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

[Sarah Ann Oates]

Thank you! Incredibly useful and timely. Sarah


Sarah Oates

Professor and Senior Scholar
Philip Merrill College of Journalism
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20457
Email: soates at umd.edu
Phone: 301 455 2332
www.media-politics.com
Twitter: @media_politics

*Support the UMD Student Crisis Fund
<https://giving.umd.edu/giving/showPage.php?name=crisis-funding> today. *



On Thu, Jun 25, 2020 at 3:31 PM Christian Sandvig <csandvig at umich.edu>
wrote:

> 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/
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/