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[DATACTIVE event] Democracy Under Siege: Digital Espionage and Civil Society Resistance, July 4

 

 

July 4th, 20.00 hrs @spui25, (TICKETS HERE)

The most recent US elections, during which hackers exposed political parties’ internal communications, revealed the devastating power of digital espionage. But election meddling is only one aspect of this growing phenomenon. From Mexico to Egypt and Vietnam, human rights organizations, journalists, activists and opposition groups have been targeted by digital attacks. How can civil society defend itself against such threats?

The DATACTIVE project (University of Amsterdam) invites you to hear from leading experts on questions of digital espionage, cybersecurity and the protection of human rights in new technological environments. This public event aims to provide a global view of digital threats to civil society and discuss what can be done to fight back.

Ron Deibert (University of Toronto) will present the work of the Citizen Lab, which has pioneered investigation into information controls, covert surveillance and targeted digital espionage of civil society worldwide. He will be in conversation with Seda Gürses (KU Leuven) and Nishant Shah (ArtEZ University of the Arts/Leuphana University).

Speakers

Ronald Deibert is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. The Citizen Lab undertakes interdisciplinary research at the intersection of global security, ICTs, and human rights. Deibert is the author of Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet (Random House: 2013), as well as numerous books, chapters, articles, and reports on Internet censorship, surveillance, and cyber security. He is a former founder and principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative (2003-2014) and a founder of Psiphon, a world leader in providing open access to the Internet.

Seda Gürses is an FWO post-doctoral fellow at COSIC/ESAT in the Department of Electrical Engineering at KU Leuven, Belgium. She works at the intersection of computer science, engineering and privacy activism, with a focus on privacy enhancing technologies. She studies conceptions of privacy and surveillance in online social networks, requirements engineering, software engineering and algorithmic discrimination and looks into tackling some of the shortcomings of the counter-surveillance movements in the US and EU.

Nishant Shah is the Dean of Graduate School at ArtEZ University of the Arts, The Netherlands, Professor of Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media at Leuphana University, Germany, and the co-founder of the Centre for Internet & Society, India. His work is informed by critical theory, political activism, and equality politics. He identifies as an accidental academic, radical humanist, and an unapologetic feminist, with particular interests in questions of life, love, and language. His current preoccupations are around digital learning and pedagogy, ethics and artificial intelligence, and being human in the face of seductive cyborgification.

This event is hosted by Spui25 and sponsored by the European Research Council (ERC) and the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA).

Stefania at the Future Forum of IG Metall, Berlin

On June 19, Stefania will deliver a talk at the Zukunftsforum (‘Future Forum’) of IG Metall, the dominant metalworkers’ union in Germany and Europe’s largest industrial union. Stefania has been asked to reflect on how digitalisation and datafication change the dynamics of solidarity today. Check out the program of the day.

AGENDA Future Forum IG Metall 19.6.2018_final_eng
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Guillén at the CRISP biannual Doctoral Training School

As every two years, the Center for Research into Information, Surveillance and Privacy offers a summer school focused on Surveillance Studies. This time, it is the turn of the University of St. Andrews (yes, that one where Kate and Edward fell in love! *sarcastic wink*) to host, from Monday 18 to Friday 22 June.

The one-week course will feature sessions on the intersection between surveillance and religion, activism, privacy, Freedom of Information, and a two-day intensive research proposal competition. The activities are coordinated by Prof. Kirstie Ball.

EDIT: The team Guillen was a part of won the research proposal competition, getting awarded 2.5 million euros of fake funding for a project called: “New Lateral Surveillance in Naming and Shaming Culture: The Impact of Viral Media on Liberal Democracies“. You can check the slides here.

[blog] Data by citizens for citizens

Author: Miren Gutierrez

In spite of what we know about how big data are employed to spy on us, manipulate us, lie to us and control us, there are still people who get excited by hype-generating narratives around social media influence, machine learning and business insights. At the other end of the spectrum, there is apocalyptic talk that preaches that we must become digital anchorites in small, secluded and secret cyber-cloisters.

