 Thanks for joining us to the launch and first webinar of the technology and policing project, which is a new and exciting collaboration between the tech law and security program at American University Washington College of Law and future tense, which is a collaboration between new America, Arizona State University and slate. Over the course of the next several months, we are going to be curating content on slate looking at questions of policing technology and power. We've already started with a fabulous piece by one of our panelists today Rashida Richardson and on the cock that was was was put up put online on September 11 and I encourage all of you to to look it up and read it because it's really fabulous. We will also be holding a policing and tech symposium on November 20 and a serious series of webinars over the course of the year. So we hope you can join us for all of those. We hope you will submit articles for publication on slate, and we hope that you will spread the word about this exciting new project. And now it's my privilege to introduce Professor Andrew Ferguson, who is a professor at American University Washington College of Law, a friend and a colleague, an author of the fabulous book the rise of big data policing surveillance race and the future of law enforcement. He will be introducing our other two panelists and moderating this panel today. And finally, before I turn it over to him, I want to remind you all that you can submit questions and and the panelists will will take the questions over the course of the next hour. So thank you for joining us and I'm going to now turn it over to Professor Andrew Ferguson. Thank you very much, Jen. Thank you all for joining us and welcome to this webinar on power policing and technology it is hard to think of a more important issue in America today. And an issue that is at the core of what we're doing in government what we're doing on the streets what we're doing about personal liberty and freedom and privacy, and what we're doing about police power. I have with me, two of the people I admire most who are national experts on this issue, a professor Elizabeth Joe and Professor Richard Richardson, who are going to come in here and have a conversation without me interrupting but my role is to get to introduce them. I'm going to start with Professor Joe, if you want to know about technology and police in America, you should simply go follow her follow her on Twitter, follow her scholarship, read the works that she's put on just in the last five years. She has written substantive serious important cutting edge articles on policing and self driving cars policing and artificial intelligence policing and smart cities policing and automation policing and police robots policing and private police robots. Policing in algorithms procurement issues of policing surveillance technology, all of this involving the fourth amendment and DNA that's just the last five years. She is a national voice in this space. She's brilliant. And I'm so privileged that she is here today. She is going to be in conversation with Professor Rashida Richardson, who's newly at Rutgers law school as a visiting scholar. Professor Richardson brings to her new academic environment, the world of what she was doing with AI now where she was director of policy research and literally changing how the world not just America but the world is thinking about artificial intelligence. Thanks to her leadership. I now delved into the world of policing and predictive policing should read her article on dirty data about exposing the connection between predictive policing technologies and the data collection systems in policing in general and the problems and policing in general, read the article that Professor Daskel mentioned about in slate about intelligence data systems. And again just follow these two brilliant scholars who are we're privileged to have today to begin this conversation. So this is a conversation about power technology involves power policing involves power. And when technology is added to police power. There are real concerns about expanding government power. This webinar conversation is about whether technology can ever adequately respond to police power. Can it cabinet can eliminate can regulate it can it help move toward abolition if that's where we want to go. So I want to begin with a slightly backward looking question a framing question and ask our two panels I'm going to start with Professor Joe first looking over the past few years and maybe even the last decade if that's where we want to go. What would you have, what would you say has been the relationship between new technologies and police power. What are the examples of technological change, or even technologies that have changed policing that we need to be thinking about today. So I'll begin with Professor Joe and I'll ask the same question and conversation to Professor Richardson. So, hello, and thank you for that very kind introduction. I'm really excited to participate in the launch of this project. I think this is an ideal time a necessary time to have a national conversation about police and technology so it's wonderful to have watched this project begin look forward to seeing the fruits of the conversations. As you guys go forward. So to answer the question, going back over the past decade. I suppose one of the ways to think about it is not to focus on a particular technology, but rather to think a little bit about the biggest change really in a more macro sense and that's been the increasing and reliance on artificial intelligence so very broadly defined you know let's call it machines to approximate human thinking, and the result is what I've called an increased automation and technology. So that comes with some huge changes whether we're talking about, you know the specific uses of facial recognition or license plate readers, or even using software to analyze massive quantities of DNA. It has a couple of big changes or shifts as a consequence so what that really means is, you know, it amplifies the power of police in ways that isn't just the replacement of human police officers please can now do this obvious is that it decreases the visibility of policing. If so many of these important decisions can be done with machines or with artificial intelligence, that means human beings are doing less of it, and that becomes less visible. And what that also means is I think we're seeing a de socialization of policing, I mean increasing distance between police and their communities means there's just less social aspects of policing happening now, all of this is, you know, it's not, you know, it's not sci fi all of this is uneven, it's a bumpy road, but we're talking about very broad developments. And I think the other big key aspect, besides just the broad reliance increasing reliance on artificial intelligence and automation is the important private sector influence in policing when it comes to