E11 Our Path Forward: The Growing Threat of Surveillance Technology at Home and Abroad

um jen i'll probably ask you just to do a brief description for yourself or introduction about who you are in the work you do sure absolutely happy to do that awesome oh we're live i think we're live great cool well welcome everyone um thank you so much for joining us today this is our path forward with care washington and today we're talking about the growing threat of tech surveillance at home and abroad and we're joined by jennifer lee from the aclu she is the i want to get your title right here maybe you could just introduce yourself that'd be great sure thing hi everyone i'm jen lee and i'm the tech and liberty manager here at the aclu of washington um i lead our tech policy work um for uh those who of you who may not know the aclu is a public interest law firm and we work to protect people's civil liberties and in many different areas including immigration health care youth policy policing and much more but in the tech and liberty space we work on protecting people's civil rights and civil liberties in the face of increasingly powerful technology a key part of our work is convening a tech equity coalition that care washington also participates in it's otherwise known as the tec and we seek to uplift the voices of marginalized communities in decision making about tech policy we work closely with the tech equity coalition to advance strong tech policies that are accountable to people and particularly people who are disproportionately affected by tech abuses um i'm glad to be here with everyone today and i'm really excited for a conversation about surveillance thank you so much jen we're really happy to have you we're also joined today by our attorney brianna o'fray and our community outreach fellow aiden anwar um brianna's going to be talking with jen about tech surveillance and kind of the battle that's going on here in washington state to protect people's people's privacy and their civil rights and iden is going to talk about um what is happening in other countries in terms of islamophobia and how technology is being used to oppress and in some cases commit genocide against people like the uyghurs in east turkestan and kind of connecting the dots for us between you know mass surveillance technology here at home and also how it's being used abroad so i'm really excited for this conversation um before i get we get get started with the conversation i'd like to just briefly tell people what the show is about i think this is our 11th episode and our path forward is a weekly live stream by kare washington we started this or we came up with this idea after the attacks on the capitol happened um and trump lost the election and the coba vaccine was rolling out there's like all these like huge moments that felt like happening at the same time and also things were changing in terms of you know we were having trump out of office and then here comes biden and we really want to talk about like what is our path forward look like as as a community as an organization and as a country um now that trump is out of office but so much of the issues are still there you know these systemic issues like white supremacy um immigration these these larger issues so we thought we'd have weekly live streams with our team so that we could talk about the work that we do at care washington give people a chance to kind of learn more about the work that we do i think a lot of times people see the kind of the big things that you do but they don't get a behind-the-scenes look about the day-to-day um so we've been wanting to talk about tech surveillance for quite a while it's a big part of the work that we do that our policy and legal team does and i'm very excited i know quite a bit about it but i i want to hear more i want to hear about the facial recognition ban and the tech equity coalition so very excited so let's just go ahead and jump into it i think my first question is actually for miss brianna rihanna i know when we were talking about this episode you talked about the importance of kind of defining some of these terms and what we mean by surveillance technology could you kind of just give us a brief description about what is surveillance technology and what are some examples of surveillance technology um it's kind of a nebulous yeah i guess because you know it isn't something that that we can point to a bolded list and go this is everything that surveillance technology but the general idea is that you know you are producing so much data and and there is data that's inherent to you whether that's you know biometric features or things like that um and biometric let's define that too because i didn't know until we got talk thank you that would be um and jen please jump in if i if i am uh not saying this quite well but um it's features of of your person so it could be you know your face your fingerprints your iris skins um it's it's identifying you by your your features is is that a pretty good way of characterizing that jen yeah totally jen's definitely uh more of the expert here than i am in fact when i switched to becoming the uh policy manager last year last summer i didn't know a thing about any of this really and jen and other members of the tech equity coalition were sort of the ones who got me up to speed on these issues um so generally what we're looking at is people are producing just massive amounts of data especially you know now that we're all on our phones all the time we're on our computers even more so now that you know most people are working remotely um we just produce massive amounts of data one of the largest things that we're we're looking at when we're talking about tech surveillance is the the mining of that data the collection um the sale of that data and the manipulation of that data for other things and that's when we start you know talking about things like facial recognition or automated decision systems and how that data is then being used that's sort of the way that i tend to think of it um but it's it's really broad it covers a lot of things jen do you want to jump in on there i think you you described it so well um and i agree with you and to put it simply i think a surveillance technology is any tool that is used to identify people and monitor public and private spaces so that's a that casts a really broad net but at its core i think what we have to understand is that surveillance is about power who has the power to watch and police whom with what tools and for what purpose um so when we think about surveillance technologies today you know like like brianna was saying we are thinking often about um very advanced surveillance tools that mine are or utilize massive amounts of data like facial recognition technology or infrared devices automated license plate readers or traffic cameras um but i think it's also important to recognize that surveillance technologies however advanced or rudimentary have always been used as a tool to oppress those with less power so one example i like to share is that in the 1700s new york city passed a lantern law that required only black mixed and indigenous people to illuminate themselves by carrying a lit candle at night and that was the surveillance technology of the time these laws incentivized and made it possible for white people to enforce slave systems and incarceration via surveillance and that was by deputizing any white