Ep. 76 - Surveillance Capitalism & Abolitionist Tech, Pt. 2 ft. Alyxandra Goodwin

Bourbon 'n BrownTown

BrownTown spills even more the tea on in part two of the surveillance capitalism and abolitionist tech conversation with Alyx Goodwin, currently a Deputy Campaign Director on Policing and Incarceration at the Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE), organizes with BYP100 Chicago, and is a co-founder and writer with LEFT OUT Magazine.

Alyx and BrownTown pick up where they left off centering a couple reminders and updates before the dig in. The gang discusses the observations and broader lessons from the October 4th Chicago Police Department budget hearing, then-updates of the #StopShotSpotter campaign (1, 2), and the global ramifications of Facebook going down for several hours before unpacking policing as a logic, disaster capitalism, and the bias of tech. Alyx and Caullen discuss how prison tech came home during COVID-19 lockdowns and the advantages of public tech. David re-introduces the role of popular culture in both reinforcing copaganda and problematic systems while also offering heightened critiques of such "fictional" future worlds with tech and spectacle at the forefront. Caullen offers his abolitionist and anti-capitalist critiques of RoboCop (1987) and its early 90's sequels, RoboCop (2014), The Running Man (1987), Demolition Man (1993), and Minority Report (2002) while David and Alyx build out the real world implications, deducing the highly reflexive relationship between art and culture. Once again, they close out encouraging us to interrogate not only the uses of new technologies, but the technologies themselves as well as the unaltered violent systems that they often embolden. If surveillance capitalism and the prison-industrial complex is the puppet master of technology, who is the show for? Here's their take. Originally recorded October 7, 2021. Listen to Part One!

NOTE: Content warning for gunshot sounds and spoiler alert for aforementioned films

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Corrections and information on films mentioned:

• RoboCop (2014) - 5 Reasons Why RoboCop 2014 Isn’t As Bad As People Say It Is (& 5 Reasons It Is) (Screenrant)
• RoboCop (2014) - Opening scene takes place in Tehran, Iran, presented as "Operation: Tehran" in the film.
• The Politics of Demolition Man (video)
• The Running Man (1987) synopsis: By 2017, the United States has become a totalitarian police state following a worldwide economic collapse. The government pacifies the populace through The Running Man, a broadcast game show, where criminals fight for their lives as "runners", fleeing from armed mercenaries named the "stalkers", to earn a state pardon.

Mentioned in episode and extra information:

• Shoshana Zuboff featured in 'The goal is to automate us': Welcome to the Age of Surveillance Capitalism (Naughton, The Guardian)
• Gang database under a new fancy name Criminal Enterprise Information System (CEIS) (MacArthur Justice Center)
• Operation Legend is Bringing Surveillance Tech to Cities (Schwenk, The Intercept)
• Students Are Pushing Back Against Proctoring Surveillance Apps (Kelly, EFF)
• For Tech to be equitable, the people must control it (Alyx Goodwin, LEFT OUT)
• Issues in "crime" reporting (Alex Karakatsanis)
• Afghan Activist: We All Deserve Refuge, Not Just Those Who Served the U.S. (Lazare, In These Times)
• Where Counter-terrorism Got Us (Todd St. Hill, LEFT OUT)
• General McKenzie apologies for Kabul strike killing 10 civilians, not ISIS-K (Smith, The Guardian)
• Plans for $400-billion new city in the American desert unveiled (Holland, CNN)
• Dystopian world’: Singapore patrol robots stoke fears of surveillance state (France-Presse, The Guardian)
• Chicago Drill 'n' Activism cross-platform documentary and multimedia project on drill rap and activism
• Obama CBA Coalition and SoapBox project
• Predictive policing and Chicago's Heat List (The Verge)
• Neighborhoods Watched: The Rise of Urban Mass Surveillance (Stein, et. al)
• Social justice solutions for BIPOC communities (SXSW)
• Citizens Police Data Project
• Tech is Not Neutral

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Follow Alyxandra on Instagram and Twitter! Read her and others' work at LEFTOUTmag.com and follow LEFT OUT on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Sign the #StopShotSpotter petition and take action with the toolkit! Watch SoapBox's Stop ShotSpotter PSA here!

Follow ACRE on their site, Facebook, Instagram, and Medium; and BYP100 on their site, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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CREDITS: Intro soundbite from SoapBox's Stop ShotSpotter PSA edited by James Edward Murray and outro song Police State by Dead Prez. Audio engineered by Genta Tamashiro and Kiera Battles. Episode graphic from the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Three Interactive Tools for Understanding Police Surveillance article.

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