← The Tech Policy Press Podcast
The Tech Policy Press Podcast
Through to Thriving: Protecting Our Privacy with Chris Gilliard
00:58:50
Loading summary
Transcript259 lines
- [00:01]
A
Your film is now ready to be shown. Good morning. I'm Justin Hendricks, editor of Tech Policy Press. We publish news, analysis and perspectives on issues at the intersection of tech and democracy. This year, Tech Policy Press is hosting nine reporting fellows. These individuals who are located around the world, from India to Spain to Brazil to the US and beyond, bring a variety of experiences and expertise to their work. One of those fellows is Anika Collier Navaroli. Anika is an award winning writer, lawyer and researcher focused on the intersections of technology, media policy and human rights. And she's an assistant professor of professional practice at Columbia University in its Graduate School of Journalism. For her fellowship, Nika is conducting a series of discussions like the one you'll hear today that are intended to help us imagine possible futures for tech and tech policy, for democracy and for society beyond the moment we're in. Here's Anika to introduce the latest episode in the series which she's dubbed through to Thriving.
- [01:08]
B
Hey y'. All, thank you for joining us for another episode of through to Thriving. This is a special podcast series where I'm talking to a bunch of brilliant tech policy folks about how we can build futures beyond our current moment. And today we are going to be talking about protecting our privacy with Chris Gilliard. Chris, would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners?
- [01:29]
A
My name is Chris Gilliard. I am the co director of the Critical Internet Studies Institute and the author of the forthcoming book Luxury Surveillance.
- [01:39]
B
I'm glad you mentioned your book because we're definitely going to get into that and talk about some of the things that you are working on. But we are here today again to talk a little bit about protecting our privacy. Our viewers do not know this. Well, they don't see this. But I can actually see your face right now, which, as I said, wow, I've never seen your face before because you are a notoriously private person.
- [02:02]
A
Yes, yeah, absolutely. I do my best.
- [02:05]
B
Can you tell me a little bit about what it means and how it is to be so online while also maintaining your privacy?
- [02:12]
A
It is difficult, you know, because I think that there's an imperative driven by tech companies, you know, but I think we, a lot of us have helped drive that imperative that we're supposed to give away everything online, supposed to put pictures of ourselves, talk about our hobbies, you know, our show, our pets, our families, all those things. I generally resist those things. I have some ideological reasons for doing so, but it's difficult.
- [02:39]
B
I would love to talk to you about your ideological reasons for resisting, but I also would just say, as a Personal point. I'm incredibly jealous. Right. I think one of the things in my life that I've. I've hated the most about the past couple of years is how visible I have had to be and how much my face has been in various different places. As someone who is also notoriously a private person and didn't have my face on the Internet ever for, the, like, many, many years, and now have to have be in this place, it's a very, very interesting sort of thought. As you said, it's sort of imperative to give away everything online. And I would love to hear a little bit more about your ideological resistance to that. Tell me more about that shorthand.
- [03:18]
A
I would say that I try, whenever possible, to not feed the machine. And so that means when I have an option. And sometimes you don't, you know, but when I have an option, I do not show my face or I do not give away, you know, intimate details about myself, things like that. I was in the Washington Post. Willow Remus did a profile of me several years ago.
- [03:41]
B
Right. Yes.
- [03:42]
A
I remember that it was quite the negotiation to get them to have pictures of me, but not pictures of my face. It was very difficult. But I. I do whenever. Whenever possible, I try to. To not feed the machine.
- [03:55]
B
As someone who's also done the profile in the Washington Post, and my face has been everywhere on that. I remember seeing this and being so jealous and being like, oh, man, what kind of negotiation did you get?
- [04:06]
A
The piece almost didn't run, you know, because of. For that simple fact.
- [04:11]
B
That's really funny. I think this, like, not showing of your face in so many ways is such a power move, to be really honest with you. Right. I remember I was working at a tech company that shall not be named, and I was really burnt out, and I had just decided, like, I'm not showing my face on camera anymore. Right. And I just started showing up to meetings, no camera on. And I remember the sort of resistance that people had to that. Right. And the sort of, like, no one really wanted to say anything. No one wanted to be the person to be like, can we please invade your privacy and be inside of your house right now? Right. While we're all working from home? But, like, it is. It is definitely like a. A shifting of power dynamics to be able to be in that space.
- [04:50]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad you brought that up, because the height of the pandemic really exacerbated some of the worst impulses there. You know, I thought of and have been thinking a lot about this in terms of educational technologies. Right. Where remote proctoring services and things like that were forcing students to show images of their face and do room scans and all these other things. But you know, during that time when we were all zooming everything, you know, there even were different accounts, Twitter accounts, I think, and things like that. That would rate people's rooms.
- [05:26]
B
Yes, yes.
- [05:28]
A
You know, and. Yeah, yeah, we're telling everyone we had to have a ring light and all these things.
- [05:34]
B
Yes.
- [05:35]
A
And I thought that that was so problematic and so under investigated that, you know, we were being conditioned to accept the idea that strangers had a right to peer into our houses.
- [05:49]
B
Yeah.
- [05:51]
A
I mean, I think Gen AI is changing that now too, because now we're being told that we have to optimize our looks with Gen AI, which is like a kind of different kind of intrusion. But I really think these things need to be kind of more investigated.
- [06:05]
B
I'm so glad you brought up this invasion of privacy and Covid, because I remember there were so many different points, so many different times when I was working that I was like, I don't really want to see your bed. Right. Like, I don't. I know there were times when like people's partners would be in the back and like various states of dress and distress and I would just be like, who okayed this? Right. Like I. This, this sort of complete invasion in this sort of complete, like, resetting of norms.
- [06:32]
A
Right.
- [06:32]
B
Like, there was never a place where in which I would ever have co workers. No offense to my co workers that would be in my house. Right. Like that was my home is sacred. Like, that was my home. And yet we were in a space where like these folks that would never be in my home were in my home every day. And that just felt so strange.
- [06:51]
A
Yeah. And if you think about all the things that could be gleaned just from the background.
- [06:56]
B
Yes.