Don’t get me wrong; I am a big fan of encryption and virtual private networks. And yes, the CEOs of the technology corporations have more resources than governments to understand social and individual realities. The consequence of this unevenness is evident because companies do not share their information unless forced or in exchange for something else. Thus, public representatives and citizens lose their capacity for action vis-à-vis private powers.

But precisely because of the severe imbalances in practices of dataveillance (van Dijck 2014) it is vital to consider alternative forms of data that enable the less powerful to act with agency (Poell, Kennedy, and van Dijck 2015) in the era of the so-called “data power”. While the debate on big data is hijacked by techno-utopians and techno-pessimists and the big data progress stories come from the private sector, little is being said about what ordinary people and non-governmental organisations do with data; namely, how data are created, amassed and used by alternative actors to come up with their own diagnoses and solutions.

hi

My new book Data activism and social change talks about how people and organised society are using the data infrastructure as a critical instrument in their quests. These people include fellow action-oriented researchers and number-churning practitioners and citizens generating new maps, platforms and alliances for a better world. And they are showing a high degree of ingenuity, against the odds.

The starting point of this book is an article in which Stefania Milan and I set the scene, link data activism to the tradition of citizens’ media and lay out the fundamental questions surrounding this new phenomenon (Milan and Gutierrez 2015).

Most of the thirty activists, practitioners and researchers I interviewed and forty plus organisations I observed for the book practice data activism in one way or another. In my analysis, I classify them in four not-so-neat boxes: These include skills transferrers, or organisations, such as DataKind, that transfer skills by deploying data scientists into non-governmental organisations so they can work together on projects. Other skills transferrers, for example, Medialab-Prado and Civio, create platforms and tools or generate the matchmaking opportunities for actors to meet and collaborate in data projects with social goals.

A second group –including catalysts such as the Open Knowledge Foundation— sponsor some of these endeavours. Journalism producers can include journalistic organisations such as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, or civil society organisations, such as Civio, providing analysis that can support campaigns and advocacy efforts.

missing_ship

This is a moment in the Western Africa’s Missing Fish map where irregular fish transshipments are being conducted in Senegal waters. See interactive map here.

Proper data activists take it further, securing in sheltered archives vital information and evidence of human rights abuses (i.e. The Syrian Archive); recreating stories of human suffering and abuse (i.e. Forensic Architecture’s “Liquid Traces”); tracking illegal fishing and linking it to development issues (i.e. “Western Africa’s Missing Fish”, co-led by me at the Overseas Development Institute); visualising evictions and mobilising crowds to stop them (i.e. in San Francisco and Spain); and mapping citizen data to produce verified and actionable information during humanitarian crises and emergencies (i.e. the “Ayuda Ecuador” application of the Ushahidi platform), to mention just a few.

This classification is offered as a heuristic tool to think more methodically about real cases of data activism, and also to guide efforts to generate more projects.

We know datasets and algorithms do not speak for themselves and are not neutral. Data cannot be raw (Gitelman 2013); data and metadata are “made” in processes that are “made” as well (Boellstorff 2013). That is, data are not to be treated as natural resources, inevitable and spontaneous, but as cultural resources that to be curated and stored. And the fact that the data infrastructure is employed in good causes does not abolish the prejudices and asymmetries present in datasets, algorithms, hardware and data processes. But the exciting thing is that even using flawed technology, these activists gets results.

But where do these activists get data from? Because data can be difficult to find…

How do activists get their hands on data?

Corporations do not usually give their data away, and the level of government openness is not fantastic. “Data is hard (or even impossible) to find online, 2) data is often not readily usable, 3) open licensing is rare practice and jeopardised by a lack of standards” (Global Open Data Index 2017). This lack of open access to public data is shocking when considering this is mostly information about how governments administer everyone’s resources and taxes.

So when governments and corporations do not open their data vaults, people get organised and generate their own data. This is the case of “Rede InfoAmazonia”, a project that maps water quality and quantity based on a network of sensors deployed by communities of the Brazilian Amazon. The map issues alarms to the community when water levels or quality surpass or fall behind a range of standard indicators.

