Title

Description

Facilitators

Room

Militarism as the Common Thread: How the Military-Industrial Complex Equips, Justifies, and Props Up the Police State

Participants will gain a better understanding of how the Department of Defense aligns with military corporations and tech companies, designs equipment, software, and tactics in endless wars overseas, and soon after deploys them domestically at the southern border and in Black, brown, and indigenous communities across the country. The workshop will use a combination of case studies, participatory exercises, and mapping to gain a shared understanding of how pervasive this system is and where we can begin to push back.

About Face

Classroom 1

Risk Assessment Algorithms are Here. Now, What do We do About Them?

From pretrial decision-making to immigration detention, from Amazon warehouses to privileges in prison, algorithms are deciding who gets access to the basic dignities and freedoms of life, and who doesn’t. Despite their ubiquity, they are shrouded in mystery — and only now are our communities coming together to reign in their use. How can we understand, control, and defeat these algorithms? After discussing how these tools work — focusing on their impact in the pretrial detention process — join us to experiment and co-create strategies combating algorithmic tools wherever we find them deployed unjustly.

Media Mobilizing Project

Classroom 2

No Digital Prisons: Challenging E-carceration in the Criminal Legal System

This workshop will focus on how e-carceration, especially electronic monitoring, is expanding and transforming our conception of punishment and freedom. We will discuss the impact of e-carceration on individuals awaiting trial, those who have completed prison sentences, and youth caught up in the system. We will explore this impact at the level of individuals, households and communities, stressing disproportionate effects on people of color. In concluding we will consider: how do we push back against this technology, how do we contest the notion “at least it’s better than jail,” how do we sync this struggle with notions of racial justice and abolition.

MediaJustice

Pavillion

Who’s Behind ICE: The Tech and Data Companies Fueling Deportations

Tech is transforming immigration policing; technology companies are playing an increasingly central role in facilitating the expansion and acceleration of arrests, detentions, and deportations. ICE now has access to information from private data brokers, international databases, facial recognition technology, licence plate readers, and much more. Come learn about what data and information ICE is able to collect through surveillance, and how we can use this knowledge can help our communities prepare for and fight back against ICE.

Mijente, 

Immigrant Defense Project

Classroom 5

Tracking Bodies: Fighting Biometric Surveillance

It used to be that law enforcement technology tracked your technology: your car, your phone, your computer. The latest wave of law enforcement techniques track your body: your face, your voice, the way you move. It is much harder to counter this kind of biometric tracking. In this workshop, you will learn about (a) how police and the FBI use face recognition in law enforcement operations; (b) how ICE uses face recognition to find and detain immigrants; (c) how jails scan phone calls made from people behind bars to identify and secretly archive the voices of detained people and those who call them; and (d) the technologies being introduced into jails that can covertly capture and store facial biometric data from people on both sides of jail walls.

Community Justice Exchange

Center on Privacy and Technology

Classroom 3

Say No to Equal Opportunity Surveillance

What happens when you ask social media corporations to police “hate speech” or remove violent content online? How could you possibly oppose countering violent extremism (CVE) in the face of rising white nationalism? Our desire to prevent violence has propped up the policing of Muslims through facially neutral programs like CVE. How can we fight white supremacy and discuss violence without expanding the surveillance state?

Muslim Justice League

Classroom 4