- [06:57]
A
Individuals settings, you know, because a lot of people don't have a dedicated space where they podcast their zoom from.
- [07:04]
B
Right.
- [07:04]
A
Yeah. And so given the world we live in, you know, there's, there's reasons why people wouldn't want everyone to have that kind of access. And there was a lot of work done to normalize that, I think, to our detriment.
- [07:19]
B
Talking about learning from the backgrounds of people. I've. I've talked about this on the podcast before, but one of my favorite things that I actually did during the pandemic when we were stuck inside of people's homes and we're in, you know, all hands meetings inside of these tech companies is we would have to go inside of the, the CEOs and the executives homes. Right. Which were, you know, they were not the folks that you were mentioning that didn't have the separate place.
- [07:42]
A
Yeah.
- [07:42]
B
Working through. I will never forget this, isn't it. I know some folks that listen, this will remember this, that we had a, A person at one place that we worked at that during the pandemic, we could have swore they were like at a spa. Right. Just like the breeze in the little curtain in the background while all of us, like people are like in alleyways, you know what I mean? Like huddled into a computer and like. Yeah, like this, like complete. I mean, the disparity that showed at that time, I think was just something that I think you said. It's like completely under investigated. Right. This sort of like the complete disparity between who had the ability to have these, you know, amazing places that, you know, were dedicated to work and who were, you know, forced inside to let people stare at their homes. I haven't thought a lot about this. I appreciate you for bringing this up.
- [08:28]
A
And that's a big part of the reason I started saying no is because I have the option to say no. And I felt, you know, I don't want to, you know, overstate my importance in any way, but I thought that if I can say no, I should say no because it gives other people the option that they say, well, there's, you know, there are some people who don't do it. Right. And here's some reasons why. So more and more, when I was, when I was on being interviewed for podcasts or for television shows or whatever the case may have been, I would not show my face. And I just tried to establish it as a norm that gave people the permission to not do it if they didn't desire to.
- [09:14]
B
Well, I appreciate you setting that standard and I want to encourage all of our listeners that. Who want to follow your footsteps to.
- [09:20]
A
Go ahead and do that.
- [09:21]
B
I feel like we need to have the revolution of a camera, a camera off, a revolution over here. You may not be inside of my home, but you said you don't want to overstate your importance. But I. Everybody listening to this podcast and myself, part of the reason why I wanted you to be on here is because you are very important in this space and you're a person who has helped, you know, shape our nomenclature and the way that we think and that we talk about tech policy. And you do that a lot by being online. Right. Which I think I mentioned is like a kind of dichotomy between being extremely private but then being. Would you consider yourself very online or how would. How online, on a scale of, you know, an offline to very online, would you consider yourself.
- [10:01]
A
Well, that's a. That's an interesting question because I mainly don't have social media.
- [10:06]
B
Okay.
- [10:07]
A
You know, I mean, I use Blue sky, it used to be Twitter, but I mainly don't use social media. I, you know, I don't. I've never had, you know, Instagram. I quit Facebook in 20, 2016, 2015, you know, so if being online means being on platforms, I guess I'm not really. But I do spend a good chunk of my day, you know, reading and researching articles that I mainly kind of access through online, so.
- [10:40]
B
Right.
- [10:40]
A
Yeah.
- [10:41]
B
Right. And I think. So I see very much of your posting about the sort of reading and research that you're doing, and I think that's what I see is the consistent sort of, here is this thing that's in the news, or here is this thing that's happening in the world that you might not necessarily see, you might have seen it, but you also add, you know, your own commentary and your context to it and bringing it sort of to the foreground in the space. And I think, you know, you have been one of the folks that people have constantly gone to to see, like, what is, you know, what is happening in the space, what we should be thinking about, what should we be talking about? Where do you go to find all of your reading in your research? Because, I mean, there are times you'll post an article that I'm like, where. You know, like, where did you find that? Like, that's interesting. And also like, where did you get this from?
- [11:19]
A
I mean, kind of everywhere, you know, you know, I have a RSS feed. You know, I do check in on. On Blue Sky. I mean, I try to follow other people who are doing and saying interesting things. I do unfortunately still read some of the legacy. Legacy media, you know. Yeah, I mean, we kind of have to.
- [11:41]
B
It's kind of part of the job. Right?
- [11:43]
A
Yeah. You know, I think there's some. Been some incredible work by independent media, like 404, you know, should shout out ProPublica. You know, there's so many an individual journalist, you know, Brian Merchant, you know, researchers like Adair. I try. I mean, I. I have the. The ability, especially in the last three years, I've had the ability to spend a good chunk of my time every day reading and writing about this stuff in ways I don't think is Mostly available to people, you know, and so. Yeah, it's your job. It's your job. Yeah. So I. I try to. Try to get, you know, I, you know, sources from outside the U.S. you know, rest of the world is. I mean, I check financial times every day. You know, I mean, okay, what.
- [12:36]
B
What can you tell me what you. What you check every day? Like, is there like a. Like a rotation up in the morning and pull out, you know, the paper or what. How do you do this?
- [12:46]
A
I. Well, I. The. I. I. I check my RSS feed.
- [12:50]
B
Okay. You said you had to get used.
- [12:51]
A
I use Feedbly. I mean, it's a little bit problematic.
- [12:54]
B
Everything's problematic.
- [12:55]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I. I also have Apple News, and then I. So I have, like, a variety of terms that I. I set up alerts for. Know, I. I still use Google alerts, you know, so do I. Yeah, so I. Yeah, I have a whole kind of system set up, and then. Yeah, I just. Part of what I do when I. When I get up, it's not the first thing I do.
- [13:19]
B
I was gonna say is that, like, the first. Open your eyes and it's like, all right, tech policy. What's going on?
- [13:24]
A
No, no, no. Right. Like, you have a life.
- [13:27]
B
Okay.
- [13:27]
A
It's a little bit healthier. I go for a walk first. Stay. Okay.