technology. So many technology tools are developed in the private sector by the private sector for the police who are essentially end users their consumers of these technology products. So that means they're kind of passive customers for these technology products that are literally shaping their basic policing functions their investigative powers, who they look at what they're looking at what their focus is. And so what that means is that this is a real challenge for the ordinary ways we think about policing right because it used to be that police procurement you know what, you know what vendor, what vendor relationships of police have some very sexy topic and policing nobody really cared about it. Nobody cares about, you know, the brand of car police drive or the kind of uniforms they have. But when it comes to procurement today to the extent that procurement is about which tools are they going to buy or lease or adopt. This becomes an essential question in what policing is today. So lots more to say about that but those are my sort of broad thoughts here. So let me ask you, Professor Richard Richardson to also help us frame this to tell us the same idea of what you see as the impact of technologies and policing so the last however many years you want to go back. Thank you for having me and what I'll do instead of trying to replicate what Professor Joe talked on I'll just try to build on from there. But first, I wanted to also clarify some of what we're talking about when we're talking about police power. And I think a useful example is if you look at any municipal budget and then we're talking about cities towns and states police usually are taking up a lot of that budget. And part of that is because over time we're increasingly using the police as the primary government response to social harm and social issues. And so that's part of the power relation we're talking about is the use of police and dealing and managing and negotiating a lot of social relationships in society. And to build off of what Professor Joe already said it's we see amplification and a lot of other issues but we also see the legitimization and justification of police practices with the use of a lot of these technologies and that's in part due to both governmental societal problems we have of automation bias or technological neutrality and these are concepts that try to capture the fact that we assume because something is based on data or because it's technology it is more neutral impartial or better than a human process. And really technology is just a human creation and susceptible to the same problems and flaws as as as humans. And sometimes when these technologies are used by police departments or even marketed as helping to deal with issues of discretion or abuse. What we're actually seeing is the legitimate station of these processes practices and policies when really we should be scrutinizing them more. And another problem that technology introduces into police and power is sometimes skew or even off you skate the function of police and society, because we don't actually see what's happening and I think a good example of a technology to illustrate that is social media monitoring and that a lot of people are using social media what you put out is public and but with not everyone social media is being viewed by law enforcement and used by law enforcement to build cases or to assess the criminality of certain individuals and what happens when the subjective judgments about what to use that we're putting now into the public or using this information without the context that in which it was stated causes several problems and we're seeing this with the use of social media post or even music videos being used to help prosecute tons of young kids. And so I think we have to think about all of these different shifts that are happening simultaneously and also compounding over time and they all serve to completely change or worsen the imbalance between power and police and its specific role as I mentioned in the beginning of my comments and negotiating and framing our social relationships. Can I just jump in here. I want to go something that Professor Richardson said which is just a really, really important. I mean, she raises the question of like well, what is what is policing for here in this context of technology, and I just have a further comment on that and that is, it's a really difficult question in the United States to talk about power policing and technology when we don't have a national police force these are literally thousands of decisions across the country. So, you know, to the extent that a large urban department, whether it's Los Angeles or New York City can have a kind of process where we think about, oh there's at least a fight against about transparency and what we're going to see and the tools they're doing for each New York or LA or Chicago, there are thousands of cities where there's 10 officers in the force. Their data might be, you know, literally some hard drives they bought at the local office depot. The questions about technology and power vary enormously. So the answer really is that there isn't a one size fits all kind of a rubric that we can use here because these decisions are so heterogeneous all across the country. So at best we can do our raised broad questions but communities actually have to have really specific kinds of things they're looking for. Let's talk a little bit about that because you know a couple of the points that you raised both about visibility that it is both hiding what police are doing but also in some ways legitimizing what police are doing that we are hiding sort of the powers also hiding the government decisions but also because the money's flowing to police granting them more power to do more social control social services work. In terms of particular technologies that worry you recognize in the fragmented nature of policing, but which are the ones that are being applied even more unequally. I mentioned social media. It's a good example of whose, you know, feeds are being watched. But how should we think about in the discussion of power of how these technologies are impacting different communities differently, not just geographically but also in terms of race or class, or distinguishing characteristics. And either one of you can go. Professor Richard, can you actually sort of brought some of social media so I'm curious about your thoughts of that I know you've written about particular policing I know you've written about other sorts of algorithmic algorithmic decision making systems. I've been struggling with this question to be quite honest because I don't I in some cases it is very clear that certain technologies don't work equally or don't work for all or can be used in various ways to give some specific examples. So as you mentioned every and we've both written about I'm predictive policing and how that's been used to perpetuate existing problems in