In my book, I discuss five ways in which data activists and practitioners can get their hands on data: from the simplest to the most complex, 1) someone else (i.e. a whistle-blower) can offer them the data; 2) data activists can also resort to public data that can be acquired (i.e. automatic identification system signals captured by satellites from vessels) or are simply open; 3) they can generate communities to crowdsource citizen data; 4) they can appropriate data or resort to data scraping; and 5) they deploy drones and sensors to gather images or obtain data via primary research (i.e. surveys). Again, this taxonomy is offered as a tool to examine real cases.

Of them, crowdsourcing data can be a powerful process. The crowdsourced map set up using the Ushahidi platform in Haiti in 2010 tackled “key information gaps” in the early period of the response before large organisations were operative, providing geolocalised data to small non-governmental organisations that did not have a field presence, offering situational awareness and rapid information with high degree of accuracy, and enabling citizens’ decision-making, found an independent evaluation of the deployment (Morrow, Mock, and Papendieck 2011). The Haiti map marked a transformation in the way emergencies and crises are tackled, giving rise to digital humanitarianism.

forensic_architecture

Forensic Architecture’s Liquid Traces.

Other forms of obtaining data are quite impressive too. Forensic Architecture’s “Liquid Traces” employed AIS signals, heat signatures of the ships, radar signals and other surveillance technologies to demonstrate that the failure to save a group of 72 people who had been forced by armed Libyan soldiers on-board of an inflatable craft on March 27, 2011, was due to callousness, not the inability to locate them. Only nine would survive. Another organisation, WeRobotics, helps communities in Nepal to analyse and map vulnerability to landslides in a changing climate.

Alliances, maps and hybridisation

From the observation of how these organisations work, I have identified eleven traits that define data activists and organisations.

One interesting commonality is that data activists tend to work in alliances. This sounds quite commonsensical. Either the problems these activists are trying to analyse and solve are too big to tackle on their own (i.e. from a humanitarian crisis to climate change), or the datasets that they confront are too big (i.e. “Western Africa’s Missing Fish” and the ICIJ’s “Panama papers” processed terabytes of data). I cannot think of any data project that does not include some form of collaboration.

Ushahidi_map

The first Ushahidi map: Kenyan violence.

Another quality is that data activists often rely on maps as tools for analysis, coordination and mobilisation. Maps are objects bestowed with knowledge, power and influence (Denil 2011; Harley 1989; Hohenthal, Minoia, and Pellikka 2017). The rise of digital cartography, mobile media, data crowdsourcing platforms and geographic information systems reinforces the maps’ muscle. This trend overlaps with a growing interest in crisis and activist mapping, a practice that blends the capabilities of the geoweb with humanitarian assistance and campaigning. In the hands of people and organisations, maps have been a form of political counter-power (Gutierrez 2018). One example is Ushahidi’s first map (see map), which was set up in 2008 to bypass an information shutdown during the bloodbath that arose after the presidential elections in Kenya a year earlier, and to give voice to the anonymous victims. The deployment allowed victims to disseminate alternative narratives about the post-electoral violence.

The employment of maps is so usual in data activism that I have called this variety of data activism geoactivism –defined precisely by the way activists use digital cartography and often crowdsourced data to provide alternative narratives and spaces for communication and action. InfoAmazonia, an organisation dedicated to environmental issues and human rights in the Amazon region, is an example of another organisation specialised in visualising geolocalised data, in this case for journalism and advocacy. I defend the idea that this use of maps almost by default has generated a change in paradigm, standardising maps for humanitarianism and activism.

Vagabundos

Vagabundos de la chatarra, the book.

Besides, data activists usually do not have any qualms about mixing methods and tools from other trades. Not only many data organisations are hybrid –crossing the lines that separate journalism, advocacy, research and humanitarianism—, but they also combine repertoires of action from different areas. An example is “Los vagabundos de la chatarra”, a year-long project that includes comics journalism, a book, interactive maps, videos and a website to tell the stories of the people who gathered and sold scrap metal for a living on the edges of Barcelona during the economic crisis that started in 2007 (Gutierrez, Rodriguez, and Díaz de Guereñu 2018).