- [13:32]
B
Okay. We. We love a healthy balance in the technology world. Okay. All right, good. Good to know that that is not the. The thing that is opening your eyes and. And making you go. I appreciate you sharing with that. I'm one of these folks, too. Like, one of the first things I'm in the morning is like, all right, let me read through my, you know, three to four different newspapers that I, you know, I feel like my dad, who used to wake up every morning with, like, the hard newspaper with his cup of coffee and be like, let's see what's happening in the news. Right. But, like, you know, it's still. It's still an interesting part of life, but I think now we do so much of that through, you know, social or through RSS feeds or through, you know, various digital ways that we can. You mentioned moving from X to blue sky. So many people have made that move. Can you tell me a little bit about your exodus journey?
- [14:20]
A
Yeah.
- [14:20]
B
Transition. Whatever we want to call it.
- [14:23]
A
Well, you know, I left actually the day Musk acquired it. Okay. Quarters with the toilet or the sink. I'm sorry. Yeah.
- [14:32]
B
A toilet might have been.
- [14:33]
A
I wonder why I thought it was a toilet. Yeah.
- [14:39]
B
It's always gonna be A toilet in my head from here on out.
- [14:43]
A
I didn't just Matt. Like, it was an actual slip up. Right. But yeah, I knew it was a sink, really. I, I love that day.
- [14:52]
B
Yeah. Okay.
- [14:53]
A
I wrote an article with a dear friend and brilliant colleague, Kashana Gray. We wrote a piece in Wired, and I believe the title was Digital Migration is Nothing New for Black Folks.
- [15:08]
B
Yeah. Okay, tell me a little bit about that.
- [15:10]
A
Yeah. And I just explained that I don't think I had any special insight, but I knew it would become what it has become, that it existed, amplify right wing narratives and, you know, poison our information sphere. That happened a little differently than I anticipated, but that's what was going to happen. And so I could not in good conscience stay on there. But also, I think even to this day there are debates about whether or not people should be on there, which I think kind of fundamentally misunderstand how it works now, you know, and what I mean by that is like, I owe a ton of my notoriety to, to being on there for a certain moment in time. You know, it's how people, some people know who I am and how some of my ideas got out there and things like that. You know, I wound up testifying before Congress because someone knew my work from Twitter.
- [16:10]
B
Yeah.
- [16:11]
A
So there was a time when it really drove, it really drove the narratives, particularly in media. It had a very outsized influence in the ideas that were put into the public sphere. Yeah, that may or may not still be true, but it's mainly true to the extent that those narratives are right wing, I think because of the way that it's been altered, you know, tweaked, that gaining notoriety for, you know, sort of leftist or progressive ideas, you know, is not really a thing on there like it used to be, I don't think. I think people who argue that you should stay on there don't understand that very well. And yeah, I feel weird saying this to you. Right. I mean.
- [17:00]
B
It'S the audience.
- [17:03]
A
Like, I'm like, I'm the choir that.
- [17:05]
B
You'Re preaching to, you know, the audience.
- [17:08]
A
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I, hopefully I'm like representing it accurately, you know, but like, I, you know, I'm not the expert on that in this conversation, but, you know, and, and so I, I, it was obvious that that's what it was going to happen. And so I left. Now I wound up on Blue sky again. Like, like all social media, it has its problems, you know, but I think, and you know, it does not have the reach at all that that Twitter did.
- [17:43]
B
Yeah.
- [17:44]
A
But I think it is a better alternative for the moment.
- [17:50]
B
Yeah. Well, I appreciate you talking to us a little bit through that while you were talking about that. I believe this could be. I think that this is true. I think, let's say this, you were talking a little bit about, you know, the progressive leftist ideas kind of being able to have, you know, a voice and a notoriety and a sort of outsized influence at a point in Twitter. And, you know, that wasn't always the case. Right. And I think a lot of the work that I ended up doing was thinking about, you know, shifting power balances and thinking about, you know, whose voices were being amplified, especially by the algorithm of the platform. I'm pretty sure that you were one of the folks that I worked with to get in the. Verified. Get verified in the absolute. Yeah.
- [18:27]
A
Okay.
- [18:28]
B
I like my. My brain. My brain is like, you know, I blocked out. I have blocked out a good. A good amount of that. I think that was. The year was 2020, and I have blocked out a good amount of what happened in the. In the bird app between 2020 and 2021. But, yes, I. That was. I. I appreciate you talking a little bit about that because that was work that, you know, so many of us inside of the company, we're sitting around looking and seeing. We're saying, like, who's. Whose voices are actually being amplified here. Right. And why is it only, you know, very often the white men who happen to know somebody who works here and not necessarily the folks who, you know, have the ability to write an article that says something like, digital migration is nothing new for black people. Right.
- [19:14]
A
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I, you know, it's how I testified before Congress. It's how I was able to write for Wired in the Atlantic. It's how I was able to, you know, talk about video doorbells on NBC. I mean, a lot of that came from. From that exposure.
- [19:31]
B
Well, shout out to everybody at Twitter who worked on those various campaigns. I think, you know, there was. There was a lot of work that was done that I think, you know, we. We kind of see the fruit of. In the world that we don't necessarily think about while we were sitting there doing that. So I appreciate that.
- [19:44]
A
But talking about it, it was incredible. Like, it was you know, absolutely imperative to me being sitting here right now, actually.
- [19:53]
B
Well, I. I'm glad that you're sitting here right now, and I'm glad that you are talking to me and talking to us about privacy, and I know that we've sitting Been sitting here talking a lot about, you know, this idea of privacy. And I want to talk a little bit about your work and get into some things that you have done, but I. I want to ask you just generally, like, what does privacy actually mean to you, or how would you define it?
- [20:17]
A
Yeah, you know, like, I rarely get asked this question.
- [20:21]
B
Really?
- [20:21]
A
Yeah. And so I reached out to a friend of mine who's also a surveillance scholar, Sava Sally Singh. And I was like, oh, I know this is a bad question, you know, but, like, how would you define privacy? You know, because there's, like, sometimes you just. Well, I mean, one of the things Saba's so good at is, like, putting things very concisely, you know, and I'm sure I could have come up with a definition. Right? Like, I mean, it's what I do. Like, I took her definition because it was so good.
