Among global movements to reckon with police powers, a new report from UK research group No Tech For Tyrants unveils how police use surveillance technology to abuse power around the world.
From No Tech for Tyrants on November 7, 2022
Diana Sardjoe writes for Fair Trials about how her sons were profiled by the Amsterdam police on the basis of risk models (a form of predictive policing) called ‘Top600’ (for adults) and ‘Top400’ for people aged 12 to 23). Because of this profiling her sons were “continually monitored and harassed by police.”
Continue reading “The devastating consequences of risk based profiling by the Dutch police”
When I found out my sons were placed on lists called the ‘Top 600’ and the ‘Top 400’ by the local Amsterdam council, I thought I was finally getting help. The council says the purpose of these lists, created by predictive and profiling systems, is to identify and give young people who have been in contact with the police “extra attention from the council and organisations such as the police, local public health service and youth protection,” to prevent them from coming into contact with police again. This could not have been further from the truth.
By Diana Sardjoe for Medium on September 28, 2022
Following the terror attack in Denmark of 2015, the state amped upits data analytics capabilities for counter-terrorism within the police and their Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET). Denmark, a country which hosts an established, normalised, and widely accepted public surveillance infrastructure – justified in service of public health and greater centralisation and coordination between government and municipalities in delivery of citizen services – also boasts an intelligence service with extraordinarily expansive surveillance capabilities, and the enjoyment of wide exemptions from data protection regulations.
From No Tech for Tyrants on July 13, 2020
The Algemene Rekenkamer (Netherlands Court of Audit) looked into nine different algorithms used by the Dutch state. It found that only three of them fulfilled the most basic of requirements.
Continue reading “Shocking report by the Algemene Rekenkamer: state algorithms are a shitshow”
Investigative journalism of the NRC brought to light that the Dutch NCTV (the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security) uses fake social media accounts to track Dutch activists. The agency also targets activists working in the social justice or anti-discrimination space and tracks their work, sentiments and movements through their social media accounts. This is a clear example of how digital communication allows governments to intensify their surveillance and criminalisation of political opinions outside the mainstream.
Continue reading “The Dutch government wants to continue to spy on activists’ social media”
An alarming report outlines an extensive pattern of racial discrimination within the city’s police department.
By Sam Richards and Tate Ryan-Mosley for MIT Technology Review on April 27, 2022
Author Tarcízio Silva on how algorithmic racism exposes the myth of “racial democracy.”
By Alex González Ormerod and Tarcízio Silva for Rest of World on April 22, 2022
Our own Jill Toh recently presented at a symposium on the use of technology and how it intersects with racism in the context of housing and policing. She spoke on a panel organised in the contex of the World Roma Day 2022 titled Technolution: Yearned-for Hopes or Old Injustices?.
Continue reading “Technology, Racism and Justice at Roma Day 2022”
In an official parliamentary investigative committee, the Dutch Senate is investigating how new regulation or law-making processes can help combat discrimination in the Netherlands. The focus of the investigative committee is on four broad domains: labour market, education, social security and policing. As a part of these wide investigative efforts the senate is hearing from a range of experts and civil society organisations. Most notably, one contribution stands out from the perspective of racist technology: Nadia Benaissa from Bits of Freedom highlighted the dangers of predictive policing and other uses of automated systems in law enforcement.
Continue reading “Bits of Freedom speaks to the Dutch Senate on discriminatory algorithms”
Traffic cameras that are used to automatically hand out speeding tickets don’t look at the colour of the person driving the speeding car. Yet, ProPublica has convincingly shown how cameras that don’t have a racial bias can still have a disparate racial impact.
Continue reading “Racist Technology in Action: “Race-neutral” traffic cameras have a racially disparate impact”
De Eerste Kamer doet onderzoek naar de effectiviteit van wetgeving tegen discriminatie. Wij mochten afgelopen vrijdag de parlementsleden vertellen over discriminatie en algoritmen. Hieronder volgt de kern van ons verhaal.