person to stop those who walked without the lit candle after dark um this is the 18th century legal framework for stop and frisk policing practices that were established long before our contemporary era and even though candles are not in advanced technology they don't use data they were clearly weaponized by people in power as a surveillance tool uh to strip black people of privacy and fuel the slave patrols and the placing of black bodies and lives that continues to to this day so i think you know when we're thinking about um or contemplating far more advanced technologies that incorporate artificial intelligence and are powered by large amounts of data we have to consider how much more invasive these surveillance abilities and the power differential has become absolutely thank you jen for that that's a really fascinating example um from our history you're cutting out a little bit i think i think you're there now oh can you hear me i'm sorry we're having a little bit of connection issues and everyone else friend that's okay oh we heard most but i think you're yeah if it continues i would hate i hate to ask this but i might ask you turn up your video if it continues jess i think it's i think it's on your end oh is it are you good you guys are fine yeah right then it's not my end okay cool um that's it's so interesting and i think that story that example that you told about you know candles being used to monitor black and indigenous people hundreds of years ago as a means of white people being able to surveil and track um people of color that's that kind of underlies what you're saying about surveillance technology it's like it's not so much the specifics of the technology it's like why is it what is it designed to do or what is it being used to do right yeah absolutely that kind of yeah um that also is a really good segue into the next question which is for both you jen and brianna you know there's all kinds of issues regarding civil liberties and privacy when it comes to surveillance technology and i was wondering if both of you could just talk about some real world examples either here in washington state or in the 50 states about how technology has been used to surveil people in a way that is dangerous or intrusive do you want to start generating um i can you know i can share um a couple examples and maybe brianna you can talk um about some examples specific to how the muslim community has been surveilled um but you know when we're talking about the history of surveillance with the tech equity coalition to lawmakers to the general public we um emphasize you know stories like for example um the the passage of lantern laws in the 1700s but also um we know that uh in the 1930s and 40s the u.s government subcontracted with ibm which produced a machine called a holler punch card machine that was used to surveil and target japanese americans via census data so with this tool japanese americans were surveilled and put on custodial detention lists were nearly a decade prior to being unconstitutionally incarcerated during world war ii and the census bureau information was compiled to determine where japanese americans lived on the west coast in order to remove them from their homes and imprison them internal government documents uncovered by researchers revealed that this that the census bureau actually gave the secret service a list of names addresses citizenship status and other personal information of of people of japanese ancestry living in the dc area the washington dc area and um i think this is you know when we're thinking about why people are afraid for example to take the census today i mean it has a long history of of um there's a long history there of people people's data being abused right and you know at that time just that census data was used to unconstitutionally incarcerate an entire community of people but as brianna was saying now the government agencies hold more data than could ever be imagined and that information not only has potential to harm but it is actually being used to surveil people every single day um i'm sorry to interrupt but i want to ask you about because the census is you know we're done with it now for 2020 but but it is a big issue and something we did a lot of advocacy around um and you know we know that history and those fears was there wasn't there protections or loss put in place so that what happened with the census couldn't happen again like there's but they just keep the data in-house and they use it for specific things yeah and i i think brianna might be able to speak more on this but i believe so um but you know and i think that's why it's really important to ensure that there are really strong data privacy protection so that people's data aren't abused right because data can be very important and useful to provide benefits provide services um compile important data and to ensure that discrim that discrimination isn't occurring but um in order to do that um while respecting people's rights and making people feel comfortable that their privacy is being protected we need strong regulations absolutely jen um and you know it's the only reason that those protections existed this time around was because of the advocacy of impacted groups from previous times that this that this has happened um is very very much in large part and so you know this time around we did see guarantees written into regulations that you know information about citizenship status or you know whether you're you're cohabitating with people who are out of status that that information is not being reported to ice or you know that that this information was only going to be used for explicitly what it was collected for but again you know the the only reason that we could guarantee that this time around was because people fought for those specific regulations um so it definitely was less of an issue and we we hope it is less of an issue but at the same time you know that that previous fear definitely informs people's decisions about how they go forward and i think that's a huge theme that we'll see throughout a lot of what we talk about today is you know whether or not there are protections built in now doesn't necessarily mean that the harm isn't already done because of past abuses if if people are going to change their the way that they are interacting because of past abuses then you know maybe maybe regulation can't fix everything brianna can you talk about some examples i know there are so many that come to your mind about how surveillance technology has been used to infringe on people's privacy or civil liberties absolutely uh jen touched earlier she mentioned automated license plate readers that was a huge one following 911 specifically targeting the muslim community you know there was a program um that you know was part of the patriot act and a number of other surveillance initiatives that were going on at that time that um were specifically registering in this case um males from middle eastern countries and you know not only were they were they explicitly required to go and register every few months their location who they were living with um you know what they were doing at that time but then that information was used to track them via these automated license plate readers that they would install outside mosques and keep track of who was coming and going to these places of worship and then they would sometimes follow individuals you know throughout