- [20:52]
B
Okay, share it with us. Share. Share this.
- [20:55]
A
And so this is what she said. The right and agency of a person or community should have to reasonably avoid evade scrutiny, be it of their body, data or property.
- [21:08]
B
So the right to avoid scrutiny.
- [21:12]
A
Yeah.
- [21:13]
B
Okay, well, tell me, how did you become interested or become kind of focused on this. This. This thing called privacy or this right to avoid scrutiny?
- [21:23]
A
Well, you know, I. I think there's a couple different ways I can think about that. You know, part of it is I was growing up black in Detroit. You know, I mean, we. When we think about Simone Brown, you know, I have her. Her book Dark Matters right in front of me.
- [21:40]
B
I mean, the classic. The classic.
- [21:43]
A
The canon, I should say right now. I mean, I didn't know her work when I was like a kid growing up in. In Detroit. But the. The way she talks about anti blackness being at the root of surveillance and carceral technologies, you know, I think even as a kid, I kind of understood some of that. Right. Like. Or I might not even. It might not even be fair to say I understood it, but I felt it. You know, I talk a lot about. You know, I talk about this in the book, and I've used this example a ton of times. I apologize for people who've heard it.
- [22:19]
B
Before, but they can hear it again.
- [22:22]
A
I think about the advent of electronic locks.
- [22:25]
B
Okay.
- [22:26]
A
And walking down the street as a kid in the city. And although I've come to find out that electronic locks were first came out in like, the 1910s or 1920s.
- [22:37]
B
Oh, interesting.
- [22:37]
A
Like that. The first car that had them. But, like, I think that they sort of started to mass up here in cars in the 70s. And, you know, so lots of black people I know have had the experience of walking down the street and hearing someone lock their car.
- [22:55]
B
Lock. Lock in the door. Yeah.
- [22:57]
A
Hi. Right. This is before cars were made to. This is before they were made to automatically lock when you shift it into drive.
- [23:04]
B
Right.
- [23:06]
A
And that experience of sort of being. Of that, like, click being sort of audible representation of how you reviewed. And this is when I'm a child. Right, right.
- [23:19]
B
Yeah.
- [23:22]
A
Of being a representation of how you're viewed. You know, it always stood out to me. I always, Always kind of felt that, you know, I came up in Detroit shortly after the disbandment of a vice group called stress, which stood for Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets. Oh, yeah. Which was this, like, what an acronym, Brutal Vice Unit in Detroit that wound up killing, I think, in a very short span of time, 13 people, 12 of whom were black. You know, and part of, like, a big part of that was like, kind of the surveillance of. Of communities. You know, black communities in the city also wound up part of what. Wound up taking them down as a black woman. Forensic science sleep. Really interesting story.
- [24:11]
B
There's a documentary about this.
- [24:13]
A
Yes.
- [24:14]
B
Yes. Okay. I'm like, I'm a document. I love a documentary. I'm like, I'm. I'm seeing this. Yes. Okay.
- [24:19]
A
There's a podcast about it, too, which is amazing. Yeah. And so part of it is that, you know. But, you know, again, like, part of my origin story, I think, is coming to social media, coming to Twitter, and finding, like, really incredible scholars who are having these discussions. You know, Frank Pasquale always stands out as someone, you know, that in the early days when I was just, like, on these platforms, I was like, oh, my God, these people are so smart. Like. Like Simone. Simone Brown. I mentioned Noble, like, to seeing the work that they were doing and talking about this stuff, it was really inspiring. And I think thirdly, it was my teaching. I was at the college where I was at the time. They were doing some really shady stuff with filtering the Internet, which required me to learn a lot about sort of how that happens, why that happens, you know, how tech companies were surveilling people, all those things, how. What kinds of decisions went into, who gets what kind of information, you know, what kinds of information goes out about you, like, all these things. Because, like, in short, my students weren't able to do research for the kinds of research I thought they should be able to do on campus because the Internet was filtered. And I sort of started a campaign against my school at the Time to try and get them to reverse that policy. So I think those three things, those are part of the story I kind of, I think is important in terms of, like, how I started to think about this stuff.
- [25:56]
B
Yeah, your origin story. So you mentioned something about that. That moment. I feel so visceral of walking down the street and hearing the click. Right. And the doors locking. You mentioned that you felt that. What did it feel like to be in that moment?
- [26:11]
A
You know, it feels like being watched, you know, and it is often. So it was never someone from the neighborhood. And that's the other thing. I think it's really important. It was never someone. It was. It was never my neighbor, you know, it was someone who was there for some other reason, or it was someone who was getting from going from point A to point B, but wasn't from around here, you know, and so it was like, it feels like a sign that I'm the one who's not supposed to be there, even though it's my neighborhood, you know, feels alienating. It feels insulting, you know. And, you know, I mean, one of the jokes I make is that often people would do this even when their windows were down.
- [26:58]
B
It's like if I were, you know, car.
- [27:02]
A
Right.
- [27:04]
B
That's. That's not going to solve the problem.
- [27:09]
A
Yeah. But, you know, I mean, I think that. That I. I think it's a good sort of icon. Right. For the ways that technologies, you know, particularly surveillance technologies. And I. I know a lot of people will not think of an electronic lock as something in that category, but I think it's a good, you know, it's good. A good symbol for how these technologies can. Can like, alienate us in our own neighborhoods and our. In places where that we have every right to be.
- [27:41]
B
Thank you for sharing that and being articulating that sort of feeling for me and for the listeners. I want to talk a little bit more about the work that you've been able to do, because I mentioned, I think when we were doing the intro that you really have shaped a lot of the way that we talk about many different things in tech policy. You've coined some of the terms that we've used. One of them, for instance, of course, as you know, was digital redlining. Would you mind just kind of sharing for folks who for some reason might have no idea what that means? What that means.