By Nadia Benaissa for Bits of Freedom on February 8, 2022
In the context of the use of crime predictive software in policing, Chris Gilliard reiterated in WIRED how data-driven policing systems and programs are fundamentally premised on the assumption that historical data about crimes determines the future.
Continue reading “Predictive policing constrains our possibilities for better futures”
So long as algorithms are trained on racist historical data and outdated values, there will be no opportunities for change.
By Chris Gilliard for WIRED on January 2, 2022
Refusing to see like a state.
By J. Khadijah Abdurahman and SA Smythe for Logic on December 25, 2022
Hiring sociocultural workers to correct bias overlooks the limitations of these underappreciated fields.
By Elena Maris for WIRED on January 12, 2022
The Markup and Gizmodo, in a recent investigative piece, analysed 5.9 million crime predictions by PredPol, crime prediction software used by law enforcement agencies in the U.S. The results confirm the racist logics and impact driven by predictive policing on individuals and neighbourhoods. As compared to Whiter, middle- and upper-income neighbourhoods, Black, Latino and poor neighbourhoods were relentlessly targeted by the software, which recommended increased police presence. The fewer White residents who lived in an area – and the more Black and Latino residents who lived there – the more likely PredPol would predict a crime there. Some neighbourhoods, in their dataset, were the subject of more than 11,000 predictions.
Continue reading “Predictive policing reinforces and accelerates racial bias”
The Dutch Data Protection Authority, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP), has fined the Dutch Tax Agency 2.75 milion euros for discriminatory data processing as part of the child benefits scandal.
Continue reading “Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) fines the tax agency for discriminatory data processing”
De Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP) legt de Belastingdienst een boete op van 2,75 miljoen euro. Dit doet de AP omdat de Belastingdienst jarenlang de (dubbele) nationaliteit van aanvragers van kinderopvangtoeslag op onrechtmatige, discriminerende en daarmee onbehoorlijke wijze heeft verwerkt. Dit zijn ernstige overtredingen van de privacywet, de Algemene verordening gegevensbescherming (AVG).
From Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens on December 7, 2021
De politie vergeleek telefoongegevens van asielzoekers met strafrechtelijke informatie. Dat „rijmde” niet met de privacywet, aldus de politie zelf.
By Martin Kuiper and Romy van der Poel for NRC on December 7, 2021
Millions of crime predictions left on an unsecured server show PredPol mostly avoided Whiter neighborhoods, targeted Black and Latino neighborhoods.
By Aaron Sankin, Annie Gilbertson, Dhruv Mehrotra and Surya Mattu for The Markup on December 2, 2021
When you or I seek out evidence to back up our existing beliefs and ignore the evidence that shows we’re wrong, it’s called “confirmation bias.” It’s a well-understood phenomenon that none of us are immune to, and thoughtful people put a lot of effort into countering it in themselves.
By Cory Doctorow for Pluralistic on December 2, 2021
Surveillance systems, no matter the intention, will always exist to serve power.
By Chris Gilliard for WIRED on November 14, 2021
Voyager, which pitches its tech to police, has suggested indicators such as Instagram usernames that show Arab pride can signal inclination towards extremism.
By Johana Bhuiyan and Sam Levin for The Guardian on November 17, 2021
In its report of the 25 of October, Amnesty slams the Dutch government’s use of discriminatory algorithms in the child benefits schandal (toeslagenaffaire) and warns that the likelihood of such a scandal occurring again is very high. The report is aptly titled ‘Xenophobic machines – Discrimination through unregulated use of algorithms in the Dutch childcare benefits scandal’ and it conducts a human rights analysis of a specific sub-element of the scandal: the use of algorithms and risk models. The report is based on the report of the Dutch data protection authority and several other government reports.
Continue reading “Amnesty’s grim warning against another ‘Toeslagenaffaire’”
Technology rarely invents new societal problems. Instead, it digitizes them, supersizes them, and allows them to balloon and duplicate at the speed of light. That’s exactly the problem we’ve seen with location-based, crowd-sourced “public safety” apps like Citizen.
