I will remember that the technologies I design are not aimed at data points, probabilities, or patterns, but at human beings.”Īutomating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

I will design no data-based system that overturns an established legal right of the poor. When informed consent and design convenience come into conflict, informed consent will always prevail. I will not collect data for data’s sake, nor keep it just because I can. I will choose system integration as a mechanism to attain human needs, not to facilitate ubiquitous surveillance.

I will integrate systems for the needs of people, not data. To ignore a four-century-long pattern of punishing the poor is to be complicit in the “unintended” but terribly predictable consequences that arise when equity and good intentions are assumed as initial conditions. I will not use my technical knowledge to compound the disadvantage created by historic patterns of racism, classism, able-ism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, transphobia, religious intolerance, and other forms of oppression. I will create tools that remove obstacles between resources and the people who need them. I will use my skills and resources to create bridges for human potential, not barriers. The book will look at three case studies of social services and governance in the high-tech surveillance state: Indiana’s welfare system, the unhoused registry and coordinated entry system of LA, and the predictive model of abuse deployed in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.“Oath of Non-Harm for an Age of Big Data I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability, the following covenant: I will respect all people for their integrity and wisdom, understanding that they are experts in their own lives, and will gladly share with them all the benefits of my knowledge.

However, Eubanks points out that in her hometown of Troy, New York, the poor and working class women she knows are familiar with databases and technology. One stereotype of poor people holds that they are trapped by new systems because of technological illiteracy. As a result, the state instituted new rules for accessing TNAF, like banning families from accessing out-of-state ATMs-rules that were impossible to obey and vague enough to entrap people. His polemic misinterpreted data, implying families were using welfare to purchase cigarettes and alcohol. From this personal anecdote, Eubanks moves on to a bigger example of faulty data: In 2004, Maine Republican governor Paul LePage demonized families receiving cash benefits from Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TNAF).

Virginia eubanks automating inequality