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Showing posts from November, 2018

Public talk on Decolonization, Resistance and Creativity

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I will be speaking on a public panel event on " Big Data from the South: Decolonization, Resistance and Creativity" organized by Stefania Milan , the PI for the DATACTIVE ERC project at the University of Amsterdam and Emiliano Treré at the Data Justice Lab, Cardiff University. The wonderful panel of speakers include Nick Couldry (London School of Economics), Merlyna Lim (Carleton University) and Ulises A. Mejias (State University of New York, College at Oswego). The premise of this panel is based on the fact that datafication has dramatically altered the way we understand the world around us. Understanding the so-called ‘big data’ means to explore the profound consequences of the computational turn, as well as the limitations, errors and biases that affect the gathering, interpretation and access to information on such a large scale. However, much of this critical scholarship has emerged along a Western axis ideally connecting Silicon Valley, Cambridge, MA and Northern

Talk at Humboldt Berlin on Tech, Law and Access to Justice

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On 28th and 29th of November 2018, I participated and spoke at a workshop titled  “ The Future of Law: Technology, Innovation and Access to Justice” at the Humboldt University of Berlin.   The workshop was organised by the Chair for  Public Law and Comparative Law, Humboldt University of Berlin and the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung for Freedom . My talk was titled, "Above the law and below poverty: Databased obfuscations, activism and publicity from the global South." My talk argues that  contrary to seeking to be protected through anonymity as the bulk of the current research alludes to, some of those at the margins may choose to put themselves at high risk by being visible and heard. The GDPR, rooted in the Western ideology of individual choice and rights, may have created a privacy universalism, begging the question of whether privacy is a privilege and a luxury. This talk draws from a decade of fieldwork and activism among vulnerable communities beyond the West to grappl

Invited to the COST Action Work group on Automation & Mobility

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I have been invited to join the WISE-ACT project,  “Wider Impacts and Scenario Evaluation of Autonomous and Connected Transport” and contribute my expertise on privacy, social inclusion and digital mobility in urban space and the future implications on how to organize mobility within public space. This is a new area for me to apply my expertise which is exciting as I have been doing research on how people are tracked with automated systems enabled by big data, be it with the tracking of illegal immigrant's movements via the  biometric identity project in India or the banning of travel via the Social Credit system in China or the Smart card in South Africa.  Basically, the project theme is as follows: Autonomous vehicle (AV) trials are currently taking place worldwide and Europe has a key role in the development of relevant technology. Yet, very limited research exists regarding the wider implications of the deployment of such vehicles on existing road infrastructure, since it