By Matthew Guariglia for Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on October 21, 2021
Chris Gilliard grew up with racist policing in Detroit. He sees a new form of oppression in the tech we use every day.
By Chris Gilliard and Will Oremus for Washington Post on September 17, 2021
Brands originally built on racist stereotypes have existed for more than a century. Now racial prejudice is also creeping into the design of tech products and algorithms.
From YouTube on September 15, 2021
In 2016, ProPublica investigated the fairness of COMPAS, a system used by the courts in the United States to assess the likelihood of a defendant committing another crime. COMPAS uses a risk assessment form to assess this risk of a defendant offending again. Judges are expected to take this risk prediction into account when they decide on sentencing.
Continue reading “Racist Technology in Action: Predicting future criminals with a bias against Black people”
Chicago’s predictive policing program told a man he would be involved with a shooting, but it couldn’t determine which side of the gun he would be on. Instead, it made him the victim of a violent crime.
By Matt Stroud for The Verge on May 24, 2021
The enduring idea that technology will be able to solve many of the existing problems in society continues to permeate across governments. For the EUObserver, Fieke Jansen and Sarah Chander illustrate some of the problematic and harmful uses of ‘predictive’ algorithmic systems by states and public authorities across the UK and Europe.
Continue reading “Racist and classist predictive policing exists in Europe too”
“Far from a ‘human-centred’ approach, the draft law in its current form runs the risk of enabling Orwellian surveillance states,” writes @sarahchander from @edri.
By Sarah Chander for Euronews on April 22, 2021
This week the EU announces new regulations on artificial intelligence. It needs to set clear limits on the most harmful uses of AI, including predictive policing, biometric mass surveillance, and applications that exacerbate historic patterns of racist policing.
By Fieke Jansen and Sarah Chander for EUobserver on April 19, 2021
The Rekenkamer Rotterdam (a Court of Audit) looked at how the city of Rotterdam is using predictive algorithms and whether that use could lead to ethical problems. In their report, they describe how the city lacks a proper overview of the algorithms that it is using, how there is no coordination and thus no one takes responsibility when things go wrong, and how sensitive data (like nationality) were not used by one particular fraud detection algorithm, but that so-called proxy variables for ethnicity – like low literacy, which might correlate with ethnicity – were still part of the calculations. According to the Rekenkamer this could lead to unfair treatment, or as we would call it: ethnic profiling.
Continue reading “Rotterdam’s use of algorithms could lead to ethnic profiling”
An already infamous example of racist technology is Amazon’s facial recognition system ‘Rekognition’ that had an enormous racial and gender bias. Researcher and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League Joy Buolawini (the ‘poet of code‘), together with Deborah Raji, meticulously reconstructed how accurate Rekognition was in identifying different types of faces. Buolawini and Raji’s study has been extremely consequencial in laying bare the racism and sexism in these facial recognition systems and was featured in the popular Coded Bias documentary.
Continue reading “Racist Technology in Action: Amazon’s racist facial ‘Rekognition’”
As the European Commission prepares its legislative proposal on artificial intelligence, human rights groups are watching closely for clear rules to limit discriminatory AI. In practice, this means a ban on biometric mass surveillance practices and red lines (legal limits) to stop harmful uses of AI-powered technologies.
By Sarah Chander for European Digital Rights (EDRi) on March 16, 2021
Charlton McIlwain, author of the book Black Software, takes a good hard look at IBM in a longread for Logic magazine.
Continue reading “IBM is failing to increase diversity while successfully producing racist information technologies”
When a secretive start-up scraped the internet to build a facial-recognition tool, it tested a legal and ethical limit — and blew the future of privacy in America wide open.
By Kashmir Hill for The New York Times on March 18, 2021
Race, tech, and medicine: Remarks from Dr. Dorothy Roberts and Dr. Ruha Benjamin.
By Dorothy Roberts, Kim M Reynolds and Ruha Benjamin for Our Data Bodies Project on August 15, 2020
Dutch tax authorities used algorithms to automate an austere and punitive war on low-level fraud—the results were catastrophic.
By Gabriel Geiger for VICE on March 1, 2021
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