Civio, mentioned before, produces journalism, hosts data projects, advocates around issues such as transparency, corruption, health and forest fires. “España en llamas” is a project hatched at Civio that, for the first time in Spain, paints a comprehensive picture of fires. Civio also opens the data behind these projects.

The values that motivate these data activists include sharing knowledge, collaborating and inspiring processes of social change and justice, uncovering and providing undisputable evidence for them, and deploying collective action powered by indignation and also by hope. These data activists deserve more attention.

*A version of this blog has been published at Medium.

References

Boellstorff, Tom. 2013. ‘Making Big Data, in Theory’. First Monday 18 (10). http://firstmonday.org/article/view/4869/3750.

Denil, Mark. 2011. ‘The Search for a Radical Cartography’. Cartographic Perspectives 68. http://cartographicperspectives.org/index.php/journal/article/view/cp68-denil/14.

Gitelman, Lisa, ed. 2013. Raw Data Is an Oxymoron. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.

Global Open Data Index. 2017. ‘The GODI 2016/17 Report: The State Of Open Government Data In 2017’. https://index.okfn.org/insights/.

Gutiérrez, Miren. 2018. ‘Maputopias: Cartographies of Knowledge, Communication and Action in the Big Data Society – The Cases of Ushahidi and InfoAmazonia’. GeoJournal 1–20. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-018-9853-8.

Gutiérrez, Miren, Pilar Rodríguez, and Juan Manuel Díaz de Guereñu. 2018. ‘Journalism in the Age of Hybridization: Barcelona. Los Vagabundos de La Chatarra – Comics Journalism, Data, Maps and Advocacy’. Catalan Journal of Communication and Cultural Studies 10 (1): 43-62. https://doi.org/10.1386/cjcs.10.1.43_1

Harley, John Brian. 1989. ‘Deconstructing the Map’. Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization 26 (2): 1–20.

Hohenthal, Johanna, Paola Minoia, and Petri Pellikka. 2017. ‘Mapping Meaning: Critical Cartographies for Participatory Water Management in Taita Hills, Kenya’. The Professional Geographer 69 (3): 383–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2016.1237294.

Milan, Stefania, and Miren Gutiérrez. 2015. ‘Citizens´ Media Meets Big Data: The Emergence of Data Activism’. Mediaciones 14. http://biblioteca.uniminuto.edu/ojs/index.php/med/article/view/1086/1027.

Morrow, Nathan, Nancy Mock, and Adam Papendieck. 2011. ‘Independent Evaluation of the Ushahidi Haiti Project’. Port-au-Prince: ALNAP. http://www.alnap.org/resource/6000.

Poell, Thomas, Helen Kennedy, and Jose van Dijck. 2015. ‘Special Theme: Data & Agency’. Big Data & Society. http://bigdatasoc.blogspot.com.es/2015/12/special-theme-data-agency.html.

van Dijck, Jose. 2014. ‘Datafication, Dataism and Dataveillance: Big Data between Scientific Paradigm and Ideology’. Surveillance & Society 12 (2): 197–208.

 

About Miren
Miren is a Research Associate at DATACTIVE. She is also a professor of Communication, director of the postgraduate programme “Data analysis, research and communication”, and member of the research team of the Communication Department at the University of Deusto, Spain. Miren’s main interest is proactive data activism, or how the data infrastructure can be utilized for social change in areas such as development, climate change and the environment. She is a Research Associate at the Overseas Development Institute of London, where she leads and participates in data-based projects exploring the intersection between biodiversity loss, environmental crime and development.

“error 404. social life not found” at TEDxYouth AICS, June 4

On June 4, Stefania will give a TEDx talk at the TEDx Youth event of the Amsterdam International Community School. Entitled ‘error 404. social life not found. (but you can take it back)’, Stefania’s talk will contribute to this year’s theme ‘Next Nature’: what is the next nature of the human experience as we enter the technological age of big data, consumerism and automation? Read more on the TED website. You can also download the presentation.