their day to see who else they were interacting with where else they were going what they were doing with their time and you know it was this this really egregious violation of of privacy and of freedom of of religion and um i'm sorry i'm blanking on all my words today i'm so tired you're fine this happened i'm chugging around sorry um no it was just this really really egregious violation and you know the effect of something like that is not only that the civil rights of those specific people who were targeted by a technology in a program like that um that their rights were violated but then all of the other people who you know later found out about this when this news broke and were then terrified to then go to to the mosque or to go to their community centers or to go visit their family members because they were worried that they were being tracked and so you know that's something again that we'll see with a lot of these technologies that because of those abuses and fear of future abuses you know we're seeing people not attending protests because facial recognition has been used to track blm protesters and and other protesters um you know we're we'll see the muslim community be you know definitely on extra guard of using things like um prayer apps after after data breaches and you know there there was a recent one um in november that that um vice broke that um sorry having a day guys um in november they broke the story that um a number of muslim prayer and dating apps were selling the data of users to the us military right to ice and you know a number of third-party um you know third parties that we we don't know who they are or what they're doing with that information and something like that alone could then deter people from from using the products or going to the mosque or you know going to protest or whatever whatever was targeted in that case it's especially troubling when it's something like you said about a protest or going to the mosques going to your place of worship the silencing impact on that is like that's a ripple effect it's one thing to say i don't want to use the disney princess pixar babyface app like boohoo you know but when it's things like it affects your your first amendment rights your freedom of speech your freedom of religion that's really disturbing i think and can have a really chilling um ripple effect on the community it's also we can talk more about this but what what has been done to the muslim community you know for decades now in the us in terms of surveillance just it continues to blow my brain because it's so it's so prevalent it's so unconstitutional it's so invasive and it's just crazy if this happened if this happened to white people like we would be it just wouldn't happen you know it would people would be freaking out be talking about it you know having people go undercover into a place of worship for no other reason then there's a particular faith worshiping there and spying on people in their place of worship and collecting data on just everyday americans i mean it's it's like i said it just blows my brain like i'm almost speechless that it's still going on but that was one of the things that struck me most when i started working for care is the prevalence of conversations about fbi contacts yeah all this i mean you all know this is a conversation we have on a daily basis and you know as as an attorney for care we get calls on a weekly basis that people have had fbi agents show up to their houses you know is usually almost even a safer option because at least you know that they're there and they're going to be questioning you you know as opposed to like you said just these undercover agents or you know being surveilled from afar um but that is just such a fact of life in the muslim community and it's something that even even having studied some of these these periods and i don't even want to say history because you know it's it's an ongoing thing but you know having studied the the post-9 11 era and you know talking about these these laws and programs like the patriot act that i mentioned before in these registration systems it did not occur to me just how prevalent this was and and you know it's it's wild it's wild before we move on to the next questions brianna if someone is contacted by the fbi or if fbi shows up at your door what should people do fantastic question jess um the very first thing that you want to do is invoke your right to remain silent and one of the things that is so tricky about your right to remain silent is that you can't just stay silent um this goes for police this goes for fbi you must say i am invoking my right to remain silent and let them know that you would like to speak to them with your attorney so we we do have door cards that you can download from our website um or you can contact us and we can give you you know a specific script that you can follow because we understand that that's a very very stressful situation you know if an agent shows up at your door but you can let them know that you know you have no problem um speaking with them but you would like to do it with your attorney so you know you can either give them cares number and they can contact us or you can get their card and let them know that we'll be in contact and then you give us a call but under no circumstances do you answer any questions and you do not need to let them into your home or go with them unless they have a warrant talk to care washington before you talk to the fba calling always always always john i'm wondering if you can talk a bit about um facial rec the facial recognition technology band that we just passed in king county what was that about why is it a victory why is this important sure um well face recognition is one form of surveillance technology that is particularly worrying because it enables invisible and persistent government surveillance on just an enormous scale it enables the tracking of people's movements and their associations without their knowledge or consent which chills free speech free association it undermines press freedom and it threatens a free exercise of religion um but you know we emphasize that face recognition technology fuels racial injustice and inequity regardless of in its its inaccuracy rate because of all the things i just mentioned but it's also important to realize that face recognition is absolutely inaccurate and um and we just in the past uh year or so we learned of at least three black men who are wrongfully arrested and jailed due to a false face recognition match um we know that this technology is disproportionately inaccurate for bypac individuals transgender individuals non-binary individuals the children and the elderly and we are have just emphasized that black and brown people should not have to pay the price with their lives and well-being to beta test racially biased face recognition systems but again we emphasize that even if this technology were perfectly accurate it would still be used to disproportionately scrutinize marginalized communities so um it would still lead to life or death encounters with law enforcement and and should not be um uh should not be allowed in our society so we have worked with the tech equity coalition care washington and many other local and national partners to push forward a ban um on this technology uh for king county government agencies um we've been working on this for quite a while and just last week we um