police departments, an example being that if a police department has engaged in discriminatory racial profiling, then and then they integrate that same data into a predictive policing system then it's more than likely that that system is going to predict that the same communities that the police department was targeting are susceptible to more criminality even though the actual crime data may not reflect that you have facial recognition technologies which simply don't work for someone that looks like me, and other technologies where it's either something inherently wrong within the system as to why it produces disparate outcomes or its application is used in harmful so I think you have kind of have to divide those out into whether there's something inherently wrong with the technology or and how it's being used, but also, we're talking about a lot of technologies that are based on data. And there's also a problem there with the underlying data that these technologies are using whether you're talking about predictive analytics, recommendation systems or even technologies that are simply automating tasks they necessarily rely on historical data, whether it's yesterday or a decade ago. And if that data is reflecting the social inequities in society, then the application at scale of that data is going to produce certain harms as well. And based on the history of policing in this country in particular we know that people of color specifically black Latinx and indigenous people are overrepresented in police databases. So that's going to lead to unwarranted scrutiny of those communities. We also know that discretion and subjectivity plays a lot into decision making and these technologies help either hide some of that discretion or displace it in certain ways so there can be targeting of people with disabilities or other marginalized groups in ways that either the technology is helping conceal or skew, as we mentioned or amplifying the use and ability to apply authority by police departments. Yeah, and I guess I would just add to that and say it's, I don't think there's any particular technology that stands out more than any others. I think it's right to focus on the data. It's right to focus on biases in the data. And I guess maybe the broader way to answer this question is to say, I think we need to be concerned anytime that technology is kind of used as a kind of thin veneer of a justification to draw more scrutiny to communities than others. And I think one of the big misunderstandings here is that you often see an argument says, Well, you just can't arrest someone because they've been on social media and said something or you can't arrest someone because it looks like there's some sort of technological match. But maybe that's the wrong question. The maybe the larger question is that these technologies make some people more visible than others. Some communities more visible than others. And that makes it easy for surveillance to increase in some communities and surveillance, even without direct physical interference is a burden. That's what we often don't realize that just the mere fact that you know that your community is heavily watched is a psychological burden. It's an emotional burden that weighs on us in ways that are traditional ways of regulating the police don't really readily capture. And that's one of the really basic problems with police and power. That's the theme of our conversation today. Can I actually jump in and say one more thing. This is so inspired. I feel like we're going to keep doing this. Another problem without trying to hyper focus on anyone technology to is that technology because of the reasons that I mentioned before of either technological neutrality or automation bias or any other term to capture our fascination with technology as the silver bullet to everything also leads to the fact that we don't explore other alternatives and that in itself is a harm to and that there are many non technological or even community based alternatives to addressing social harm or social issues and communities that are completely off the table once the technology is purchased or the idea of technology solving the problem is part of the public discourse. So I think we do need to think more abstractly about what harm is and what is being lost by the application of these technologies. And that's the part that we jump into that and that is that you know if you think about it. It's not really an either or but it's often presented that way. And here's the insidious part about the private sector influence I think in policing today. And that is those technological options are so tempting for very understandable reasons to police departments. Here is an easy fix to make you better on crime control. Here is an easy fix to help you reduce X kinds of offenses in crime. And very often it comes with an even greater sweetener. Maybe it's free. Maybe there's a trial for six months. It's absolutely free. No strings attached right or it's at a greatly reduced rate or more importantly there is federal funding for that in a way that isn't available for just having more police officers work with let's say mental health care providers and create some kind of creative solution. So there's every structural incentive for the police to just try out all these tools. And in a way I think what Professor Richardson is getting at is this idea of well maybe that's the wrong way to approach technology not just a well that's cool let's try it but some a very basic question of what are we trying to accomplish here. You know what is the goal here what does success look like if we adopt X police technology and that's typically a question that's just never asked. And I think it's a wonderful conversation for where we are in America today where we're talking about removing police power through defunding or abolishing the police the recognition that these structural inequalities are part of policing in America. And the question is whether police technology has any role at all if as we've sort of said earlier that the technology certainly the technology as it has been for the last decade has sort of reified power and policing like the technology is sold to police to be used by police to be adapted by police and not the communities. Is there any role for surveillance technology that could be consistent with the sort of the defund police movement that has errone after the arose after the killing of George Floyd and that sort of cascading incidents of police brutality that we've seen across America. Is there any way to think about technology that doesn't reify those deep structural power inequities that are what they are. We know they are. So I think it's first important to clarify what is meant with calls for defunding the police because I know there's been tons of publications that kind of blur on that ask and what I really think advocacy around defund the police is about is about reframing our conversation about