[BigDataSur] blog 1/3: Imagining ‘Good’ Data: Northern Utopias, Southern Lessons

by Anna Carlson

What might ‘good data’ look like? Where to look for models, past and emerging? In this series of three blog posts, Anna Carlson highlights that we need to understand data issues as part of a politics of planetary sustainability and a live history of colonial knowledge production. In this first instalment, she introduces her own search for guiding principles in an age of ubiquitous data extraction and often dubious utopianism.           

I’m sitting by Cataract Gorge in Launceston, northern Tasmania. I’ve just climbed a couple of hundred metres through bushland to a relatively secluded look-out. It feels a long way from the city below, despite the fact that I can still hear distant traffic noise and human chatter. I pull out my laptop, perhaps by instinct. At around the same moment, a tiny native lizard dashes from the undergrowth and hovers uncertainly by my bare foot. I think briefly about pulling out my cracked and battered (second-hand) iPhone 4 to archive this moment, perhaps uploading it to Instagram with the hashtag #humansoflatecapitalism and a witty comment. Instead, I start writing.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the politics and ethics of data and digital technologies. My brief scramble up the hill was spent ruminating on the particular question of what “good data” might look like. I know what not-so-good data looks like. Already today I’ve generated a wealth of it. I paid online for a hostel bunk, receiving almost immediate cross-marketing from AirBnB and Hostelworld through social media sites as well as through Google. I logged into my Couchsurfing account, and immediately received a barrage of new “couch requests” (based, I presume, on an algorithm that lets potential couch surfers know when their prospective hosts login).  I’ve turned location services on my phone on, and used Google Maps to navigate a new city. I’ve searched for information about art galleries and hiking trails. I used a plant identification site to find out what tree I was looking at. Data, it seems, is the “digital air that I breathe.”

Writing in the Guardian, journalist Paul Lewis interviews tech consultant and author Nir Eyal, who claims that “the technologies we use have turned into compulsions, if not full-fledged addictions. […] It’s the impulse to check a message notification. It’s the pull to visit YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter for just a few minutes, only to find yourself still tapping and scrolling an hour later.” And this addictive quality is powerful: digital technologies are credited with altering everything from election results to consumer behaviour and our ability to empathise. Indeed, there’s money to be made from a digitally-addicted populace. Encompassing everything from social media platforms to wearable devices, smart cities and the Internet of Things, almost every action we take in the world produces data of some form, and this data represents value for the corporations, governments and marketers who buy it.

This is the phenomenon commonly referred to as Big Data, which describes sets of data so big that they must be analysed computationally. Usually stored in digital form, this data encompasses everything from consumer trends to live emotional insights, and it is routinely gathered by most companies with an online presence.

The not-goodness of this data isn’t intrinsic, however. There is nothing inherently wrong with creating knowledge about the activities we undertake online. Rather, the not-goodness is a characteristic of the murky processes through which data is gathered, consolidated, analysed, sold-on and redistributed. It’s to do with the fact that few of us really know what data is being gathered about us, and even fewer know what that data will be used for. And it’s to do with the lineages that have structured processes of mass data collection, as well as their unequally distributed impacts.

Many of us know that the technologies on which we rely have dark underbellies; that the convenience and comfort of our digital lives is contingent on these intersecting forms of violence. But we live in a world where access to these technologies increasingly operates as a precondition to entering the workforce, to social life, to connection and leisure and knowledge. More and more workers (even in the global north) are experiencing precarity, worklessness and insecurity; experiences that are often enabled by digital technologies and which, doubly cruelly, often render us further reliant on them.

The ubiquity of the digital realm provokes new ethical conundrums. The technologies on which we are increasingly reliant are themselves reliant on exploitative and often oppressive labour regimes. They are responsible for vast ecological footprints. Data is often represented as immaterial, ‘virtual,’ and yet its impact on environments across the world is pushing us ever closer to global ecological disaster. Further, these violent environmental and labour relations are unequally distributed: the negative impacts of the digital age are disproportionately focused on communities in the Global South, while the wealth generated is largely trapped in a few Northern hands.