got a unanimous vote in favor of this ban in the full king county council so we have become the first multi-city county in the country to pass a government ban on face recognition technology that is absolutely huge and i also want to share like why this is so astounding because king county is a headquarters to both big tech companies microsoft and amazon which are two of the biggest producers of face recognition technology so i i really think this demonstrates just how much people have recognized um the dangers of face recognition technology um it also showcases the um amazing coalition effort that went um that that was so critical to passing this ban and it really paves the way for us to start having a critical discussion about what are the allowable and um unallowable uses of technology in our society who gets to make these decisions um and and it starts to push for the conversation about excuse me the conversation in which we question the assumption that technology is inevitable and that we can't stop it at all i want to get into that a little bit later because that is what always goes through my head and i think a lot of people's head's like well this is just the future and how are we gonna you know stop this um i was actually surprised what's that brianna i was just gonna say one thing on on that exact point um and this goes to the conversation that you and i were having um off the show earlier is jen always um makes the point when she when she talks about this that you can't leave home without your face like it's your face there's nothing to do about it so you know when jess and i were discussing previously about you know well i'm just gonna decide to opt into that anyways or you know maybe that's a risk i want to take or maybe this is something that is inevitable but your face you can opt in and out of your face you know the the only way to truly avoid facial recognition based surveillance is is if you don't ever leave your home and that's just that's not an option right i just kind of figure my face is everywhere or they just you know like um yeah yeah no that's a really that's a really good way to put it and jen you already talked about this which is what i was going to follow up and ask you is that you know people say well this is is technology like isn't technology blind you know it's neutral it's just a program but the real reality is people create programs people tell algorithms what to look for like we input the data and because human beings are creating this stuff the and i might not be quite worrying this right but the data that this technology uses is bias so you know a 2019 federal study from the national institute of standards and technology found that asian and african-american faces were misidentified up to a hundred times more often in some algorithms conducting one-to-one matching so and jen you spoke about it so eloquently but like it's just not true like this technology is bias um and yeah yeah yeah you're you're totally right it is biased um because the data is biased because it the concept of the technology itself is biased i mean just one example is that it is you know it does it this disproportionately misidentifies many types of people bipoc individuals um transgender individuals children women etc but it does not work on non-binary individuals because the technology presupposes that there are two genders therefore it will not work on non-binary individuals i mean there are a lot of assumptions that go in the design and development of the technology um and you know as you said the by the data itself is biased um because it relies on his uh you know often data um that relies on a history of over policing of his communities of color but also with surveillance technologies you know the communities that are most impacted by these technologies often don't get to decide not just how the technology will be developed but whether or not it should be developed at all and that's what we're trying to do with this conversation about moratoria and bans by putting a stop um and saying let's take a at the very minimum a pause so that we can have a conversation and see whether this technology is compatible with our democracy and our and the values we want to espouse right and we can do that we can do that um thank you jen again i want to bring you in um really quick introduction for people who may be watching who aren't familiar with you or your work um i didn't anwar is the community outreach fellow at care washington um so she does outreach for care washington across washington state she's also a human rights activist and um uyghur american who has also done activism around the genocide that is happening in east turkestan and aiden i would love um if you could kind of connect for us this issue of surveillance here in the u.s there's surveillance in washington state and how is surveillance technology being misused abroad and how is it part of this larger um result of the war on terror and and global islamophobia yeah so first of all thank you jenna and brianna for all your insight into facial recognition technology here in the states and what that can look like i do want to kind of point out or bridge back to the idea that this whole this whole technology is inherently biased and it's meant to oppress people and one of those examples is the way that china is using technology um and surveillance to essentially mass incarcerate an entire nation in this case it's the nation of east turkestan a nation that's currently under the occupation of china it's also current it's also known as xinjiang which means new territory in chinese so there's a whole colonial um you know uh aspect to this as well um and so if i if those who are listening don't really know much about the situation or haven't heard of this nation i encourage you to look it up and uh do prior research i mean sorry do additional research because it is a lot of context to it but um i myself have over 90 relatives deemed as missing right now where and right now in east turkey sun china has detained millions of people in concentration camps and prisons um and how do they determine if people are sent to these camps and prisons it's through surveillance and through technology and what they what china has done is criminalized very basic very basic acts to basically claim these people are potential terrorists so china has now made um you know acts of worship a crime to the point where you can be sentenced to 15 to 20 15 to 25 years of prison for simply being somebody who prays five times a day or somebody who has a name like muhammad or fatima which are very conventional muslim names that itself is another reason for you to be sent to these camps and prisons and by the way these camps and prisons are aimed according to the chinese government to re-educate the mind claiming that these people are not normal they have a virus in their brain that needs to be cleansed that they are potential terrorists if we don't stop the root of the problem which is in this case islam or their ethnicity as an oil turkic person or any other turkic person then there's going to be issues arising they claim you know we're going to go around bombing people and killing innocent people so we got to get rid of that route and so in order to determine if you qualify for these camps they're they're basically you know logging into your smartphone or hacking into your smartphone uh you got to go around every time you go