the role of police in society and also how we deal with social harm in society, not necessarily that police need to be gone tomorrow, but maybe police are not the people to be sent when someone's having a mental health crisis. Maybe it's a social worker or someone who's actually trained in that. And I think with reshaping those conversations about how we deal with social harm and what exactly is the role of the police in society. We then should have the conversation about technology. I feel like in policing and tech it's often the state or the police predefined what the concern or question is and then technology is applied to that and we never actually have these larger holistic conversations about what what do we need to have a safe and equitable society and then what is the role in technology and advancing that and I hope that with these conversations that are trying to really address the structural conditions that lead to the social inequities we have in society. We can first get that more imaginative framing first of like what is it that we're actually trying to create and then what is the role of technology in advancing that instead of this sort of perverted. We've already decided what the problem is and we're applying this technology that was designed to solve that specific problem in the first place. I think that's right and I think one of the key issues here is not to the extent that I I interpret the defund the police movement as a way of raising questions about resource allocation and priorities. I think it's those basic questions that have to be answered first and then think about what technologies are useful to that end, rather than the world we live in now which is largely to throw all kinds of technologies at an undefined problem. Worry about regulation later and then realize there are harms which for many people who look at this work entirely predictable. And that's been our general historical arc with every kind of surveillance technology used by the police. This idea that well I'm sure it will work without defining what work means. I'm sure the harms we can remediate later without realizing well maybe they're very difficult to remediate and without thinking about regulation beforehand in many many instances whether we're talking about facial recognition technology, body cameras license play readers, you know it's technology specific. It's basically a an approach to police technology that we're sort of sadly lacking here. And so to the extent that a defund the police movement means a reassessment a fundamental reassessment of what the police should be doing. You know, it's not a technology specific kind of mandate or prohibition. And in fact, I think it's a little bit mistaken to think of, Well, here are the technologies we need to ban, because that's just not the way things are going to work, particularly when those technologies are being used very, you know, with rapidity in the private sector, you know, we are we worried about license plate readers, well sure we can be worried about those things, but we wouldn't want to necessarily ban them by the police with me because we think that neighborhoods can join together and by their own network why would why would we allow that in the private sector and decide that the police couldn't have that at all so some of these things are really about trying to agree on what the basic questions are when we decide, what is the relationship between police technology and power and I don't think we've come to that consensus and I don't see anyone in a position of power trying to raise it in that very basic way. There are only communities who are raising that right as part of the abolished police of movement of saying that the answers won't come from City Hall they won't come from a police chief they have to come from communities, and we have to sort of step back of the traditional role of policing. But in the now in the moment now, it almost sounds it's interesting, there's both the recognition that the history of policing technology has been a history of missteps of every time that's a new technology shows up and we forget what we've done. And so one lesson from that is that policing technology, as it has always arisen and any kind of police surveillance will always be fraught and we should just not go there we have money that you know could come from the federal government can come from state budgets, none of it should go into police technology at that moment. Before we have these conversations with communities about policing and the role of police and the role of social services and other government, and that if given the keys to the whatever your mayor's ear, or whatever you would say no just don't spend another dime on any policing tech at this moment because it's just we're just going to repeat the same patterns that we've seen before. Is that what we're saying. So, I guess my response here would be we're not necessarily saying not jump in but I think we, you know, every community kind of needs a checklist for themselves about what questions they should be asking when there's a proposal to adopt new technologies by their law enforcement agency, and this assumes that they even know that this is going to happen. Many communities now have sort of built into their model notification to the police. But that's still not true as a kind of nationwide practice. So we need a sense of best practices for every community. And what we're we are seeing now and maybe this is decreased some with the renewed attention on policing this year, but and that is, well, communities need to have a sustained focus on their local law enforcement agency. Too often, there is a lot of attention to that initial adoption of a technology. And understandably, you know, local community members have many other things to do they have jobs they have families, particularly during this time of crisis there. These are not the things that they can attend to. But the problem with police technology is that you need a long term community engagement to figure out whether this is the best solution for a particular city or community, you need oversight, not just in that sense of, you know, should this be adopted, but also in terms of how, how are we going to measure success what is the, what is the police department here going to tell us about how this is working. Are we going to know whether it's not working. What are the things that police are doing to reduce harms in attendance to using that particular technology. That's hard work. It's hard work for communities. But it's as necessary as being as deeply involved in one's public school district, you know, you have to be really, really attentive to what's going on here for the long haul and communities can make steps or take steps to gather together organize themselves because let's face it, some of these details are not terribly exciting right there's a kind of really cool interesting tech aspect to it but a lot of