Codesigning Countersurveillance

Presented at HOPE X (2014), July 19, 2014, 10 p.m. (60 minutes)

Recent revelations about massive data collection by the National Security Administration have brought sustained popular attention to the rise of pervasive surveillance systems. We have entered a moment of important dialogue about the surveillance state, the role and ethics of technology companies, the potential harms of mass surveillance to civil liberties and human rights, and the need for interventions involving technology, policy, and social practice. At the same time, the voices of communities that have long been most explicitly targeted by surveillance have been largely excluded from the debate. There are multiple, overlapping surveillance regimes, and they disproportionately target people of color, low-income, and working people, as well as activists in general. State, military, and corporate surveillance regimes are growing in scope, power, and impunity, not only in countries such as Iran, Syria, and China, but also within liberal democracies such as the United States, India, and Brazil. This talk will focus on projects and process from the MIT Civic Media Codesign Studio (codesign.mit.edu), which works with community-based organizations to develop civic media projects that connect to grounded strategies for social transformation.


Presenters:

  • Sasha Costanza-Chock
    Sasha Costanza-Chock is a scholar, activist, and mediamaker who works in the areas of social movement communication, community-led design, and media justice. He is Assistant Professor of Civic Media at MIT's Comparative Media Studies/Writing, and is a faculty affiliate at the Center for Civic Media, the MIT Open Documentary Lab, and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He cofounded VozMob, leads the Vojo team, and sits on the board of Allied Media Projects.
  • Emi Kane
    Emi Kane has a background as a community organizer, educator, and journalist. She is a former National Steering Committee member for INCITE, a women of color anti-violence network, where she is a current member of the Media Working Group and works on the digital archives and oral history project. In Oakland, she has been leading community forums on violence prevention and alternatives to street-level surveillance and policing. She also works with educators and students to develop popular education tools that address the intersections between surveillance and social movements, focusing on the ways in which those issues impact communities of color, poor people, and LGBTQ communities.

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