- [28:10]
A
Yeah, So I did not invent it. I think even. I'm pretty sure Jason Sadowski and Astra Taylor did an article before my piece came out that used the term. But I did help popularize it, you know, and where it came from is, you know, the, the, the instance I just mentioned where I was teaching and my students weren't able to do research because the Internet was filtered, you know, and for those who don't know, I taught at a community college in suburban Detroit that a lot of my students did not have Internet at home, you know, or were working multiple jobs and things like that. We're in situations where when they were on campus was. When they were able to do their work. And for people who don't know a lot about how filtering works traditionally, it, the, the, one of the problems with it sort of like just on a sort of technical level is that it lets in things that you, you know, if you're trying to keep things out, it lets them in anyway, you know, if the person is. Is dedicated enough.
- [29:21]
B
Right.
- [29:22]
A
But it also, but it also keeps out things that, you know, would be kind of legitimate arenas of inquiry. Now, from my taste on a college, almost everything's a legitimate arena of inquiry. Right? But, but I'm talking about from the perspective of someone who's installing or maintaining a filter. So it would keep out elements of the Bible, right? It would keep out, you know, a June Jordan poem or an E. Cummings palm. Well, you know, things like that. If there, you know, Playboy used to do interviews of, like, great interviews, right?
- [29:58]
B
Yeah, yeah, it did.
- [29:59]
A
You know, there's a interview of Jimmy Carter in Playboy. Yeah, you couldn't get it because of the filter. And so I started thinking about that not only in terms of sort of what my students were not able to access, but what were the sort of class and race implications of that. As someone from Detroit, you know, who's very clued into what redlining meant, not only in the, you know, 40s and 50s, but with the remnants of that now. Right. Like, I grew up two miles away from eight Mile, you know, where you could see the very strong distinction between an area where investments and loans were, like, allowed and encouraged, and on the other side of the street, they were not. They weren't, you know, you know, and then later on in my life, I lived in another city or another kind of suburb, gross point, where we could see the same things, right?
- [30:56]
B
Yeah.
- [30:57]
A
And so the more I came to understand, the implications of this were drawn along not only class and race lines in terms of, like, digital. Right. But they also kind of mirrored the exact geographies that we tend to see. Right. That, you know, I remember. I don't, I don't know if I've told this story before, but I once lived in a loft downtown, and the ISP said that I could not. Like, broadband wasn't available to me from where I lived. And it was only a couple of, like, a matter of, like, the telephone pole being a couple feet this way or a couple of feet that way.
- [31:40]
B
Wow.
- [31:41]
A
To get broadband now, I mean, I was able to, like, a little bit, kind of socially engineer and get the guy to give me.
- [31:47]
B
Right.
- [31:48]
A
You know.
- [31:49]
B
Right.
- [31:50]
A
But everybody was. Is not able to do that.
- [31:52]
B
Right.
- [31:53]
A
And so. And I mean, we've seen that educational outcomes, health outcomes, you know, political outcomes can all be connected to, you know, there's a strong connection between whether or not some of those things are positive or negative in people's ability to access information on the Internet.
- [32:12]
B
Right.
- [32:13]
A
And so, yeah, I began speaking and writing about that as digital redlining.
- [32:18]
B
Well, the thing that you have been talking a lot about recently, and I know that you're writing a book about, is luxury surveillance. Could you tell us a little bit about what that is and tell us a little bit about your book that you're working on?
- [32:28]
A
Yeah. So this came about when I. So, like, the basic root of it is that I argue that an ankle monitor and an Apple watch are essentially the same technology. Oh, my God, you're right.
- [32:42]
B
I'm wearing. I'm wearing an Apple watch. And I will tell you when I got this Apple watch because, you know, I was trying to be healthy or some shit, and I literally got it and told my best friend, and her response was, I didn't think we were allowed to do that. And I was like, screw, you know, we. Yes, as you're saying, my own.
- [33:03]
A
Yes, they are essentially the same thing. And that we can really understand some of the things that tech companies are up to when we tease out those parallels, that there's a segment of devices often chosen by people who have the ability to say yes to surveillance, where they think that they are likely to gain some benefits, accrue some benefits, and they don't understand them as surveillance devices. And that ultimately a big part of this is helping to normalize surveillance for all of us by the fact that people embrace these technologies and understand them as aspirational.
- [33:53]
B
Yeah. Is there any particular. I mean, you mentioned the Apple watch, which, again, is. I just feel like I should have taken it off before I talked to you. Is there any piece of technology that really just like, pushes the button or, like, really irks you out there, like that? Really? Luxury surveillance technology?
- [34:14]
A
Yeah. I mean, the big one. Now, are the video, the video glasses, the meta ray bans or you know, what have you. But also like all the wearables that are coming out that are stuff with gen AI, you know, video doorbells who are the. I mean, I mean I've hated those since the beginning. Right.
- [34:37]
B
Yeah.
- [34:38]
A
I think those are also a hugely detrimental to society. But the one that sort of pokes me the most in the worst way at this moment would be glasses with. Yeah, video glasses.
- [34:52]
B
Like, like the meta. The glasses of those ones. I mean I think it's really fascinating that we basically brought back Google Glass, but I thought we had shamed people away from it.
- [35:03]
A
Yeah, we, we can again, right?
- [35:06]
B
Yeah, I think that piece of shame. So I, I would love to talk to you a little bit. I know that you describe yourself as an abolitionist. Right. And I think that there is something there. Would you describe or tell us what that means? Especially in the tech policy space?
- [35:19]
A
Yeah, I mean I'm of a firm belief that many of these technologies should not exist and that you know, we should reject them in any and always possible and available to us. You know, I know that some people don't consider that practical and you know, okay, but, but yeah, I, you know, I think that the negative social impacts of these technologies have already been well established. I mean, look around. And so, and one of the parts of pushback I often get is talking about their sort of legitimate use cases. Right. I think for some of these technologies there is not a legitimate use case or at the very least for something like the meta ray bans. I mean, yeah, a big part of the reason they exist. I would, I would argue the main reason they exist is to normalize through ever present surveillance and lower the barrier for all kinds of harassment and antisocial behavior. Now people can use them for other things, you know. Right, like.
- [36:33]
B
Right, like, like what?