these things are matters of budgetary decisions you need someone who's good at accounting you need someone who can help explain to the community what's going on with the data science here. All of these things are really hard but that's kind of the today in today's world and necessary aspect of police oversight. And I'll just build on what Professor Joe is saying and that I also think communities need to think about what redress means for them because it's not the same in all communities and a lot of the problems that we're seeing and policing relate to pre existing structural conditions and what that specifically is divestment in communities so if you haven't had proper resources and are experiencing a slight uptick in property crime as a result, then like that's not necessarily connected like I think there's a tendency to pathologize the behavior of specific individuals to explain crime, when really it's connected to these policy decisions from for decades and communities. And that's what needs to be focused in on but also communities for themselves need to think about well what does redress look like if we are able to reformulate the conversation in this way. And I think that's part of a larger difficult national conversation we're having because for so long in this country, the way we deal with redress is retributive justice in some forms and what really we need to deal with is addressing a lot of the harms that have been compounded over time, specifically affecting marginalized communities in a particular way. I also would jump in here and say, you know, another way to think about this problem is that technology isn't, and thus far we've been having this really interesting conversation about technology as a potential harm right, but there's lots of ways in which technology can be good or useful. I mean, there's a really interesting dynamic that we can identify right now I mean, you know, a big locus of police violence unexpected police violence is through traffic stops right traffic stops that go terribly wrong right is hurt or even worse killed during the course of a traffic stop. So let's take the world as it seems to be going right. There's an increasing amount of automation in our world in policing and everywhere else. On one take that seems really really bad right, but you know we appear to be moving towards a future of driverless cars that tech companies are going towards a future of driverless cars they're already anticipating how government agencies would have to remotely stop those cars. So you think like well from an informational privacy perspective. That's really scary right that's kind of the one one group of people who are saying this is bad because there's so much data drawn from there. But maybe if informational prior privacy isn't your top concern, maybe if literal physical harm during a traffic stop is your top concern, then maybe that technological development would be welcome. Maybe for some communities at taking literal human police officers out of the equation would be a welcome development. And that's what I mean by saying it's not obvious that every new police technology is going to be rejected by communities who have had problems with their local police. And I also don't think that there's necessarily going to be consensus a national consensus about which things are truly harms and which aren't. It really depends on your point of view and your sort of historical experience with policing thing. Well let's talk about that because in some ways the argument that the use of technology can reduce the physical policing harms of policing has been used to justify like video cameras on the streets in certain communities and other kinds of surveillance technologies that are invasive in the surveillance way but not in the physical way. And I think that you know communities have rightfully pushed back on that to say there is really an invasion there. So I guess my question is, if we were going to, you know, sit down in a particular community at a church or, you know, a community center and have a conversation about a proposed, you know, smart car technology. So are you thinking about the sort of use of government power to change power dynamics in that community. What would we advise the community what would we advise the companies trying to sell products and what would we advise the police chiefs who are thinking about another cool toy to, you know, help do what we have to do. Well I think it first starts with the question of what why are we even trying to use the technology and for what I'm aim and I feel like that convert from my own participation in these processes on in a local government level we never actually have a conversation about those questions. And that's what I meant earlier when I was saying it kind of the use or acquisition of technology kind of forecloses other options and it doesn't necessarily mean that non technical options were the other options on the table but it forecloses the conversation about what are we even trying to for. And I think if you, if we were to start with having an open conversation of what are our community issues and what do we like what do we need or what are we trying to solve for in the role of technology, then we'd get a different kind of development which I think Jo is starting to speak of like if you're looking at the boards or even who's involved in some of these technology companies they don't have people like us on it, first of all, it's usually police chiefs other police adjacent people, and then other technologists and we could also get into the demographics of who are in that room which is typically white males and not women people of color and other people who are disproportionately targeted by policing. But I think if we change twos in the room and shaping those questions of what are we even trying to solve for, then we could have more productive conversations about the inclusion of technology and society and it's just not the presumption that a technology will cause harm but instead looking at it as a tool and actually trying to see what is it a tool for. I think that's right and I think one of the, you know, the key problems here again is we never get to that first principles question which I think Professor Richardson is getting to and that is, you know, drawing in a community, you know, if you think about it, you are talking to our audience here today, I want to ask all of you how to answer the question of when was the last time you were at your local law enforcement's public agenda meeting. I bet the percentage is relatively small right because you know they're they're not well attended I've been to them I've been to them when they're literally just two other people in the room. That's a problem when you have these really basic things happening and the community, I, you know, they need to get involved they need to know what kinds of questions to ask and I think that's kind of the guidance that you know