Hacker News Reader

none of those require google to be around.

Far as I'm concerned, if this happens it becomes the duty of every person to destroy these sensors and destroy the ability to deploy new ones.

View on HN

Yes but they all require a ~1bn dollar investment by somebody. Let's not forget the price alphabet is paying for this. And they have already agreed that they would not have IP level access to any of the data collected. Nothing personally identifiable. And all data goes through a 3rd party committee over which they have no control. I'm not sure what would lead somebody to vandalize the sensors besides ignorance and paranoia. What people fail to realize is that mass data collection, when done right, can be an extremely useful tool in improving convenience and efficiency of service. While alphabet may have a dodgy history of collecting information they had no right to, they are not Facebook or Equifax. As far as I am aware they havent mishandled or abused the data they've collected and it genuinely seems like they are committed to honest data collection this time around. Honestly I'm more concerned that the privacy committee that Toronto puts together will botch the data collection/storage end up leaking the data. And most likely they will blame alphabet for it in an "see we knew this would happen" kind of way. I lived in Toronto for a decade. Maybe it's because of Rob Ford but I have zero faith in the competence of Toronto city politics and fully expect them to over involve themselves beyond their capacity and royally fuck things up and then shift the blame to somebody else. #blockthesidewalk really says it all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com