Distillations/Constellations #7: there's no data justice without justice
Photo: Sara M. Watson
Yesterday I gave a talk at re:publica, a big (big!) conference here in Berlin focused on digital society. This year's theme is: Who Cares?
After Israel's brutal attack on Sunday night, carrying out air strikes on a tent camp for displaced people on Rafah, I was disappointed to see very little visible sign of support for Palestine (or indeed, much discussion of the issue) on Day 1 at re:publica. Who Cares? Apparently, not many people who are focused on digital society.
Personally, right now, I'm finding it difficult to talk to anyone without mentioning those horrors. So that's what I did in my talk. Here's a summarised version of the first part of my talk – I'll share more in a later post, and a video of the talk should be coming soon.
We're More Than What They Say We Are: Solidarity for Data Justice
Last year, I wrote a book about the broad issue of how data about who we are is collected by others, and then used to form often false impressions of who we are. I wanted to try and summarise everything I’d learned from a decade of experience trying to make harmful digital systems, less bad. As I was writing the book, I realised I had a whole lot of examples of how data - biometric data, databases - played a role in strengthening structural inequalities.
And towards the end of the book, I realised that by focusing solely on data, there was very little I could say that would meaningfully address the issues I talked about.
It’s never just that data rights or digital rights are being violated. All that most digital systems do - and I’m talking about at least those built and enforced by states and multilateral institutions - is reinforce, or often even strengthen, the status quo. And if something stands out to you as being a violation of digital rights – it’s most likely that you’re noticing a problematic violent system, structure or policy.
It's only when we start to see how digital rights violations are so closely intertwined with other oppressive structures that we see how the necessary long-term solutions to those digital rights violations actually need to be intertwined with other issues.
In the data rights/digital society space, I’d argue, we’ve not been very good at expressing true, transformative solidarity. I’ve been in too many spaces where knowledge about technology is put on a pedestal, and lived experience of the ways in which tech - or other structures - can impact lives, is valued far less.
But that approach is doing us all an injustice. It’s only together with others that’s the true power of our resistance can be found – in solidarity with others. The structures of violence and oppression that make digital rights and data rights violations possible aren’t new since computers came along – they’ve been in place for decades, centuries even.
I don’t mean to say that ‘just’ working on data and digital rights issues isn’t useful - it is. But I do also think that there’s more that we - and I mean myself too - could do, to ensure that the issues we work on are meaningfully connected to broader fights.
So here are my suggestions on how we can get there (and I'd love to hear yours, too):
1. By using violations of rights as they appear in tech/data spaces, as a signal towards broader structural issues, and an opportunity to connect.
We need to stop focusing only on harms in the digital space, and instead look at the structures of violence that made those harms possible.
2. By building connections between movements We talk often of ‘silo busting’ - but one of the most effective ways of doing that is with people, building social tissue or social fabric between silos, spaces and movements. And it’s people’s relationships that create that social tissue, this trust between spaces. That trust is absolutely essential to ensure an intersectional approach to these intersectional problems.
3. By showing up for issues that don’t affect you personally Whether that means going to pro-Palestine demos, volunteering or being a board member at an organisation outside of the digital bubble, taking the time to learn about issues that are new to you.
I mention Palestine intentionally because it’s top of my heart and mind right now, and also because there are so many reasons why if you care about rights, you should care about what’s happening there. German taxes, German weapons are being used to carry out unspeakable violence on an unarmed population. I’ll mention just one incident. On Sunday night, two days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop its operation in Rafah, Israeli military hit a tent camp for displaced people there, killing more than 45 displaced people. The images coming out of that horrific attack are unspeakable.
If you care about tech and digital rights and surveillance - please know, there is so much repression of civil society and civil protest and legitimate basic rights, here in Germany. And that’s not even going into the brutal violence and losses of life in Palestine and Israel.
If any part of you cares about rights or justice - digital or not - what’s going on Palestine right now should be making your heart break and your blood boil.
It is never too late to change your mind, to pull your head out of the sand, to let yourself care, or to pay attention, or to just say: what’s going on there has gone too far, and to stand up for the unarmed, defenceless Palestinian people who are suffering the most. This is the part where I almost started to cry...but managed not to. A huge thanks to the audience for the spontaneous applause when I started talking about this, too.
There are so many opportunities for you to show true solidarity - to stop looking away from genocide and to make sure you’re part of stopping it.
If there’s one thing I want you to take away from my talk today, it’s this: working on digital issues without being in solidarity with other movements is at best ineffective, and at worst, violent, and replicates the same power dynamics we say we're fighting against. Our struggles are connected, so our resistance must be connected, too.
There is no data justice without care, solidarity and justice in our structures and our systems.