Micah Lasher, the head of policy and communications at Sidewalk Labs, told me that Cavoukian’s demands were unrealistic. “The kind of certainty Dr. Cavoukian was seeking at this stage in the process could only be achieved if Sidewalk Labs presumed that it could have authority over all private-sector entities that may come to operate in Quayside,” he said. He added that Cavoukian’s exit was “unexpected,” and that the company has received enormous amounts of positive feedback on the data-trust proposal.

Lasher also told me that Sidewalk agrees with the importance of scrubbing personal info. “We’re not going to gather up all Torontonians’ data and sell it, we’re not building Sensorville,” he told The Atlantic in February.

How Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto square their plan for “ubiquitous sensing” with a simultaneous goal of avoiding “Sensorville” remains to be seen. But people like Cavoukian suspect that Quayside will work much in the same way other corporate projects do: User behavior is mined, the product is refined, and people spend more as they are engaged with more precision. If, for example, increased walkability and modular building increases sales at the string of planned shops in Quayside, any financial benefit theoretically goes to retailers. If peoples’ data, produced as they live and work, are key in enhancing profit, shouldn’t they reap more benefits than a shorter commute and cleaner air?

Read: Google’s guinea-pig city

Another resignee, Saadia Muzaffar, the founder of TechGirls Canada, said over the phone that Sidewalk Labs failed, in her eyes, to inform residents how their data are part of either the city’s or the company’s revenue model.

“When you are coming to the table in good faith,” Muzaffar said, “I think you have to show what’s in it for you. That’s the only way to have any kinds of equity in a deal, especially when you’re talking about public interests.”

Muzaffar also said she felt as though representatives were not fully informing residents, focusing only on the potential positives of the project and ignoring questions of ownership and consequences. “There was actually active dissuasion from talking about data,” she said. “They make it feel as though it’s so complex [that] people won’t understand [data], when you can actually break it down. I think it’s really unfair to try and consult with the public on something they don’t understand.”

Lasher told me that “thousands of Torontonians” have attended varying workshops and public-engagement opportunities, with another roundtable scheduled next month.

“I think it’s important to note that this project seeks to accomplish many things,” he said,“including delivering large amounts of affordable housing, a highly sustainable neighborhood, and economic activity and new jobs. All of that needs to happen along with policies that protect the public interest, including with regard to data. But, data is just one piece of this conversation.”

Quayside may very well accomplish these things, remaking the city as we know it and setting precedent for future projects like it. But the controversy has shown that it may need to reimagine not just traffic patterns and thermostats, but a set of rules for data, privacy, and corporate “innovation” in a context that has never existed anywhere else on Earth. Thus far, at least, that’s proved the most difficult project to pull off yet.

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