[krschultz]

I came here to say something similar. I've seen many people using them all hours of the day & night. People are watching music videos, charging their phone, getting directions, and surfing the internet. The people using them are often those that don't have the luxury (necessity?) of walking around with a nice smart phone and a big data plan.

Do they have ads on them? Of course. So do the bus shelters which are funded using a similar public/private partnership.

If you are worried about the data collection, don't use them or the wifi provided by them. But you are basically saying you trust Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile/Sprint with your data more than you trust Sidewalk Labs/Google. Is that an informed tradeoff?

[smpetrey]

On the streets and subways?

Hell yeah it would be worth it. If I had to choose who gets my data I think I take Google over an A Mobile ISP like At&t or Verizon

[Vexs]

This is my little deal with the devil, I know that google has loads of my data, but I know they'll do something to keep it in house, instead of selling it off to whoever. It's more profitable for google not to sell your data because they already have the largest ad provider out there.

[walterbell]

Google's business model is based on selling user-generated data to advertisers, unlike telcos who sell network data to you.

See Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff's video on Surveillance Capitalism, https://vimeo.com/110222526

NYC has the leverage to negotiate better financial terms for capturing the value of city residents data. The money generated from harvesting city resident behavior can then be invested into city infrastructure and services for residents.

Data and networks are here to stay. What is open for negotiation is the split of revenue between city residents and vendors. For example, kiosks could be funded as neutral infrastructure that could be shared by competing vendors. A city itself is "shared infrastructure".

[kbenson]

> Google's business model is based on selling user-generated data to advertisers, unlike telcos who sell network data to you.

Sure, because the telcos have no interest in tracking their customers for profit[1]? As long as it's profitable and legal, any public company will eventually sell metadata regarding you. Since the data is profitable, if we want to protect ourselves from this that leaves us with making it illegal to collect and share, either through contract or by law.

1: http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/7/11173010/verizon-supercooki...

[morgante]

> Google's business model is based on selling user-generated data to advertisers, unlike telcos who sell network data to you.

Really? Where?

I have worked on some large marketing projects. We'd love to be able to buy user data from Google.

This facile argument is really getting old. When you get a free newspaper, does that mean you're getting "sold?"

[hueving]

Google generates most of its revenue from selling targeted ads to advertisers. A targeted ad is selling data about users.

Just because you aren't looking directly at the data doesn't mean you are getting information as a result of it.

[morgante]

> A targeted ad is selling data about users.

That's a lazy and incorrect causal link.

Google goes to great lengths not to sell user data. It's far more valuable if they can hold on to it and use it to continue selling advertising.

It's important to understand the difference. This isn't a great metaphor, but imagine a top university. The professors at said university have accumulated many Nobel prizes. The university uses those Nobel prizes to sell classes to students. Does that mean the university is selling Nobel prizes? Obviously not.

Google uses data to target advertising. That doesn't mean Google's business is selling data.

[hueving]

Targeted ads are worthless if they aren't targeted based on correct data. Google would lose massive amounts of advertising if they didn't heavily base it on user data.

As an advertiser, Google's ability to target users based on user data is very important to me, so your analogy with Nobel prizes at University misses the mark by a mile.

If Google doesn't let me target users in a region with a specific interest, then I will just go to Facebook.

[morgante]

> Targeted ads are worthless if they aren't targeted based on correct data.

A university without well-respected and celebrated faculty is similarly "worthless." In fact, the gap in price between community colleges and prestigious universities might even be greater than the gap between targeted ads and non-targeted ads.

> As an advertiser, Google's ability to target users based on user data is very important to me, so your analogy with Nobel prizes at University misses the mark by a mile.

As a student, the prestige of an institution and the prizes it's faculty receive is an important component of choosing to purchase education there.

There's a reason that college admissions brochures love to tout the number of Nobel prizes their faculty have received.

[Phlarp]

This is true, but there is still a rampant hyperbole in the ad-tech industry that firms can simply write a check to Google and be handed raw data to mine against. This simply isn't the case.

Plenty of firms will sell you consumer data if you are looking, but it won't be anything near the granularity of what google collects.

Google is not the "big scary player" in town, Verizon and ATT are.

[Nadya]

>Google's business model is based on selling user-generated data to advertisers

Important distinction: they use their massive user-data collection as a selling point for advertisers. They do not sell the data directly - they'd prefer to keep a monopoly on the data. Their business model is in selling advertisements. They sell advertisements because they have a massive user-data collection to target those ads towards.

[walterbell]

Thanks for the distinction.

[blfr]

Google's business model is based on selling user-generated data to advertisers, unlike telcos who sell network data to you.

Come on. Telcos are just not competent enough to do what Google do. It's not like they're morally opposed to it or wouldn't try. Remember Verizon injecting headers into their users' http traffic to track them for advertisers?

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/verizon-x-uidh

[walterbell]

Surveillance incompetence is a feature, not a bug, in a neutral network provider.

Edit: the onus is on the city to negotiate better terms with the network provider. The city would have a better negotiating position if there were multiple vendors (including telcos) competing for the network/data business. Once better terms are in the contract, security researchers can help ensure compliance.

[blfr]

No, it isn't. That just means they will spill your data to some random 17yr old who figures out how to increment a parameter in the URL or something.

[shostack]

Sorry to break it to you, but Verizon certainly sells data. Check out their data membership with AOL (pretty sure it's them ) to help close the cross device tracking gap.

Telcos are very aggressive about monetizing their data.

[shostack]

Lost the window to edit, but here's more info on the Verizon/AOL data deal:

http://adage.com/article/datadriven-marketing/verizon-aol-pa...