outside you got to carry your phone with you if you don't carry your phone with you you are deeply suspicious or like what do you you know what do you have to hide um they have facial recognition technology all over the streets every few blocks you see a camera a camera is surveilling you they now have technology to now detect your own emotions um so it's it's considered a crime or it's you're you're you're actually questioned if you show any type of sadness or uh discontent with the chinese government or just in general they'll be like why are you sad um this happens both inside the camps in prisons and outside um and now it's to the point where it's beyond just technology itself they actually have chinese officials living inside our homes to monitor their everyday activity to make sure they're not engaging in religion to assess their political views and they even have programs um encouraged or they even have programs by the government that basically encourage families to inform one another to inform um the government about activities of your mom your sister your brother your cousin um and and if you don't inform the government about what your own family member did then again you're deemed a suspicious and sent to a camp so right now i actually have extended family members in these camps one of my family members uh was sent to a camp in 2017 because he had went abroad um to the united states to attend my cousin's wedding um again we don't know where he is now if he's alive or dead um and you know what his uh what his what his life is going to look like in the next few years um and i want to point out that uh i mean i also want to point out that china is now using this technology to also um to also basically gather data of people's dnas iris scans uh they're forced to go into these health clinics and just get they get a bunch of again biometric data um that are very very uh um intrusive um and there is no and basically china claims it to be some kind of public health program but with no reason whatsoever given so they have millions of data on the uber people on other turkic people that basically would never on a normal basis give to anybody um so i just wanted to like kind of give a context that's right so how this how honestly deadly this technology can be and how governments are are um utilizing it thank you again i think um i'm so sorry about what is being done to your family and to other people in east turkestan um it's horrifying and i think but i think it's really good to talk about because it does show people the dangers of this technology and how it can be used um i'm sorry my laptop is dying i have to plug it in one second i don't want people to see my sweatpants there we go okay um yeah so so thank you i didn't and i know it's a lot and you kind of give us like a broad picture and some examples of what is happening over there i know too i didn't you've talked about you spent some time in turkey um talking with refugees who were fleeing east turkestan fleeing the chinese genocide and they told you stories about being watched by the chinese government you've also shared with me a couple stories about your family members how they've experienced being monitored or surveilled by chinese government officials would you mind sharing one or two of those stories with people so one story that i had mentioned um and i don't really bring it up much but i realize this is very very relevant my cousin would actually talk about he mentioned this um when he was living there he remembers putting himself on house arrest for 40 days so he did not leave the house for 40 days he said he almost went crazy and when we asked him why he was like it's because he was blacklisted by the chinese government because his his siblings were in the u.s

so they marked his id his identification so when you go and so by the way when people go outside they have to go through multiple checkpoints go through multiple cameras you have to carry your id on you so when you go through these uh checkpoints they're gonna ask who you are and immediately he was his system or his id was linked to um being considered dangerous or considered to be you know tied to some type of diasporic activity that could be linked to some kind of terrorism and so he talked about that experience of that being traumatizing and so scary to even step outside the house to even run a basic area so he could not do that um and people in turkey uh with regards to refugees in turkey there are people telling me just generally the feeling of being watched constantly like every action um to the point where they stay they could i think they would describe it as um being suffocating every day but not actually dying um so you know and and um the fear of their their i remember one mother was telling me how she would be so afraid to tell her son to go get milk from outside because she would be afraid that he would never come back because they would arbitrarily detain young males and put them in these camps in prison with absolutely no reason whatsoever um and using the technologies to kind of claim that these these kids are or these boys are somewhat dangerous or whatnot another example off the top of my head was just being uh one one mother talked about how she educated her kids islamically she wanted them to be raised as devout muslims and so she wanted them to have some kind of islamic education but obviously practicing religion practicing islam right now is completely forbidden um and doing so again equates you to being a terrorist so she basically had her kids go into a moving car um and had the t the teacher was in that car and they would just kind of drive around the town the neighborhood as they're you know doing their recitations and you know doing their lessons and that was their way of going to school basically it's you know a form of underground schooling where nobody is supposed to know um but yeah that was that was how she basically managed to educate her kids on a on a more religious basis and to me that blew my mind because i was like you know i was born and raised here went to sunday school you know go to attend islamic lectures you know with with pride and uh you know you go excitedly but these people are scared for their lives and they're trying to and now it's to the point where now people don't even want to either embark or they they're too um it's too much of a risk to even try attempt these things because of what we're seeing um uh and by the way these when i spoke to these refugees this is 2016 before the camps even started so you can imagine the fear that people are experiencing now seeing that millions of people in our nation are now actually being incarcerated and experiencing methods of genocide including force civilization torture and and other horrific occurrences iden what do you say to people that look at that and say well that that would never happen here that's extreme you know this is the us we we have rights um or people that maybe have a loss attitude towards things like surveillance technology well i don't i haven't done anything wrong you know like what do you say to people like that well i'm going to go back to jen's point earlier about how this technology again is not it's not meant it wasn't created in your favor it's not meant to uplift you it's actually meant to do the opposite which is oppress you and even if it doesn't seem like that openly in the beginning there are you know uh you