Description:

In the nearly two decades since the UN Protocol on Human Trafficking was passed, anti-trafficking activist organizations have taken increasingly innovative and high-tech approaches to solving international cases and garnering public support.

Tech companies, police, computer scientists, and activists now work together as “algorithmic detectives” by shared understandings of risk, sexuality, race, and exploitation online. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, cultural anthropology, and digital science and technology studies, SPAN postdoctoral fellow Mitali Thakor argues that these new digital campaigns against child trafficking are permitting unprecedented levels of online surveillance, legitimated in the name of “child protection.”

Mitali's ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands, Thailand, and the US explores partnerships and tensions between international police, border control, computer scientists, UN bureaucrats, and activists as they develop algorithmic solutions to cases of exploitation and trafficking.

This is part of the Buffett Institute Faculty & Fellows Colloquium. Find it on Facebook.