[Air-L] Teaching computing, race, and policing -- a lesson about surveillance, AI, and facial recognition

[Christian Sandvig]

Dear AoIR colleagues,

Yesterday the Wayne County Prosecutor publicly apologized to the first
American known to be wrongfully arrested by a facial recognition algorithm:
a black man arrested earlier this year by the Detroit Police. The statement
cited the unreliability of software, especially as applied to people of
color.

With this context in mind, some university and high school instructors
teaching about technology may be interested in engaging with the Black
Lives Matter protests by teaching about computing, race, and surveillance.
I'm delighted that thanks to the generosity of Tawana Petty and others, ESC
can share a module on this topic developed for an online course. You are
free to make use of it in your own teaching, or you might just find the
materials interesting (or shocking).

The lesson consists of a case study of Detroit’s Project Green Light, a new
city-wide police surveillance system that involves automated facial
recognition, real-time police monitoring, very-high-resolution imagery,
cameras indoors on private property, a paid “priority” response system, a
public/private partnership, and other distinctive features. The system has
allegedly been deployed to target peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters.
Here is the lesson:

Race, Policing, and Detroit's Project Green Light
http://esc.umich.edu/project-green-light/


The lesson includes videos, readings (including yesterday's apology), and
suggested discussion questions and assessment.  With some tuning, this
lesson is suitable for courses in Information Science, Computer Science,
Science & Technology Studies (STS), Information Technology, Sociology,
Criminology, Media Studies, Public Policy, Law, Urban Planning, Ethnic
Studies, and Applied Ethics. If you know of a mailing list that would reach
instructors of these courses who would be interested, please feel free to
forward this email.

This lesson is offered as part of the "Emergency ESC" initiative from the
Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing. If you are an instructor and you
are willing to share similar material, ESC would be happy to act as a
clearinghouse for these lessons and to promote them, whether or not you are
affiliated with our center.  Please e-mail esc-center at umich.edu to suggest
or contribute. We will share selections on the "Emergency ESC" page in the
future (http://esc.umich.edu/emergency/).

Sincerely,
Christian


--
Christian Sandvig
Director, Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing (ESC)
H. Marshall McLuhan Collegiate Professor, School of Information; Dept. of
Communication & Media; Center for Political Studies
University of Michigan
http://umich.edu/~csandvig - http://esc.umich.edu/