are being targeted right so even if you're not necessarily doing anything wrong um the government whoever is surveilling you can find something to be like hey you did this little action what does this mean what and then you know go from there to question you and basically kind of criminalize everything every little thing you do until you uh uh you know are essentially forced to confess for something you never did or to just claim that you know you have uh some kind of dangerous mindset like the chinese government uses as an excuse you know to and to lock you up or to you know god forbid punish your family or punish you or just honestly surveil you for the rest of your um uh for the for further your remaining time and all a lot of times unknowingly you wouldn't even know that you're being watched by the government so again this this this technology is not meant for us uh it's not um again it's it's it's uh inherently biased and it's apparently meant to um uh further oppress a weaker a weaker population i think that would be my response i don't know if you guys have others yeah no that's i asked this question because you things that you said to me in the past about like your frustration sometimes with people in the us being like everything's you know everything's fine here you know we don't need to we're looking at china like this is an extreme example it's like but that's stuff not on the same scale but that stuff has happened in the us as you've brought up as jen has brought up um the u.s government since its inception has surveilled you know black americans and infringed on their constitutional rights and spied on them and muslim communities so it does happen here it is happening here and if you want to live in a democracy and that's right we should all care about um and that actually leads me to my next question which is for jen you know and this is probably something you all could talk to but the muslim community is perhaps the most surveilled community in the us in terms of like modern surveillance technology um because of course 911 has been used to justify putting people including children on things like no-fly list list watch list the fbi as we know has for years infiltrated and spied on muslims in their houses of worship for no other reason than the fact that they're muslim law enforcement has racially and religiously profiled the muslim community for decades now et cetera et cetera i'm just wondering jen if you can like i was thinking how is this still going on and how is this legal i mean i think so i think brianna can also answer this question but yeah you're absolutely right i mean the dangers of surveillance and privacy invasions have particularly been salient for the muslim community because the muslim community is one of the most surveilled communities in the u.s and as briana mentioned earlier with passage of the patriot act weeks after 9 11 and other surveillance programs that were launched shortly thereafter these sort of programs enabled so many of the surveillance abuses that have directly harmed muslim communities as well as arab communities and anyone who could possibly be conceived uh as being muslim even if they're not um the patriot act legitimized invasive suspicionless and discriminatory profiling of our already oversurveilled communities and even after a decade after 9 11 as brienne mentioned the muslim community was being illegally targeted by the nypd whose officers used powerful alpr technology to collect photos and license plate numbers of people at mosques and warrantlessly surveilled innocent community members um you know if that wasn't legal you know that's not legal that was struck down as illegal but that doesn't remedy the harms that were done and continue to be done on the muslim community because of these awful policies that further entrenched racial and religious profiling you know so um i i think another reason a lot of what should be illegal is continuing is because of the power of new artificial intelligence-based technologies and automated decision-making systems that use proxies for um for data for data points and variables that that should not be used so um even if you know you're not specifically for example explicitly targeting the muslim community or a specific member of the bipark community you can use proxies that that that showcase very clearly different characteristics uh that may be used for targeting by police departments by government agencies so um it's it's that more that much more important that we have really strong data privacy laws but also laws that outlaw discrimination via um these sort of systems that because right now it's really hard to hold these systems accountable that continue to discriminate against people um but very secretly and in very unaccountable ways can i add on to that point well before we i want to ask for some clarification from the people who aren't experts on this what do we mean by proxy like what is an example of something being used as a proxy that is an excellent question um so by proxy it means something that um seems relatively innocuous like a variable that seems relatively innocuous but actually indicates something else so um for example you might not think that from just by looking at a zip code or a census or census block data you could immediately tell the race of somebody but in many cases you can or you can use a combination of really um seemingly innocuous data points like what what shampoo do you buy um what store do you visit plus who's your friend and then when you put those together you can create a really intimate profile of somebody's life and that's what makes it really hard to often pinpoint discrimination and who's doing it you know because these algorithms or these um computers right these calculate these formulas that that make decisions and um tell police where to allocate their resources or um what credit score to give someone um they're shrouded in secrecy often in um uh they're and because they're shrouded in secrecy they're unaccountable and even if they discriminate it's hard to say who did it um did the machine did it did you do it even if the machine did it how do we hold it accountable we don't even know what's in the black so-called black box um so that's kind of what i mean by proxy i see that's fascinating thank you for that explanation i know you have something you want to add i was just going to in response to your question about you know it's 2021 how are we still getting away with this how is this you know considered okay and i was just going to touch on the fact that one of the other ways besides everything that jen mentioned that this is still happening is through the framing of you know we want to protect muslim communities from radicals that might you know harm them or give them a bad name we want to make sure that that we know that everyone you know generally in the muslim community is is good people and we support them when we want to protect them so it's even more important that we root out these these radical elements and that becomes the basis for things like cbe programs countering violent extremism programs and that is money coming from the federal government most of the time um the the department of homeland security um more than anywhere else and a lot of times that money is going to non-profits it's going to universities it's going to to places within the community that are then supposed to spy on the community and