
[Cover photo credit of J. Khadijah Abdurahman by Nkozi Tiewul found on @/ Webeimagining ] J. Khadijah Abdurahman shares her personal experiences with Administration of Children Services (ACS) in New York City and the critical work she does around archiving our own stories around power and systems. Too much of the literature about how certain…

Speaking to computer scientists at an academic workshop on machine learning, Seeta Peña Gangadharan challenges researchers to think about the problem of disappearing people and history into mathematical equations. Math is deeply political. Yet computer scientists tend to talk about the real world as if they are separate from it and if they do not…

Our Data Bodies was happy and grateful to be represented in the first Making A Feminist Internet convening held on the African continent at the end of October this year! The convening was hosted by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and took place just outside of Johannesburg, South Africa where ODB team member Kim…

Kim M Reynolds spoke with Tawana Petty to learn more about the anti-surveillance work going on in Detroit, which is currently one of the national spotlights for resistance against facial recognition technology. Can you briefly introduce yourself and the work you do? My name is Tawana Petty, and I’m also known as Honeycomb.…

In this post, Seeta Peña Gangadharan joins forces with Seda Gürses and Suresh Venkatasubramanian to briefly canvas research and works that challenge studies of fairness, accountability, and transparency in statistical and automated decision systems. FAT* stands for fairness, accountability, and transparency, and it refers to a growing field of work automated and statistical decision making…

Refusal is an important part of how we challenge pervasive data collection and data-driven systems. In the below transcript (remarks prepared for a TedxLondon talk), Seeta Peña Gangadharan introduces Jill, Bebop, Mika, and Sam, all of whom have shared their stories of control and refusal with Our Data Bodies. Bring to mind those first times…

Fresh off the launch of the Digital Defense Playbook: Community Power Tools for Reclaiming Data, Our Data Bodies presented Building Power Not Paranoia: Community-Based Data Defense, at the 5th annual Internet Freedom Festival in Valencia, Spain. This workshop galvanized the festival’s commitment to elevating the voices of marginalized people and connected ODB to an international…

Brandi Collins-Dexter, Senior Campaign Director at Color of Change, cited to Our Data Bodies in her testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Our Interim Report was subsequently submitted to the Congressional record. The digital revolution transformed this landscape dramatically. Online pokies platforms emerged in the early 2000s, offering Australian players unprecedented…