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October 31, 2019 01:11 am PDT

Leaked document reveals that Sidewalk Labs' Toronto plans for private taxation, private roads, charter schools, corporate cops and judges, and punishment for people who choose privacy

Tomorrow, Toronto's City Council will hold a key vote on Sidewalk Labs's plan to privatize much of the city's lakeshore in the name of creating a "smart city" owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet.

Today, the Globe and Mail published a summary of Sidewalk Labs's leaked "yellow book", a 2016 document that lays out Sidewalk Labs's vision for Toronto and future projects in Detroit, Denver, and Alameda.

The plan lays out a corporate-owned city similar to Lake Buena Vista, the privately owned municipality established by the Walt Disney Company on a massive tract of central Florida land that contains the Walt Disney World resort.

The plan calls for the creation of privately owned and regulated roads, charter schools in place of publicly administered schools, the power to levy and spend property taxes without democratic oversight, a corporate criminal justice system where the cops and judges work for Sidewalk Labs, and totalizing, top-to-bottom, continuous surveillance.

Torontonians who decline to "share" information with Sidewalk Labs will not receive the same level of services as those who do.

Sidewalk Labs says that the document does not reflect its current ambitions.

Sidewalk Labs previously grossly understated the scope of its ambitions. When we revealed that the company had secretly secured the right to build across virtually the city's entire waterfront, they lied to us before finally admitting it.

Those choosing to remain anonymous would not be able to access all of the areas services: Automated taxi services would not be available to anonymous users, and some merchants might be unable to accept cash, the book warns.

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Original Link: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/G3Aqi6kErJc/citizen-scores-eh.html

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