people like Professor Richardson and Professor Richardson can can kind of help address like these are questions that in plain language of their police departments and we're not getting that from any anywhere we're not saying like, you know, you have to become a policing expert or you have to have a degree in CS now, but you do have to know like what to ask you do need to know like, well, is this technology going to work for us some basic questions like, well, ask your chief, you know, is it do you know what it means for this technology to work. Right. I mean, how are you training your officers to use this other than just saying, you know, here's what the manual says go ahead good luck I mean there's got to be more to it than that and that that basic problem I think we keep returning to this question of, well, it's not enough to throw it through a technology at the problem we haven't solved the question of what is policing for and what exactly is the problem itself. That's intimately tied up with everything from the, you know, defund the police movement to broader questions about community harm and mitigation. And the theme here is that it's not technology specific so the advice I would give for communities is try to organize yourselves in a way that you can have sustained focus and oversight of what's going on in your local police department. And one of the things that you both have written about so well is about how even the definition of the problem or what the data you're collecting is changes any potential solutions so if you're trying to think about the information that police collect your answers are going to go to else, if your question was what a communities need, you might be collecting a whole lot of different pieces of information that might lead you to a very different sort of solutions and some of the solutions are probably not be technological at all we'd like better schools and more, you know, after school programs and not more surveillance cameras I think that's definitely a piece of it. I want to remind the audience that there is this q&a you can people are writing their questions and they're coming in so we're going to go to that in in a few moments. I'm taking away this is a struggle for people who write about policing technology is that when the conversation is about power, and it's about the lack of community power to have a say in the ways that police police communities. Any conversation about technology is largely a distraction in the sense that it is hiding the real structural problems that we need to focus on. And I think that that is sort of what is coming out and I think what's interesting is the way you framed in beginning about even the technologies themselves like AI because of its, it's sort of hiding of the visible nature of what's going on only exacerbate that. So if we wanted to devise the space or place to begin a conversation about changing the conversation about policing power and technology in America. Is it necessarily just going to be your local board, you know whatever your local community because policing is so fragmented. Can it can it have can we have a national conversation about this and if so, how would we develop that. We absolutely can have a national conversation. What we need are kind of an articulation of best practices that have input from all of the relevant communities and actors who have a stake in policing. And to think about you know even if it's as simple as a checklist to develop what you know across the country, what do you need as a community to answer questions about your own technology because let's face it, you know, the very idea of technology is frightening to people you know I can't most people can't you know explain to you why they're you know they're how their auto correct works right how are we going to have a conversation about how this development of suspicion came about, based on an alert a police officer received, you know how can we translate that into something where communities understand these are the questions we need to ask. And that's what I need to know in the long term as a member of my community. And yes, we can have a national conversation about it in ways that are more complex more nuance than let's have a band or, or my favorite let's just have a warrant requirement, which never gets to the deeper questions about you know what is this going to mean at a very granular granular level for individuals right because not everything is simply about a warrant or an arrest as I've already said. It's simply about these deeper fundamental changes between police and their communities, because of artificial intelligence, because of automation, and let's face it, because of what you might call a kind of bastardization of the technology right this idea that you say it's technology but it's actually technology is the basis for adding on many layers of discretion and bias and saying well it's just the tech right that's a totally different harm we haven't addressed thus far. So those are the kinds of things that everybody should be aware of on a national level. I also think we need like a national history lesson of sorts, because even taking this the tech out of policing context. And what's at stake and what benefits can come from technology very much are constrained by where you sit in the social economic political hierarchies of our society. And I don't think most people understand that fact in itself but also why is that, and that's where history comes in and understanding the social context of policing both on a localized level and nationally can really help and understanding how everyone has the same relationship with police not everyone has the same positive or negative outlook on police and how can we move forward and thinking about reform and the proper role of police when there's so many deaf spirit experiences and viewpoints on policing in itself and I think having a better understanding of that social history is really important for us to have critical conversations about where to move forward. Just some of the questions from the Q&A but I want to mention I'd be remiss if I didn't say that there is a checklist of sorts that was created the Harvard Law School criminal justice policy project and partnership with the Stanford criminal justice policy project created a checklist of sorts on policing technology was mainly directed toward police chiefs to sort of have them think through these fundamental problems but it was also in recognition that they would have to face communities who were concerned and rightfully so about these technologies and I think that that is a resource I know the policing project in New York has done work on it in the same kinds of audits and technological audits but again that kind of presumes that there will be technology in the conversation and it may be the case that if you understand your history and you look at surveillance and policing and American history your answer to