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January 11, 2019
Abolition Economic justice Data weapons

Abolition in the Age of Big Data

Fingerprints, facial recognition, background checks, gang databases, FBI lists, social media surveillance, credit scores: data has always been central to the expansion of the prison industrial complex, the immigration enforcement industry, and the financialization of our economy.

Abolition is not an end goal, but a process. The prison abolition movement asks the question: how do we create solutions in our communities to social problems without recourse to prisons? In this panel, we apply the same lens to big data. How can we reimagine the structures and industries that centralize big data in the hands of few. And how can we abolish the structures that turn data into a powerful and deadly weapon?