- [36:35]
A
I mean, yeah, well, you know, I like somebody on social media the other day was like I use it to. They do this thing, you know, and it's like look, okay, sure, you know, you can use your AK as a doorstop. Right. That's not what it's for, you know, is not what it's for.
- [36:52]
B
Like not what they made that for.
- [36:58]
A
And so yeah, I, I think we should reject these things now again, there's, there's ways I've, and I've talked about this before. There are, there's a lot of investment in making sure that we're not able to, you know. So for instance, Amazon is also coming out with a eyewear for workers.
- [37:18]
B
Oh Wonderful.
- [37:19]
A
And they mostly, I imagine, will not be able to say no to these. You know, and this is why I kind of came up with that formulation of luxury surveillance is that I don't think people, when I would talk about these things, a lot of times, if you bring up how it harms marginalized people, how it is used to target black and brown folks, trans people, people seeking reproductive care, people would often invoke some kind of nothing to hide argument or say that it didn't affect them or things like that. Now, I'd love to live in a society where it was, you know, if you said, like, it harms this segment of people, then people's response wouldn't be, well, but I still need to get my packages or whatever, who cares? I would love for that to be true. Unfortunately, it's like, in my experience, mostly not. And so part of what I have set out to do, or what I. What I hope some of my projects do, is show people that the negative effects of these things are not isolated to the most vulnerable. Now they do. It's true that they hit them the hardest, the earliest, the most often.
- [38:38]
B
Right.
- [38:39]
A
But they eventually come for everyone.
- [38:41]
B
Also coming for you.
- [38:42]
A
Yeah, right. And also the supposed benefits of these things are highly overrated.
- [38:49]
B
Oh, right. I mean, yeah. Like Apple watch for health. Right. Like, okay.
- [38:53]
A
Yeah, right. Like, it's not, you know, like, just go for your walk. Right. Just, just with weights. Like, just, you know, go to bed on time. Like, you'll be fine. Right. Like most of us will.
- [39:06]
B
Right. I mean, I don't know that we all need to see our sleep categorized into colors and broken down by the minute. And the thing.
- [39:13]
A
Yeah.
- [39:13]
B
And look at it. I'm like, I was definitely not asleep. You know what I mean? Like, I was awake. So, like, you're wrong.
- [39:18]
A
Right.
- [39:18]
B
So you are so right in that. And I mentioned, you mentioned this piece that I think is so fascinating around tech that just, like, simply shouldn't exist. Right. And the way that we should reject these things. I was reading the Washington Post article that you were talking about and you said no one would look at asbestos and say, we can't outlaw chemistry. But they look at facial recognition and say, you can't outlaw math. And I thought that was it.
- [39:43]
A
Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, recently. And I. I apologize because I don't have the quote in front of me. Um, but, you know, Emily Bender said something. If she doesn't use the term gen AI, I forget the term she uses. But she was talking about what we understand or was like, Kind of commonly called Gen AI.
- [40:03]
B
Yeah.
- [40:03]
A
And she referred to it or thought, you know, in the, in the piece that she wrote, she talked about it, said we should view it in the same way we view plastic.
- [40:13]
B
Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.
- [40:15]
A
That, you know, that an important thing would be to avoid it when we can. Right. That if we had avoided it and understood the harms right now there's, you know, now we all have microplastics in our bodies and it's the bottom of the ocean. Right, right. I thought about it differently at the, you know, when it was becoming more, you know, prevalent that we might be looking at a different landscape now. And so I think for particularly, I mean, this article was talking about Gen AI, but there are a lot of things that we've let. I use that term loosely, it's not exactly the right term, but the trajectory of a lot of these technologies has been established by companies who do not have our best interests at heart and like frankly, probably should be seen. Saying they do not have our best interest at heart is like the lightest touch I can say. Right. They're like, they're, you know, openly oppressive and aligned with authoritarianism is probably a better way to say it. Yeah, yeah. But we've let them set the terms for like what society should look like and what technologies are out in the open in the world. I would argue that the, the result of that has not been positive.
- [41:35]
B
Yeah.
- [41:36]
A
In, in that some of these things, I think. Yeah. I would. We should say like they should not exist. You know, a good friend of mine, David Columbia, before he passed away, wrote an article called Chad GPT should not exist.
- [41:51]
B
Yeah.
- [41:52]
A
Now this was like three years ago. Right. This is like shortly after like the initial version of chat was launched. Got a lot of pushback on that.
- [42:01]
B
Yeah.
- [42:03]
A
A lot of negative feedback. It's turned out to be like the right call.
- [42:07]
B
Yeah.
- [42:09]
A
And I, I think we should like be, you know, more openly articulate that when that's the case. Right.
- [42:16]
B
Yeah.
- [42:17]
A
I was talking to another friend who was reading Joseph Weizenbaum's and I forget the name of, of the, of his work, but one of the, one of his early books where he talks about the negative effects of some of these technologies and how we can and should respond to them. And I think we've. I. What's the right way to say this? I think a lot of people have been force fed this notion of innovation that, that serves like the best, the, the best interest of the tech companies that say they should be able to do whatever they want cause Whatever terms they want.
- [42:53]
B
Right.
- [42:54]
A
And that, you know, doing and not letting them do that is somehow bad for society. Yeah, I don't think the results of that have worked out very well for us in the, in the, you know, at all. But in the last couple decades, certainly.
- [43:08]
B
Yeah. Hard agree and question for you. Do you use ChatGPT? Do you use Gen AI at all?
- [43:15]
A
I have never. So the short answer is no, right to the. Like, if you pulled up, like the website or the app or whatever, like, I don't even know what it looks like, you could tell me, you know. Yeah, Like, I would have no idea. I never been on my computer right now, you know, someone listening is going to be like, well, there's Gen AI in your phone, you know. Right, right, right, correct. Or whatever it is.
- [43:41]
B
But you've never gone to chat GBT and been like, tell me about myself.
- [43:46]
A
I never will. I never have it. I never will.
