After months of uprisings during the second half of 2020, we’ve seen some progress from tech companies but have a long way to go. Black folks are targeted by high tech surveillance and then punished for speaking out against it. From Amazon to Microsoft to Google, the world’s most powerful tech companies are selling products to law enforcement agencies which expand their ability to surveil and criminalize communities of color. Founding Director and Senior Fellow Malkia Devich-Cyril talks to Protocol about why Big Tech must stop enabling institutional racism.
“We saw the movement for Black lives have an incredible impact on the tech industry in the facial recognition debate… It was because of the fight and the language of ‘defund the police’ that those companies even went that far and said: Let’s have this moratorium while we figure this out…At every stage of the policing system, of the carceral system, we now have technology. The movement for Black lives has taken this on.”
Malkia Devich-Cyril, Founding Director and Senior Fellow via Protocol