Gathering data means producing knowledge within a particular set of parameters. In the new and emerging conversations around Big Data and its impact on our social worlds, much focus is placed on the scale of it, its bigness, the sheer possibility of having so much information at our fingertips. It is tempting to think of this as a new phenomenon – as an unprecedented moment brought about by new technologies. But as technologist Genevieve Bell reminds us, the “logics of our digital world – fast, smart and connected – have histories that proceed their digital turns.” Every new technological advance carries its legacies, and the colonial legacy is one that does not receive enough attention.

So, when we imagine what “good data” and good tech might look like now, we need to contend with the ethical quagmire of tech in its global and historical dimensions. To illustrate this point, I examine the limits of contemporary digital utopianism (exemplified by blockchain) as envisioned in the Global North (Episode 2), before delving into the principles guiding “good data” from the point of view of Indigenous communities (Episode 3).

Acknowledgments:  These blogposts have been produced as part of the Good Data project (@Good__Data), an interdisciplinary research initiative funded by Queensland University of Technology Faculty of Law, which is located in unceded Meanjin, Turrbal and Jagera Land (also known as Brisbane, Australia). The project examines ‘good’ and ‘ethical’ data practices with a view to developing policy recommendations and software design standards for programs and services that embody good data practices, in order to start conceptualising and implementing a more positive and ethical vision of the digital society and economy. In late 2018, an open access edited book entitled Good Data, comprising contributions from authors from different disciplines located in different parts of the world, will be published by the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences Institute of Network Cultures.’

Big Data from the South at the LASA conference in Barcelona

Stefania Milan is the co-organizer with Emiliano Trere (Cardiff University) and Anita Say Chan (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) of two panels at the forthcoming conference of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), in Barcelona on May 23-26.

The (slightly revised) lineup:

Big Data from the Global South Part I (1033 // COL – Panel – Friday, 2:15pm – 3:45pm, Sala CCIB M211 – M2)
PROJECT FRAMING + GROUP BRAINSTORMING
·      Stefania Milan, Emiliano Trere, Anita Chan: From Media to Mediations, from Datafication to Data Activism
 
Big Data from the Global South Part II: Archive Power (1101 // COL – Panel – Friday, 4:00pm – 5:30pm, Sala CCIB M211 – M2)
·      Inteligencia Artificial y Campañas Electorales en la Era PostPolítica: Seguidores, Bots, Apps: Paola Ricaurte Quijano, Eloy Caloca Lafont 
·      Open Government, APPs and Citizen Participation in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico: Luisa Ochoa; Fernando J Martinez de Lemos 
·      Cryptography, Subjectivity and Spyware: From PGP Source Code and Internals to Pegasus: Zac Zimmer
·      Engineering Data Conduct: Prediction, Precarity, and Data-fied Talent in Latin America’s Start Up Ecology: Anita J Chan
 
Big Data from the Global South Part III: Data Incorporations (1167 // COL – Panel – Friday, 5:45pm – 7:15pm, Sala CCIB M211 – M2)
·      Evidence of Structural Ageism in Intelligent Systems: Mireia Fernandez 
·      Doing Things with Code: Opening Access through Hacktivism: Bernardo Caycedo
·      Decolonizing Data: Monika Halkort
·      Maputopias: Miren Gutierrez

 

About LASA 2018

Latin American studies today is experiencing a surprising dynamism. The expansion of this field defies the pessimistic projections of the 1990s about the fate of area studies in general and offers new opportunities for collaboration among scholars, practitioners, artists, and activists around the world. This can be seen in the expansion of LASA itself, which since the beginning of this century has grown from 5,000 members living primarily in the United States to nearly 12,000 members in 2016, 45 percent of whom reside outside of the United States (36 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean). And while the majority of us reside in the Americas, there are also an increasing number of Latin American studies associations and programs in Europe and Asia, most of which have their own publications and annual seminars and congresses.