- [43:49]
B
Okay, I, I love that because I think that there is such a world in which, you know, I working in academia, there's just those, like, everybody's using a. Therefore, we have to adopt it. Right. We have to figure it out. And I. You remind me so much of my friend's mom the other day when we were talking about chat GBT and their response was chat who? Right. Like what, what. What is this thing that we are talking about? And so there is definitely still a way to resist as you're talking about and to believe in this piece of abolition. I'd love to talk a little bit about the future and in what we're kind of what you're thinking, what you're seeing. One of the questions I have for you is what are the sort of biggest disparities in the realm of privacy that you are seeing right now, today?
- [44:32]
A
Yeah. Can I go back for one second, please?
- [44:35]
B
Of course. All the time.
- [44:37]
A
So, you know, I was talking, you know, another part of my origin story. Right. Or another thing I think is. Is so interesting or about how people have come to embrace this tech. There's a study, I think, out of U of M that talked about how marginalized and minoritized people were much less likely to sort of trust Gen AI. You know, I've been thinking a lot about, um, you know, and, and at some point I hope to. To write something and Damian Williams and I have been talking about it online because, you know, I think about sort of the history of literacy as I understand it, like, not only in my own journey, but like, in terms of like, blackness. Right. That there in. In recent Very recently. Right. I could not go to the library and take out a book. Right. Like, not me personally, but someone who.
- [45:33]
B
Right. Ancestors.
- [45:34]
A
Yeah, yeah. Illegal to teach people, black people to read things like that. That is in, like recent memory.
- [45:44]
B
Yeah.
- [45:44]
A
That. And now these billionaires and soon to be trillionaires in some cases have come along and said, oh, we have a thing that's going to make it so that you don't have to read anything. We have a thing that will give you the answer.
- [46:01]
B
Yeah.
- [46:01]
A
You know, and I don't, I think it's such a weird. I'm a little bit surprised at, to the, at the extent to which academics have embraced it.
- [46:14]
B
Yeah.
- [46:15]
A
I mean, I understand from the appointment administrators.
- [46:18]
B
Right.
- [46:19]
A
Academics, all kinds of people who, you know, thinking and being creative and writing and writing.
- [46:27]
B
Reading and writing.
- [46:28]
A
Right. And I, you know, I can't help but think about it just in terms of like the struggles for literacy that have been, you know, that were very bloody. Right. And pronounced just to be able to like, read.
- [46:44]
B
Yeah.
- [46:44]
A
And now like a bunch of a small cadre of super rich people are telling you you don't need it anymore. And I'm.
- [46:51]
B
You don't need it.
- [46:51]
A
No, I'm not doing that.
- [46:53]
B
They have all the money, therefore we don't need to read.
- [46:55]
A
Yeah, yeah. Like we, we have the machine that'll give you the one answer.
- [47:00]
B
Like, no, I've been.
- [47:01]
A
So I read that story before. It doesn't work out.
- [47:06]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is. Thank you for bringing us back to talk about that because I think that that is, that is a really great point that you're making, especially the. We've read, you know, we've read that book before. Right. And we're still, we're living in the future of the books that warned us about our present, which feels a little fascinating. Okay. So the biggest disparity in the realm that you see what's going on.
- [47:33]
A
I mean, I think gen AI is a good kind of use case or example of that.
- [47:40]
B
Right.
- [47:40]
A
That often it's not understood or talked about as a surveillance mechanism.
- [47:45]
B
Yeah.
- [47:45]
A
It's not, you know, I mean, I think a lot about what Meredith Whitaker was talking about when, you know, people are talking about agentic AI. Right. And things like that right now. I don't know, like how much it works like, or if it'll ever kind of fully work or anything like that. I have some, some questions. Right. I have some skeptics. But if it were to work, the extent to which it would surveil you is like unprecedented. You know, I think a big part of what companies. So I have this kind of model or whatever that I'm working on for the book. And I think there have been sort of like three different kind of important eras, for lack of a better term, in terms sort of like algorithms and what people say their algorithms are going to do and things like that. But also what tech companies promise they're. They're going to do that. The deal that they used to offer is, we'll give you this service, you know, give you. And to pay for it, you let us surveil you a little bit. You know that Facebook model. Yeah, Facebook. You know, like when we. People would say, well, Mark, why can't we just pay for Facebook where you're not surveilled. Right. Like.
- [49:08]
B
No, no, no. Right. That's the whole point.
- [49:12]
A
Right. That now that deal was a lie. You know, like the level of surveillance that people. This is deployed against people like, you know, the data broker system. Broker system say to someone like, you know, there are data brokers who, you know, have categories, like parents whose child just died of cancer.
- [49:34]
B
Right.
- [49:34]
A
You know. Right. Things like that. Right. Like a lot of people don't know that.
- [49:39]
B
Yeah.
- [49:39]
A
Like the extent of that surveillance. Right. Facebook pixels on your, you know, on your doctor's office, on the website and things like that. So that deal was sort of always a lie. Right. But how they've tried to alter that deal, I think is really important in that now the wave of Gen AI is promises you all these things. But the only way, like the surveillance has now become the thing that the surveillance is the benefit that if you let these devices watch you sleep, you know, listen to you talk to your partner, record you on your way to and from things like all these things that it will help you optimize your life, you know, that pervasive and always on surveillance will somehow, like, benefit you in kind of untold ways. Now, you asked about the disparity, right? I think there's going to be a lot of ways that some people. There are going to be some people who like, want and like these things, right? Yeah, unfortunately, like I, I used to say, who wants this? And it seems like there are people who want.
- [50:55]
B
There's a market somewhere.
- [50:56]
A
Yeah. But there are also people who will not be able to say no. Right.
- [51:00]
B
Yeah.
- [51:00]
A
That, you know, like they're starting to, you know, Axon is. Is. Is like, has now has the product of body cams for retail workers and hospital workers.
- [51:10]
B
Wow.
