The second session of Up/Root Democracy takes the shape of an online panel featuring Digital Justice researcher Fieke Jansen, privacy activist Susana Sanz, and artist Helen Knowles. You can follow the event live on the 24th of November at 17:00 through Framer Framed’s YouTube channel, where panelists will be answering questions from the public.
As much as algorithms are used in our everyday life to seemingly innocently suggest playlists, products, and pages on through social media, a darker side broods. Through targeting and tracing of cookies and browser histories, AI (Artificial Intelligence) is fed to disseminate fake news, influence political votes and identify debtors and other vulnerable groups.
A constant state of top-down surveillance, softly applied through the convenience of digital devices and police equipment, calls for new ways of hiding, un-tracking, resisting, and re-thinking legal systems to account for data and AI. In this panel, the speakers will unpack the topic from different angles: How to hide from AI? What tools can be used against surveillance and tracking? Can an algorithm be held culpable in a court of Law?
Subscribe: Framer Framed Youtube Channel to ask questions.
Fieke Jansen
Fieke Jansen is a phD candidate at the Data Justice Lab at Cardiff University. She is interested in re-politicising data and technology, by understanding it’s historical, social, cultural and political context in Europe. Her research focuses on the impact of implementing data driven decision making in European police forces on marginalized communities.
Helen Knowles
‘The Trial of Superdebthunterbot’ is a project initiated by Helen Knowles which seeks to explore questions of ethics and accountability in relation to the increasing and often un- seen computer automation of our lives. The work imagines a speculative scenario not too far removed from current practices in technology and finance. A debt collecting company buys up student loans and uses unconventional means to ensure fewer loan defaulters by targeting individuals through the use of big data. A chain of events leads to deaths in medical trials. Superdebthunterbot has the “capacity to self-educate, to learn and to modify it’s coding sequences independent of human oversight” (Susan Schullppi, Deadly Algorithms).
Susana Sanz
Susana Sanz is a privacy activist and information security trainer. She is the founder of BalkonTactics, an open space for people using digital media interested in learning how to survive in a data extraction web. With online training and talks for anybody eager to learn about privacy and security options and avoid falling victim of their devices.
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Netwerk Democratie and Framer Framed present Up/Root Democracy, an online public program focused on extractive systems undermining human/non-human rights. Looking for a potential balance for legitimate, ethical and sustainable systems in the Anthropocene, we need to consider new forms of political representation, legislation and re-politicise data and technology. Up/Root Democracy showcases the work of researchers, artists and activists; amidst an intersection of crisis, this program delves into how systems of extraction – digital, mineral, etc. – can be a force for or against democratisation.
The program is shown in the run-up to the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (CICC) by writer and lawyer Radha D’Souza and visual artist Jonas Staal, which will be presented at Framer Framed in spring 2021. In this Tribunal, human/nature rights offenses of the present will be held accountable for future generations.
This online event is FREE and in English.
Up/Root Democracy is a collaboration of Netwerk Democratie and Framer Framed.
