Saturday, July 19, 2014: 10:00 pm (Olson): Recent revelations about massive data collection by the National Security Administration have brought sustained popular attention to the rise of pervasive surveillance systems. We have entered a moment of important dialogue about the surveillance state, the role and ethics of technology companies, the potential harms of mass surveillance to civil liberties and human rights, and the need for interventions involving technology, policy, and social practice. At the same time, the voices of communities that have long been most explicitly targeted by surveillance have been largely excluded from the debate. There are multiple, overlapping surveillance regimes, and they disproportionately target people of color, low-income, and working people, as well as activists in general. State, military, and corporate surveillance regimes are growing in scope, power, and impunity, not only in countries such as Iran, Syria, and China, but also within liberal democracies such as the United States, India, and Brazil. This talk will focus on projects and process from the MIT Civic Media Codesign Studio (codesign.mit.edu), which works with community-based organizations to develop civic media projects that connect to grounded strategies for social transformation.

Sasha Costanza-Chock, Emi Kane