- [51:11]
A
As I mentioned, Amazon's coming out with, you know, Smart glasses, you know, surveillance glasses for workers, you know, that more and more there'll be kind of a segment of the population who is forced to endure, you know, a degree of this surveillance, not only in their working lives. Right. Then they'll come home or whatever, and they'll, and that'll be part of their life as well. You know, I think that that's where some of the disparity is going to come from that. And again, like, I think that as this becomes normalized. Right. And I don't, I don't want this to be the future. Right. Like, I, I hope that this is not the future. I think the current trajectory kind of lends itself to that, that as it becomes normalized. Right. Like, you know, we started talking about this from the very beginning that I've seen, unfortunately, that people are kind of adopting and accepting of these, these things with the belief that it will benefit them some way. And again, this is apart from when it's, when it's enforced on people for work, for school, you know, as conditions for employment or benefits or whatever the case may be.
- [52:24]
B
Yeah.
- [52:26]
A
And so, yeah, I think, I think, and again, part of like, what Gen AI sort of promises, like, again, whether it can deliver is that all this data, you know, is that something will be watching it and parsing it. Right.
- [52:40]
B
Yeah.
- [52:41]
A
We're in the past. Like, you know, like, I mean, there's like untold hours of body cam footage that's never been watched.
- [52:48]
B
Right.
- [52:48]
A
It's like a human can't, you know, they're not going to dedicate the resources for a human. Right, Right. But the promise, you know, in quotation, part. Sorry, of Jenna is that. Yeah, yeah. Allow all that stuff to be watched and part some way or another. Yeah, that's a long explain. There's a long.
- [53:08]
B
No, no, no, I, I appreciate you, I, I, you mentioned, you know, the Axon sort of camera, cameras for retail workers. And it, it struck me because I remember, was it like 10 years ago he was working on policies for Axon body cameras for police officers. Right. And so thinking about how the policies for these things that we wrote in such a different context are now streaming down to, you know, everyday folks is something that I think is fascinating. And so you mentioned something that is not your hope for the future. But I have one last question for you, which is actually, what is your hope for the future of privacy and what it could look like for all of us?
- [53:48]
A
Yeah. I mean, so, you know, I always think a lot about Ruha Benjamin, you know, who talks about yeah, everyone should. Right, Right.
- [53:57]
B
Especially in this space. I think that's. That's a good place to start.
- [54:00]
A
Yeah. You know, I mean, who talks, like a lot about imagination and kind of future we were living in, you know? You know, I think, you know, like, I hate to say what I'm about to say, but I haven't. I don't. Because I'm not going to phrase it the right way. Right. I think a lot of times people are like, ah, well, I'm not a Luddite. Right. Which is like, not true. Like, I. I would actually probably be better categorized as one. I do like technology. Right. Like, I do. You know. Right. I do. I think that it is possible to have some of these things, but that don't, you know, like, but I mean, we'd have to have a sort of divorce from capitalism. Right. And I mean, I have a phrase that I say often. Right. Which is like, every future imagined by a tech company is worse than the previous iteration.
- [54:48]
B
Yes. Yes. This is. That is on T shirts, on stickers and everything. Yes.
- [54:52]
A
Yeah, I think I need to do another T shirt drop. Right.
- [54:55]
B
Yes, I think you do too.
- [54:57]
A
And the reason I say that is because the imagination of the tech company is. Is driven by capitalism and the need to, like, extract maximum value from us. That in order for these things to exist in a way that didn't do that and actually benefited us, you know, we kind of have to rewrite a bunch of the ways that things work. I think that's possible. You know, I think it is. It's like actually super dark right now, you know, but, you know, I was just talking to a collection of college students and, you know, I think in a lot of ways, like, the tech barons are really overplaying their hand. And what I mean by that is that it's very clear where their alliances are. Like, they. There's not really kind of any pretense anymore whose side they're on, whether they believe in. In things like, you know, racial justice or equity or even democracy. Like, we don't. Like, I don't have that question anymore. Yeah, you know. Yeah, I know. Like, I personally never did, but, you know, like, some people did. Yeah, yeah, it's very obvious where. Where they are.
- [56:11]
B
Yeah.
- [56:12]
A
You know, history says that that usually doesn't work out well for.
- [56:15]
B
Yeah.
- [56:18]
A
Or into that crew of people, you know, and so I think that, that. I think that there, it's possible to have some of these things in ways that don't feed directly into authoritarianism. You know, I mean, again, Like, I think some of them, like, should not exist.
- [56:36]
B
Right.
- [56:38]
A
But, like, if you wanted a device, Right. That, you know, you thought helped you better kind of stick to your fitness goals, that didn't send that to a company, that then sends it to an authoritarian, like, government, like. Right.
- [56:53]
B
It would be. That'd be ideal, Right?
- [56:57]
A
Yeah.
- [56:58]
B
Your dream.
- [57:00]
A
And so there's gonna have to be, like, a sort of reckoning with, like, where we are.
- [57:06]
B
Yeah.
- [57:07]
A
That I think is. I do think it's more and more common that people understand some of these things.
- [57:13]
B
Right.
- [57:14]
A
That. That pushback. You know, like, I've been talking about luxury surveillance maybe 10 years, you know, and when I initially said, like, oh, like, this thing's like a ankle monitor, you know, people were scandalized. That would be such, like, a comparison. And, like, nobody fights me on it anymore.
- [57:34]
B
Yeah.
- [57:35]
A
Like, they're like, oh, yeah, I kind of see that. Right?
- [57:37]
B
Yeah.
- [57:38]
A
Like, it's clear what the imperatives and impulses of these companies are. And so as I think more and more people understand that, I think more and more pushback is inevitable.
- [57:51]
B
Well, I agree with you. I hope that we have that pushback that comes. And I want to reiterate something that you said, that we can rewrite the ways that things work and that it is possible. And so I appreciate you, Chris, for joining us on this podcast. As we think about, you know, the ways that we are able to rewrite these things, the way that we can think about, the way that privacy can be possible for all of us together in the future. Thank you so much for joining us today.
- [58:15]
A
Thank you for having me. I. I really appreciate it. That's it for this episode. I hope you'll send your feedback. You can write to me at Justin TechPolicy Press. Thanks to Anika, thanks to my co founder, Brian C.H. jones, and thank you for listening Tech Policy Press.