet. We covered critics’ concerned about residents’ privacy and how data would be used.
Last week, Sidewalk labs has released a 1,500-page development proposal for its planned “smart” neighborhood. They claim it will integrate physical, digital, and policy innovations to take on affordability, sustainability, quality of life and generate economic opportunity. Critics assert, this is an experimental model for a surveillance state and covert data collection.
Sidewalk Lab’s plan is a radical departure from the principles that have guided city planning in Canada since citizen participation and accountability came to the fore in the era of renowned Canadian-American urban planner Jane Jacobs.
Guest – Mariana Valverde, Professor at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto. She’s an urban studies scholar whose research interests include public-private partnerships, governance and infrastructure.
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Impeachment Analysis Of President Donald Trump
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s May statement on his investigation and report revived calls to impeach President Donald Trump. Such calls rest on solid legal ground. There is already more than adequate evidence supporting at least seven articles of impeachment – four more than President Richard M. Nixon would have faced had he not resigned in 1974.
Trump obstructed the administration of justice by attempting to fire Mueller, to curtail his investigation; he ordered White House counsel Donald McGahn to falsify the record to conceal these attempts. He fired FBI Director James B. Comey because of “Comey’s unwillingness to publicly state that Trump was not personally under investigation. He also sought to protect himself from an investigation into his campaign,” because he knew it would uncover facts about the campaign and the President personally that Trump could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to personal and political concerns.”
He tried to dissuade Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, and other witnesses from cooperating with the government. The non-cooperation of Manafort and Stone made it impossible to establish the exact nature of the relationship between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
All of those are violations of Article I of the Constitution, and Trump has violated Articles II through VII, as well.
So the internal debates are not about the legal grounds. They pertain to strategy. And these debates are fracturing alliances among liberals and the left.
Guest – Attorney Abi Hassen is a criminal defense attorney, technologist and co-founder of the Black Movement-Law Project. He was formerly the Mass Defense Coordinator at the National Lawyers Guild and a union and community organizer. His podcast is Against the Law. Against The Law Podcast Link
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