Open Technology Institute, Civil Rights, Research Leaders Launch DataCivilRights.org

WASHINGTON, DC – New America’s Open Technology Institute, in collaboration with The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Data & Society Research Institute, launched a new website Datacivilrights.org to serve as a resource that addresses how the “big data” phenomenon affects civil rights issues.

The site highlights takeaways and proceedings from the first annual “Data & Civil Rights” conference, held on October 30, 2014 at the Newseum. The inaugural conference convened civil rights leaders, technologists, researchers, and key representatives from industry and government in education, consumer finance, health, criminal justice, housing, and employment.

Conversations spanned from the consideration of how technology perpetuates historical discrimination, to the possibilities of using data collection to serve civil rights goals. The event revealed an urgent need to broaden public discourse and develop leadership across civil rights, government, and corporate sectors to grapple with new technologies’ impact on equity and fairness.

The website features “firestarter” talks by technologists and civil rights leaders, and background materials that detail algorithmically driven, automated computer decision systems and their ability to help and hinder equal opportunity, fairness, and social justice. The site also provides summaries of workshops and break-out sessions from the conference.

Expert Contact

Seeta Peña Gangadharan
Senior Research Fellow, Open Technology Institute, New America
gangadharan@opentechinstitute.org

New America’s Open Technology Institute The Open Technology Institute strengthens communities through grounded research, technological innovation, and policy reform. We create reforms to support open source innovations and foster open technologie s and communications networks. Partnering with communities, researchers, industry and public interest groups, we promote affordable, universal, and ubiquitous communications networks. For more information, visit http://www.newamerica.org/oti.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national organizations to promote and protect the civil and human rights of all persons in the United States. Through advocacy and outreach to targeted constituencies, The Leadership Conference works toward the goal of a more open and just society - an America as good as its ideals. For more information, visit http://www.civilrights.org.

Data & Society Research Institute Data & Society is a New York City-based research institute dedicated to addressing social, technical, ethical, legal, and policy issues that are emerging because of data-centric technological development. Data & Society provides a space for researchers, entrepreneurs, activists, policy creators, journalists, geeks, and public intellectuals to gather, debate, and engage one another on the key issues introduced by the increasing availability of data in society. Data & Society brings together divergent constituencies, hosts events, does directed research, creates policy frameworks, and builds demonstration projects to grapple with the challenges and opportunities presented by an ever-increasing amount of available information. For more information and to subscribe to the Data & Society mailing list, visit http://www.datasociety.net.