Every year, local, state, and federal governments spend millions of dollars on technologies like AI and surveillance, with very little public information on how they get used. Our team at People’s Tech has been working with partners and communities in Philly and beyond to track and make sense of how tech accelerates arrests, deportation, abuse, and exploitation.
In this moment of uprisings and arrests, we’re pulling back the curtain on the silent automation of injustice we are all witnessing, and highlighting how we can push back.
There’s a lot we don’t know, but here’s what we do:
ICE is barreling into neighborhoods, from LA to Philly, armed with biased and highly fallible software that is fueling terror. Last week, ICE stormed into Norristown, using facial recognition and tools like Peter Thiel’s Palantir to identify who to arrest, detain, and deport.
Protest is being criminalized and surveilled. Trump is getting ready to deploy armed SWAT teams in Philly and beyond in order to arrest and detain our neighbors and protestors, while local police and the Department of State use social media surveillance to track people speaking out for Palestine.
Amazon is taking over communities. Governor Josh Shapiro cozied up with Amazon leaders to go “all in” on building AI data centers that will overrun our power grid and require millions of gallons of precious water to cool, while utility customers pay higher rates and 300,000 Pennsylvania families have their utilities shut off.
Children are being robbed of their childhood and privacy. Philadelphia is using invasive technology to track more children by GPS than ever before, turning our children’s neighborhoods into open air prisons and sharing their private and sensitive data with law enforcement—without a warrant and without their parents’ consent.
The automation of injustice may be silent, but it’s not inevitable, and the fight begins at home. We have power right now to put Philadelphia’s tech use and spending on the public record—and that begins with a public hearing.
Read and sign on to our letter to City Council here demanding a public hearing on how the city uses tech.
We are watching in real time what happens when tech rapidly expands and is weaponized against the public. Before City Council spends tens of millions more to prop up Trump’s deportation and detention machine, the taxpayers paying for it deserve to know how this tech is being used.
Sign on to our letter to City Council now, and stay tuned for more. We’re committed to keeping you grounded in how tech and the billionaires who build it are hurting our people, and what you can do to help.