EPISODE 1

Facial Recognition in Brazil: Automating Oppression?

Produced by Coding Rights. In many places around the world, facial recognition technologies are gradually being deployed in several moments of our lives: be it in surveillance cameras installed across the streets we normally walk around or when we need to authenticate our IDs to allow access to social services or to enter banks and other private services. But what happens when we use a binary algorithm to control and influence non-binary and very diverse lives and experiences? Who gets excluded? What historical oppressions are being exacerbated and automated?

Vanessa Koetz and Bianca Kremer, both Coding Rights fellows on Data and Feminisms, talked to two Brazilian experts: Mariah Rafaela Silva, scholar and activist in transgender rights and to Pablo Nunes, black scholar and activist specialist in public security and racism. Through this podcast, we will discuss the risks of implementing this kind of tech without an informed public debate about potential consequences. We even spoke to an algorithm, Dona Algô (Misses Algô… short for algorithm)! Are you curious? Press play!

Links in this Episode:

 

Credits

Research and Interviews: Bianca Kremer and Vanessa Koetz
Concept and script: Juliana Mastrascusa and Joana Varon
Interviews: Pablo Nunes and Mariah Rafaela Silva
Fictional Character: @Malfeitona
Editing & Mixing: Ergi Shkëlzeni
Visual Design: Ura Design
Executive Producers for Privacy is Global: Laura Schwartz-Henderson and Laura Vidal
Sponsored by Internews and Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Washington DC