Several factors explain this dynamism. Perhaps the most important is the very maturity of our field. Various generations of Latin Americanists have produced an enormous, diverse, and sophisticated body of research, with a strong commitment to interdisciplinarity and to teaching about this important part of the world. Latin American studies has produced concepts and comparative knowledge that have helped people around the world to understand processes and problematics that go well beyond this region. For example, Latin Americanists have been at the forefront of debates about the difficult relationship between democracy, development, and dependence on natural resource exports—challenges faced around the globe. Migration, immigration, and the displacement of people due to political violence, war, and economic need are also deeply rooted phenomena in our region, and pioneering work from Latin America can shed light on comparable experiences in other regions today. Needless to say, Latin American studies also has much to contribute to discussions about populism and authoritarianism in their various forms in Europe and even the United States today.

With these contributions in mind, we propose that the overarching theme of the Barcelona LASA Congress be “Latin American Studies in a Globalized World”, and that we examine both how people in other regions study and perceive Latin America and how Latin American studies contributes to the understanding of comparable processes and issues around the globe.

Becky and Stefania at the Data Justice conference

Stefania will present on “Questioning data universalism” with Emiliano Treré (Cardiff University) and she will be chairing the session on Data Activism (14.00 – 15.30 Parallel Sessions B).

Becky will present on “It Depends On Your threat Model: Understanding strategies for uncertainty amidst digital surveillance and data exploitation” as part of the Civil Society and Data (chair: Isobel Rorison).

About the data justice conference (website, program)

Date: 21-22 May 2018
Location: Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
Host: Data Justice Lab, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

The collection and processing of massive amounts of data has become an increasingly contentious issue. Our financial transactions, communications, movements, relationships, all now generate data that are used to profile and sort groups and individuals. What are the implications for social justice? How do we understand social justice in an age of datafication? In what way do initiatives around the globe address questions of data in relation to inequality, discrimination, power and control? What is the role of policy reform, technological design and activism? How do we understand and practice ‘data justice’? How does data justice relate to other justice concerns?

This conference will examine the intricate relationship between datafication and social justice by highlighting the politics and impacts of data-driven processes and exploring different responses. Speakers include Anita Gurumurthy (IT for Change, India), David Lyon (Queen’s University, Canada), Evelyn Ruppert (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK), Rob Kitchin (Maynooth University, Ireland), Sasha Costanza-Chock (MIT Center for Civic Media, US), Seeta Peña Gangadharan (London School of Economics, UK), Solon Barocas (Cornell University, US and FAT/ML).

Stefania at RightsCon 2018

Organising, together with the Data Justice Lab (Cardiff University) the following session:

The Fight Against the Institutional Datafication of Social Life: Challenges and Tactics

Friday 18 May, 4pm

Chair: Stefania Milan, Datactive Ideas Lab, University of Amsterdam

Speakers: Arne Hintz, Data Justice Lab, Cardiff University
Malavika Jayaram, Digital Asia Hub
Nandini Chami, ITforChange
Javiera Moreno, Datos Protegidos
Anita Say Chan, University of Illinois
Mitchell Baker, Mozilla (tbc)

This session will serve to discuss challenges and opportunities for civil society advocacy in response to data analytics by governments. While the use of data analytics, scoring and identification systems by state institutions is advancing rapidly, often underpinned by tightening surveillance legislation, civil society efforts to address the datafication of citizens and its consequences have faced difficulties. We will map these challenges, in view of exploring potential tactics and forms of influence. The session will allow participants to share knowledge about innovative strategies of intervention; engage in a dialogue on how citizens can have a say in the adoption and implementation of big data analytics; and advance a transnational mobilization connecting struggles on the consequences of datafication with the social justice and human rights agenda.

About Rightscon

As the world’s leading conference on human rights in the digital age, we bring together business leaders, policy makers, general counsels, government representatives, technologists, and human rights defenders from around the world to tackle pressing issues at the intersection of human rights and digital technology. This is where our community comes together to break down silos, forge partnerships, and drive large-scale, real-world change toward a more free, open, and connected world.