that question of well what do you think about this should be no just no just look at history no and that's not irrational it's actually pretty rational if you look at the history of surveillance in communities of color and black communities especially and that may be where we need to start in order to build something else. So I want to bring up some of the questions in the Q&A so one question comes from you know is about politics right that the political pressure of senior officials and police chiefs and primarily is part of what's going on here right they are getting pressure from the community who that community is is an open question to adopt these high tech surveillance tools because they want to be seen as cutting edge sometimes they want to be seen as progressive sometimes it's a cost effective mechanism and that it is you know unfair to critique chiefs who are responding to political pressure when it's political it's political pressure that is actually doing that and why is that I guess not legitimate when it's usually not the chiefs want to do it themselves they're responding to something and isn't that part of something we have to address. Well I want to complicate this question because that presumes police are responding to all community needs when the reality is that they're usually responding to those who are in closer proximity or have some type of power relation with police and or government officials in some way. And I and there's often tons of community concerns that are never responded to and I can even say here in New York City we have like that imbalance. Happening where tons of communities are like we don't want tech or we actually want a better understanding of the technology that's being used. But I guess you could say a silent majority is whose interests are being advanced and you wonder why and it's like there's whole histories of the financialization of policing technologies and how that's entangled with government. But I do hear what is in that question and I do it. Politics are involved but I also think you need a sort of nuanced analysis of the politics and play in that there's also politics that go into politicians not wanting the proverbial blood on their hand and and pushing back on police departments whether we're talking about the adoption of police or abusive practices so politics. I'm not really answering the question I'll admit that to whoever the person who asked it, but I do think there are politics in play but you have to think about whose politics are being advanced by police and who's are being ignored because it's often racialized and it often very much aligns with the power dynamics within a certain jurisdiction. And I think to also respond to that question. It's right I mean it's very hard to just blame police choose for adopting the technology, particularly if they say look we need we need to try something different. I mean that's a very understandable motivation. And I suppose that the problem is much deeper right I mean, imagine if we said abstractly. We approached policing in 2020 by having every department be approached at a vendor conference by one or two companies, offering them a year of free X technology and see if it works and one or two and they don't have any choice about what the products are how they're doing and they just do it. And then you factor that into a police chief saying well I had to try something. We'd never design a system of Democratic policing from the ground up in that way. We would want police chiefs to say, here are the things I want to find out with technology. Here's what the community also says they need from the technology, someone designed this technology for us. That is not the world we live in. We live in a world where the police departments are basically consumers. They are passive consumers, taking whatever is out there, which is usually not a full robust set of choices. And certainly not something that we as the public have easy access to. That's a fundamental problem and it goes well beyond just a police chief saying, well I had to do something by adopting this technology. How do we restructure that basic system? I don't have an answer for you, but that is a real real problem today with police power and technology. It has almost has nothing to do with police in the first instance. Just to add a little bit more because this is something Professor Joe and I both focus on but there's also tons of problems in procurement where there's not enough friction in the process. So as Professor Joe was illustrating police are going into like the target of police technologies and picking things off the shelf, but they're not necessarily doing market research on what is the best technology to serve my community needs. Often they're being approached by some marketing or sales person from a vendor being told this is the silver bullet solution for your community not doing any more research and then go into their procurement person saying I need this yesterday. So we also need to think about the processes within government that are leading to this sort of blind use and purchasing of technologies that are being sold as the solution and then we later find out it didn't work. And that that is the fundamental challenge for understanding policing today. So I think being a policing scholar in in 2020 is not just about knowing that constitutional regulations of police. It's not about knowing the standard state laws about what police should do. It's about knowing something about procurement. It's knowing something about intellectual property believe it or not. All of these things which used to have very little to do with policing are absolutely fundamental to knowing about some of the key drivers of how policing is changing. That's a real challenge for anyone interested in the basic topic of police technology and power. Well you lost students out there is time to write your comments on these issues because they're really important or you know academics and policymakers like this is the hidden power behind these technologies. Almost none of these technologies arose through truly public discussions and a few places where there are are through Democratic oversight boards like an Oakland around San Francisco and Seattle and other places that have done that. But even those have created their own problems in terms of, you know, as Richard said like true Democratic accountability not everyone is in that meeting to debate their views and a lot of times money and power and connections control and that has happened a bit too often. One I want to bring up another question that came up from the audience that I think was probably triggered by Professor Joe's comments about how there's this you know parallel world of non government consumerism and so the question is about the sort of dissonance and people's views of people who are concerned about policing technology but then putting ring doorbell cameras on their home. Who are concerned