Five key stories from 2015.
A look back at five key stories on the intersection of social justice, civil rights, and technology.
Social justice depends on how governments and corporations make the key decisions that reshape peoples’ lives. But, increasingly, decisions in areas like housing, lending, health, employment, and criminal justice are made with new tools and methods that simply didn’t exist when core civil rights protections were first established. In order to secure those civil rights protections for the future, we have to ensure that these new systems and technologies — no less than the older ones they replace — reflect our shared values.
At Equal Future—a publication by Upturn — we work to lay the foundation for this new, important conversation, mapping the changing landscape within which the struggle for social justice and civil rights continues. And before the new year begins, we think it’s appropriate to look back at some key stories from 2015, all of which will certainly continue to be part of the conversation in 2016:
New apps like Uber and Airbnb are efficient and innovative. But, as Tom Slee argues in a newly published book, they also entice people to break or avoid rules, argues. Is it time for conscious consumerism in the Gig Economy?
From the piece:
At their best, these new apps can give consumers affordable, convenient, and in some cases more interesting or rewarding experiences, all while providing flexible, incremental work to people who badly need it. But as consumers, we should not judge these apps solely in terms of the immediate experience they offer each of us. Instead, we need to recognize that some old rules are being newly and widely ignored, and some new ones may yet need to be written.
What happens when people search for short-term loans on Google or Bing? Today, they see ads from entities called “lead generators,” marketers that offer payday loans. Lead generators are central the online payday lending industry, and they often advertise to consumers living in states where payday lending is illegal. These companies are the focus of Upturn’s new report, Led Astray.
From the piece:
We searched Google and Bing for keywords indicating financial distress (like “need a loan fast,” or “need money to pay rent”) from internet protocol (IP) addresses originating from states with strong payday lending laws — states like Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania.) Along the way, we also double-checked to make sure that these search engines weren’t inferring our location from our Wi-Fi connections or other sources … we learned that payday lead generators are using platforms like Google and Bing to show payday loan ads nationwide, even in states that legally restrict both payday lending and payday lead generation. (This was somewhat surprising, given that both advertisers and ad platforms can choose to restrict the geographic reach of certain ads.)
An in-depth report from USA Today’s Brad Heath highlighted how local law enforcement in Baltimore increasingly turn to sophisticated — and secretive — high-tech surveillance tools called “stingrays” to investigate and solve petty crimes. The revelations lend yet more evidence to a national trend: the use of counterterrorism tools and funds for local law enforcement purposes.
From the piece:
This is part of a broader pattern of surveillance mission creep: Oakland was poised to use counterterrorism tools and funds to create a 24-hour surveillance “Domain Awareness Center” to support its broader community surveillance efforts. Federal authorities relied on drugs as a rationale to justify NSA-style dragnet surveillance, secretly paying AT&T to build a massive database of calling records for domestic law enforcement use. And fusion centers — which were initially created in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and combine federal, state, and local surveillance data for counterrorism efforts — now largely work in support for local law enforcement.
Earlier this year, The Intercept reported that the Department of Homeland Security monitors the tweets and other public social media activity of #BlackLivesMatter activists. Given that these postings are public, should law enforcement be free to collect and analyze them en masse? Or, do Fourth Amendment protections need to be updated for the digital era?
From the piece:
In light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Jones, Kevin Bankston and Ashkan Soltani argue that large-scale and low-cost surveillance technologies may deserve their own constitutional limits. When considering these new technologies in light of the Fourth Amendment, Bankston and Soltani offer a rough rule of thumb: “if the new tracking technique is an order of magnitude less expensive than the previous technique, the technique violates expectations of privacy and runs afoul of the Fourth Amendment.” The surveillance of the Black Lives Matter movement that The Intercept reported on might be just such an example: reproducing the same surveillance, but in person, would require dozens, if not hundreds, of police officers to physically monitor activists across multiple cities and states.
Earlier this year, a diverse coalition of 34 civil rights, media rights, and privacy groups released a set of civil rights principles on police-operated body-worn cameras. The principles aim to guide law enforcement policies to ensure that the cameras become tools for accountability, rather than instruments of injustice.
From the piece:
Ever since Ferguson, law enforcement agencies all across the country have begun outfitting their officers with body-worn cameras. The cameras bring hard tradeoffs. At best, they could help to hold police accountable, but they also risk intensifying surveillance, reducing privacy, and increasing disparities in law enforcement practices that impact the most heavily policed communities. There’s an active debate inside the social justice community about whether the cameras should be rolled out at all.
What’s clear today is that, for better or worse, these cameras are being rolled out rapidly in departments around the nation. There is an urgent need for basic guidance on how departments can use the cameras to strengthen, rather than weaken, civil rights.
Since the release of these principles, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and Upturn released Police Body Worn Cameras: A Policy Scorecard. The scorecard evaluates the body-worn camera policies of 25 local police departments on eight criteria, all derived from the Civil Rights Principles on Body Worn Cameras.
Be sure and checkout the scorecard, too:
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