you know one of the things that that really struck me during the pandemic and you know all schooling going virtual is that you know universities could be could be monitoring students students actions and also being paid to root out you know extremism but when extremism is defined by these completely innocuous non-data-driven characteristics like how long someone spends on the internet or how many times a day they pray or you know who they're they're talking to things like that that are just that that are so innocuous but are now being mapped and collected and then reported the the danger of programs like that just grew exponentially with the with the pandemic in my opinion and that's something that i've been really concerned about um and i think that's something you know it became very large during the obama administration and it's something that we're starting to see a rise in again even since the beginning of the biden administration you know now we're not seeing quite the the explicit islamophobia and and you know rooting out of terrorism that we were hearing in discourse from trump but we now have this other framing where you know no we're doing this to help you and you know i think that's something to be aware of and um just just to keep in mind as well it's more civilizing that perpetuates it thank you for that brown uh yeah gosh so much to i feel like we could talk for hours but we don't have hours we have six minutes left so i'm going to move this along but jen you alluded to this earlier in the conversation um you know it's 2021 these technologies have been developed and they've been around for over a decade now if not decades um and they're used in so many parts of our lives so many parts of the country in both public and private sectors it feels like it's just in the fabric of everything we also live in you know one of the biggest tech cities in the nation with uh tech giants like amazon google and microsoft what do you and this is for both of you um or all of you what do you say to people that say that it's too late to close pandora's box at this point like this is just the way of the future we gotta accept it i think that is creating a future that sort of belief perpetuates a future we probably don't want to see um our rights here in the u.s are deeply connected with um people's human rights all across the world some of the biggest tech companies that create surveillance devices for government agencies around the world you know our us-based companies right like microsoft and amazon are two of the biggest developers of facial recognition technologies um we i think we have to start questioning the assumption and pushing back on the assumption that technology is inevitable if we want to create a future in which technology is really created by people who have historically been disproportionately surveilled and harmed by technologies then we can't just accept what tech companies are telling us which is that technology is great it'll help our all our lives you know the the benefits are worth more than the cost it'll make your lives easier we have to be asking who gets to define the costs and who gets to define what benefits are and and are those who are being harmed being um uh being supported in in highlighting those harms and bringing those up when we talk about those costs and benefits i think that one step people can take is when they see uh when they see for example here in seattle um where i'm based we have a log called the seattle surveillance ordinance that requires agencies to get approval before they acquire any new surveillance technology if you have such a law in your jurisdiction or you have similar sort of regulations that that allow for some public scrutiny to happen around technologies you should be contacting your policy makers to ask them questions about you know what are the impacts about these technologies have you actually talked with the people who are likely to be most impacted by these surveillance tools i think just starting to question is really really important otherwise tech companies and government agencies who have a lot more power and influence within legislatures will be shaping these conversations um so that's why i'm really really um grateful to the work that care washington does that other partners within the tech equity coalition do because that is a work highlighting the history of surveillance highlighting um others voices like that is the work we do to push back against this assumption that was really long-winded but i know that was great and i was i was gonna say like and literally like you know i don't i feel like talking about these tech companies you can i'm sorry my baby is screaming you might hear ezra screaming sorry guys um my husband's watching him i didn't leave him or anything um but we should feel empowered because you're right jen like if we don't do anything automatically they're gonna do what they do the people with power the tech companies government they're gonna do what they want to do but like literally we just had this huge victory in king county with you know the second largest tech city after san francisco amazon google all these powerful powerful companies um with millions or billions of dollars and we had a unanimous vote to ban facial recognition technology that's huge and that is directly because of the work of the women here today not me but you guys and other you know community activists and community groups who've been doing this work day after day i don't think people see that but like there is a coalition of people out there who this is what they do and they are protecting us and fighting for the rest of us and i think that we should all be just really encouraged by that what about some things people can do um let's talk about like action that people can take here in washington state that um helps protect civil rights or pushes back on some of this tech surveillance and then i did i want to ask you as well about uh what people can do either to to learn more and educate themselves on the genocide that is that is happening to the uyghurs and or anything that people can do to take action to put pressure on the chinese government or even our elected officials so first jen and brianna do you have any action items that people can take today yeah absolutely um i would say just generally speaking one of the best action items people can take is just fighting apathy fighting finding that that feeling of inevitability because the more that we we chalk this up as to something as something that's just we live with this it's inevitable we have to deal with this the more that you know governments can abuse it and the more that that capitalism can can co-opt it and abuse it as well and it's just it's not inevitable we we can fight it um so awareness is the first part and uh you know a very tangible thing that we've been working on with the tech equity coalition over the last year is developing a really robust data privacy law that would apply statewide and you know we we made a great showing this year and we we did stop what we believed to be a much more harmful corporate friendly data privacy law this year which was just a really huge win but we are hoping to gain a lot more ground with the people's privacy act going forward next year and you know you can talk to your representatives and let them know that you do care you know one of the things that we heard in in meetings with elected