about the growth of facial recognition in mug shots and other places but are happy to have the convenience of facial recognition in their consumer worlds back on the day when we went to stores. So what do we do about the fact that there is not only this dissonance but this dissonance cuts against the move toward maybe not looking for a technological solution to social problems. I'll let you fight it out whoever wants to go. Professor Richard, so it sounds like you wanted to jump in so I'll let you know I was actually thinking. I mean, part usually when I get this question about like consumer products and I point out that like technology is a tool there's inherent trade offs to it all and I think we need to think more critically, whether on an individual basis or a societal basis about where those trade offs are falling and who they fall on I think that's more on the societal question of there may be an immediate or even incremental benefit of a particular technology but it could also have disproportionate harms for particular subsets of one community or inherent trade offs that you're not particularly thinking about whether mentally in that we lose certain skills from adopting that technology or we lose privacy or other principles that are related to the convenience that we get from a particular technology. I think that's right there is an absolute dissonance and I think the thing that concerns me most with the consumer use of these things, particularly as they become more and more networked in other words as neighborhoods band together for facial recognition or for license plate recognition. But that has to be layered upon a topic that Professor Richardson has already raised and that's our history. We have a strain of violence in American history that is directly tied to vigilantism and the thing to be worried about is, you know policing is one topic of course but there's also the very real possibility of technologically driven vigilantism. And that is a, you know, I suppose that's a webinar for another day, but it's really concerning of course because it takes that policing power leaves it in the hands of people who with no training whatsoever, and with far less regulation so it's a worrying dissonance and something people really need to pay attention to. So I'm mindful of times I'm only asked one more question from the queue. I will say my answer to that question about the difference the consumer is that anything you're giving up to a private company is one, you know, most worn away from the police so that the line isn't terribly strong and you should realize that you are what you think is private is not very private. So there's a question about harms that have been compounded over time, because of the interaction of police and technology. And the question is, where should we center our focus for thinking about it should come from communities community organizations, sort of, you know, community organizations and sort of stand in the stead of communities sort of you know, national nonprofits that might represent civil liberties or racial justice or those or other places like where do we center this conversation where should we reach out to after this seminar and say hey you need to start a conversation I saw this really cool webinar. It's amazing. I want to get involved. I think since we're talking about police and these are always localized issues that should start within a community and we should center the voices of those who are disproportionately harmed and most marginalized because like there's the overall theory of change if you try to create solutions for the most marginalized group, every the trickle down effects stem to everyone and I think that's how we should be thinking about these conversations. I personally am not one for symbolic representation of having national organizations or someone who is saying they're the speaker for an entire community as representing it because you don't get that localized nuance, or truly understand that. But I also understand like we're living in reality where everything is mediated through a computer right now. So that may not always be practically available. But I also think there's little things we can do as individuals and and that's also like talking to your neighbors like I know I've had some contentious debates with other New Yorkers about like the adoption of like Amazon rain cameras and I'm like do you really think you're going to be robbed or are you just doing that because you like the security and don't understand how that enables profiling against marginalized bodies in your neighborhood. So I think it's like being comfortable to have those types of critical debates with neighbors and peers and then being open to having larger community conversations but knowing whose voice needs to be centered and it's usually those that are on the like lower part of the power dynamics. So I think one of the basic things you can do as a citizen is to tell yourself this matters to you and you're and that you want to spend a little bit of time on it and, you know, get hop off of next door and hop onto something else, and figure out a way to engage your neighbors to do that. I want to get a community group going where, you know, we promise that one of us out of the hundred of us is going to attend, you know, every single public police meeting, and take notes and discuss it. You know, one of the things about American society that I think is often overlooked is people can really get up to speed on lots of things there are community discussion groups a very high specialization on gardening to you know chess to everything can become a local expert on policing and we just need the will on the drive to do so and that's where to start. And I think communities are local experts on policing and they know better because they've been police and the question is how to give voice. So I'm mindful of time we have a hard stop at 1pm and I want to be respectful but I want to just say thank you the goal of this webinar was to start a conversation not give answers necessarily that we got great answers and great ideas. It's a conversation that needs to go beyond the participants here and into your local communities. The issue of policing is at its for the issue of surveillance and policing and technology and policing is right behind it. And it needs to be part of a national conversation so I encourage you to reach out to those local groups and to reach out to people to start and continue this conversation because we need more voices into a larger conversation. So once more thank you to Professor Joe and Professor Richardson. Thank you to Jen daskel and the technology law society security program at American University Washington Law and to slate and the future tense and Arizona State and to everyone who participated here with us we appreciate your time we appreciate your engagement and let's continue this conversation. So thank you all. It was great fun.