Co-sponsored by the Brennan Center for Justice and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund

8:30 am: Doors open / breakfast and registration
9:00 am - 3:00 pm: Program (lunch included)

Please join the Brennan Center for Justice and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund for a full-day symposium on December 3, 2019, with a keynote address by Dr. Ruha Benjamin - Associate Professor of African American Studies, Princeton University.

This convening aims to center the racial justice issues raised by modern surveillance technologies such as facial recognition, predictive policing, and social media monitoring tools. Through panels and discussion, this symposium will explore topics such as:

• The deployment of surveillance technologies in the face of well-documented error rates when analyzing communities of color, and the ways in which their unchecked use threatens to obscure and automate racial inequalities under the guise of unbiased computer systems;

• The need to analyze the use of surveillance tools in the context of well-established racial biases in policing, which has knock-on effects on the criminal justice system;

• Issues raised by using surveillance technologies in tandem, such as their exacerbated impact on communities of color and the creation of a pervasive dragnet that is incompatible with a democratic society; and
  

• The different approaches to regulation, including outright bans (enacted for facial recognition in cities such as San Francisco and Somerville, MA), efforts to pass transparency measures (enacted in cities such as Seattle and Nashville, TN), and the role of inspector general audits (influential reports in Los Angeles and Chicago).

Timeline:

9:00 - 9:15 am, Welcome and Conference Goals.

• Michael Waldman, President, Brennan Center for Justice
  

9:20 - 9:50 am, Keynote Address

• Dr. Ruha Benjamin, Associate Professor of African American Studies, Princeton University
  

10:00 - 11:00 am, Panel 1: Beta Testing Surveillance Technology on the General Public

• Kade Crockford - Director, Technology for Liberty Program, ACLU of Massachusetts
• Rachel Levinson-Waldman - Senior Counsel, Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program (moderator)
• Deborah Raji - Technology Fellow, AI Now
• Josmar Trujillo - Writer and Activist
• Ali Winston - Investigative Reporter

11:00 - 11:10 am, Coffee Break

11:10 - 12:10 pm, Panel 2: Connecting Mass Surveillance with Mass Incarceration

• John Cusick - Litigation Fellow, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
• Ángel Díaz - Counsel, Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program (moderator)
• Rashida Richardson - Director of Policy Research, AI Now
• Kira Lerner - Staff Reporter, The Appeal
• Carl Takei - Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU
  

12:15 - 12:50 pm, Lunch

12:50 - 1:45 pm, Firestarter Discussion: The Technical Backbone of Immigration Enforcement

• Faiza Patel - Co-Director, Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program (moderator)
• McKenzie Funk - Journalist and Author
• Paromita Shah - Executive Director, Just Futures Law

1:45 - 2:45 pm, Panel 3: Reining in Unaccountable Surveillance: Paths Forward

• Dr. Theron Bowman - CEO, The Bowman Group
• Brian Hofer - Chair, City of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Committee
• Tawana Petty - Director, Data Justice Program, Detroit Community Technology Project
• Mark Smith - Inspector General of the Los Angeles Police Department
• Katurah Topps - Policy Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (moderator)
  

2:45 - 3:00 pm, Closing Remarks

• Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
  

Event hand outs:

• New York City Police Department Surveillance Technology
• Cellphones, Law Enforcement, and the Right to Privacy
• Government Access to and Manipulation of Social Media: Legal and Policy Challenges
• The Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act (The POST Act)
• The Public Oversight of Police Technology (POST) Act & National Security