Thread by @faineg

I’ve been doing writing on data colonialism and humanitarian aid lately (inspired in part by work from .@couldrynick) - I think this Palantir/WFP partnership is a great illustration of the problem. irinnews.org/news/2019/02/0…

Basically: data colonialism (or surveillance capitalism ala .@shoshanazuboff) seeks to commodify the personal data of human beings. Aid organizations can inadvertently aid this process by collaborating with companies whose existence depends on data extraction.

Aid orgs may mean well when they work with private companies to “datafy” more human beings - “for their own benefit” - but the problem is you can’t unring that bell. Once that data exists on an individual, it’s damned hard (or impossible) to get “rid” of.

Once you’ve made people legible to data colonial powers/surveillance capitalism....they’re legible. We need to think damn hard as humanitarians about whether our actions are facilitating the extraction of data from the world’s most vulnerable people.

We need to start thinking of data as “toxic waste” per .@pinboard (Maciej Ceglowski) and others - though perhaps we should revise that to “toxic waste that can make other people lots of money against your own stated values.”

.@linnetelwin has also done great work on the question of who actually benefits when aid groups and corporations work together on data extracted from people affected by disaster.

We suck at protecting people’s data as humanitarian aid workers. Powerful private companies like Palantir will always be better at breaking through those protections then we will be at safeguarding the data. Working closely with these companies is damn risky.

And again - per critiques from .@samuelmoyn and others, are we as humanitarians by fairly uncritically working with corporations (because we need the funding, or access) also propping up an inherently unsustainable system of extractive, colonial capitalism?

The process of colonialism relied on explorers, ethnographers, cartographers: they realized they needed to document what they “owned.”

Are we as humanities inadvertently helping tech companies *colonize the data* of the people we say that we want to help?

I’m a maps and drones person: I’ve focused particularly on the spatial aspects of “data colonialism.” Colonialism and cartography are intimately linked. What unintended processes do we participate in as we create maps relevant to poor people or people affected by disaster?

Particularly chilling me to how often data leaks 1. Occur because a gigantic data conglomerate messed up and 2. Are largely shrugged off by media and regulators. What happens when we hear of a leak of humanitarian data that gets people killed? Who will be accountable?