officials was i i don't care if i get targeted ads this is not harmful i don't see what the big deal is are people actually upset about this so what you can do is show them show them that you do care show them that that you're not satisfied with this being the status quo and when we speak up when we show them that this is an issue that matters to us then they're going to have to sit up and take action and i i think that's you know a huge first step awesome thank you brianna did you have anything to add i think brianna summed it up super well but i'll point to um a few resources that folks can look at um we have developed with a critical platform studies group a toolkit called the algorithmic equity toolkit that provides a list of questions people can start to ask policy makers also a flowchart you can kind of look at to understand what is an automated decision system or a surveillance tool um also data for black lives recently came out with an excellent report um about data capitalism which i think is just wonderful so i highly encourage folks to take a look at that um and uh and i yeah i think brianna just said it super well fighting apathy um just staying engaged just questioning assumptions um but honestly just tuning in to these probably these um uh live chats every week and just stay engaged with community members who have very important things to say is is also a big part of the fight thank you jen who what was that first tool box that you mentioned it's called the algorithmic equity toolkit so i'll i'll drop um a link in the chat um or email folks so um you have those resources okay great this is through aclu all we're gonna link it in the comments okay i'm gonna send this to katie so katie can put it in the comments you can also follow discourse on twitter at the hashtag realprivacy4wa um that is the hashtag that we used throughout the legislative session um to track the the privacy fight and i imagine that we will continue to use that um with the tyco korea coalition and other allies that are working on this fight awesome thank you okay aiden can you talk about what people can do if they want to learn more about um what's happening in east turkestan and if there's any action items that we can take yeah so i'll try to keep this quick because i know we're over time this is our longest episode ever but it's a lot to talk about a lot to cover um so if you want to learn more about what's happening there are a lot of online resources out there um i would say just honestly even googling it now brings up a lot of reports articles testimonies about what is happening testimonies by current by former camp survivors and um political prisoners people who will flood the region um and there was actually uh this past week there was a little tribunal where people were coming in and giving testimony as us that they were experiencing uh so i encourage everyone to really listen to these stories because i think there's a there's also generally a lot of um genocide deniers out there who claim that a lot of what is being stated is a product of western propaganda and that this is just the way west way of trying to bash china rather than actually listening to the oppressed people themselves and and having them talk about uh their experiences um so i would encourage you to look into that data to look into the information and really educate yourself also look into that read into the history of the circus then because this is something that is uh also systematically being erased by the chinese government you know they don't make this information available um understanding that this is part of a larger occupation that has taken place since most recently most recently since 1949 just like tibet for example a lot of people don't know that um understanding that we are turkic people with our own distinct ethnicity culture language et cetera so i guess the first yeah the first thing here is education and if you go to save oil.org s-a-v-e-u-i-g-h-u-r-dot-org that website lists a bunch of resources that you can access to you know action items um you know we're actually calling on people to boycott certain companies that are now um that source are sourced from uh little forced labor so a lot of these detainees of these camps are now being uh being uh turned into modern day slaves and so there are a lot of american companies a lot of global companies that we love to buy from that are actually sourcing the cotton and a lot of the products from there to name a few uh including zara apple um uh there were even like some companies that we had called up before yeah nike adidas h m formerly uh you know kind of admitted to it and then they apologize so there were some companies that actually responded and said that we're not going to do it anymore but you uh tommy hilfiger ralph lauren oh my god murders which is like the biggest baby supplying i feel like i feel like the most popular uh company for baby clothes um 84 and by the way 84 of china's cotton actually comes from eastern sun where they're using those that that slavery to to basically uh continue doing what they're doing so just kind of like there's a lot of resources out there that will kind of go through that but those are just you know some off the top of my head um also calling your congressperson to support the oil forced labor act um and because that has not been um you know formally signed by the president um essentially that is going to prevent uh forced labor goods from entering the united states um so that will be that's a huge step forward in terms of local advocacy that you can do um and also just educating people in your community um really just and also amplifying the fact that this is a genocide um this is nothing less and it's happening very happening very very swiftly and if we don't take action now um including with what you know jen and brianna mentioned regarding facial technology uh you know we may see a whole nation wiped out very very soon and we're already starting to see that unfortunately a lot of it has taken place but um you know with it all comes down to individual action at the end of the day too thank you right and um we will was it saveuger.org yeah i can uh type that in okay thanks we'll put that in the comments too um i think that's a great i've been there it's a great hub for like from there you can kind of branch out thank you everyone so much for being part of this conversation today i know this is our longest episode but it was a really big topic we could probably talk for hours about all of this so i really appreciate your time your expertise your individual passions and the work that you you're all doing around these um separate but interconnected issues and we're actually next week we're gonna we're not gonna have our path forward because one of our team members we're doing a baby shower for her so we're prioritizing the baby shower um but the following week we will have an episode and the july 1st episode i'm really excited we're going to have marcus greene um the founder of south seattle emerald former seattle times journalist he's going to be joining us to talk about community journalism the shifting landscape of media and also what his his own path into journalism which was a bit non-traditional so very excited for that thank you all again so much thank you thank you all yeah nice to meet you jen great talking with you

2021-06-15 01:47

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