UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry Presents
Data Borders: How Silicon Valley is Building an Industry to Know Immigrants
This lecture investigates the emerging state of borderland technology that brings all people into an intimate place of surveillance where data resides and defines inclusion and exclusion to citizenship. Detailing biologically mapping undocumented people through biotechnologies, Villa-Nicholas shows how Latinx immigrants are the focus and driving force for surveillance by Silicon Valley’s industry within defense technology manufacturing. This murky network gathers data on marginalized communities for purposes of exploitation and control, implicating law enforcement, border patrol, and ICE, and pulls in public workers and the public, often without their knowledge or consent. Enriched by interviews of Latinx immigrants, this work argues that to move beyond a heavily surveilled state that dehumanizes both immigrants and citizens, we must push for immigrant and citizen privacy information rights along the border and throughout the United States.
For more information:
Contact Stacy E. Wood (swood@c2i2.ucla.edu).
