[wbs] response to 'Call for Review: Web-based Digital Twins for Smart Cities Interest Group Charter'

The following answers have been successfully submitted to 'Call for Review:
Web-based Digital Twins for Smart Cities Interest Group Charter' (Advisory
Committee) for Mozilla Foundation by Tantek Çelik.


The reviewer's organization abstains from this review.

Additional comments about the proposal:
   This response is intended as "suggests changes to the Charter, but
abstains from (neither supports nor opposes) the proposal whether or not
the changes are adopted"

Mozilla supports the comments and suggested changes from Tetralogical and
BBC.

In addition:

We have an explicit concern about the unknown potential for privacy &
agency harms to individuals with a "Digital Twins"
(https://www.w3.org/2024/06/smart-cities/#digital-twins-dfn)
model/foundation (removal of default anonymity/pseudonymity enabled by
current technologies).

We should learn from the experience and lessons from automobiles that have
been enhanced with networked information systems ("networked automobiles"),
and in practice nearly universally compromised the user’s privacy: 
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-wheels-every-car-brand-reviewed-by-mozilla-including-ford-volkswagen-and-toyota-flunks-privacy-test/


We should expect that "Smart Cities" products are very likely to replicate
the same harms, potentially with greater severity since people can sell
their car and choose another more easily than they can sell their "city" or
"mass transit system" for example and choose another.

We suggest that the IG Charter explicitly include in scope and purpose
something along the lines of:

Consideration and analysis of known privacy, security, and user agency
harms in the related use-cases and products of automobiles as documented in
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-wheels-every-car-brand-reviewed-by-mozilla-including-ford-volkswagen-and-toyota-flunks-privacy-test/
, what were the causes of those harms including financial incentives, and
what steps the Smart Cities IG should explicitly take to minimize and avoid
those harms in any Smart Cities related technologies and products, present
and future. The intersection of potential compounding harms as a result of
such networked automobiles operating in a Smart Cities environment should
also be considered and documented. 


Answers to this questionnaire can be set and changed at
https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/33280/smartcities2024/ until 2024-07-03.

 Regards,

 The Automatic WBS Mailer

Received on Thursday, 4 July 2024 12:27:02 UTC