Consistent with our past research, the study presented in Tracked and Targeted: Navigating Worker Surveillance at Amazon is a participatory action research study. This means we focus deeply on individuals’ and groups’ lived experiences as the basis from which we can know and understand the world. This type of research design deeply emphasizes reciprocity and…
Our Data Bodies’ interim findings on surveillance of low-wage workers at Amazon are now published! Tracked and Targeted: Navigating Worker Surveillance at Amazon features insights and stories based on an initial analysis of 21 interviews we conducted with current and former workers. Our qualitative, participatory studyDetails on our participatory methodology can be found here: https://www.odbproject.org/2023/11/15/odb-at-work-methodology/.…
Earlier this year, Our Data Bodies attended the RightsCon Conference that took place in San José, Costa Rica. It was a complicated affair that came with great connections, but incredible disappointment in the conference’s handling of the realities of racism, colorism, imperial borders, and government negotiations. Overall, it was a complicated, connective time. Our Data…
This past month, Our Data Bodies co-hosted a Technology, Discrimination, and Exclusion workshop with Cape Town-based civil society organization, Open Secrets. The workshop focused on knowledge generation around specific issues of data collection, collusion between private and government sectors, and ideas of ethical data usage in South Africa. The workshop took place at Community House in…
ODB member Seeta Peña Gangadharan worked with Sanne Stevens, Co-Director of the Justice, Equity, and Technology Table, and Safia Oulmane, member of the Justice, Equity, and Technology Table to co-organize the Abolish Carceral Tech track at the Allied Media Projects Conference this year. In this post, we preview interviews conducted by Safia with a sample…
Photo Credit: New Frame News Part two of this interview is below, to read part one, click here: Kim M Reynolds: You kind of you detail the industry of private security, which is really interesting for me as well, something that I’ve been kind of thinking about deeply and particularly the ways that private security…
Ziyanda Stuurman shares her reflections on her debut book, Can We Be Safe: The Future of Policing in South Africa, broader insights on the inadequate delivery of safety and justice from the police and what the vision of abolition could be in South Africa. Ziyanda Stuurman is a political science and security studies graduate who…
At the end of 2020, Our Data Bodies was featured in The New York Times for their annual Good Tech Awards. The Good Tech Awards profile technology efforts that make an important impact in their respective fields from racial justice to food and wellness to COVID-19 responses. ODB received mention for our work on facial…
We started teasing out all the levels of the way we actually criminalize young people by having surveillance. We started thinking about who’s in charge of this and who’s really pushing this through, and it was both acutely. Well, it was acutely APS, but also broadly that there was nobody, no one person making sure…
Misclassifying—especially truck drivers—as independent contractors, and that’s obviously something that’s spread to a bunch of other sectors, rideshare being the most obvious one. So now we’re seeing this surveillance kind of capitalism based in Amazon and other companies and seeing, again, that this is starting here and that it’s not going to stay here, it’s…