This report is the most comprehensive examination of U.S. law enforcement’s use of mobile device forensic tools. Our research shows that every American is at risk of having their phone forensically searched by law enforcement.

Upturn submitted this testimony in support of DC legislation that would seal many eviction records and limit their use to make housing decisions.

Upturn testified in support of a bill to make it harder for landlords to reject tenants because of eviction records and credit history.

Working with the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School, we filed a brief in *New Jersey v. Pickett* supporting the defense’s request to fully examine TrueAllele, the probabilistic DNA analysis software used in the case, in order to assess its reliability.

This brief argues that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act should not criminalize violations of computer use policies, like terms of service.

Consistent with the calls to defund the police by Black-led DC-based organizers, we testified that the District needs a new approach to public safety, including a significant reduction in taxpayer spending on police surveillance technologies.

We called on the Attorney General to rescind guidance which said that only individuals assessed as minimum risk by PATTERN should receive “priority treatment” for release during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, arguing that the Court should not order the implementation of a pretrial risk assessment instrument as a bail reform measure in Philadelphia.

In a paper presented at the 2020 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in Machine Learning, we describe how and when private companies collect or infer sensitive attribute data, such as a person’s race or ethnicity, for antidiscrimination purposes.

We are suing the NYPD for records concerning the department’s use of mobile device forensic technology. Upturn is represented on a pro-bono basis by Shearman & Sterling, LLP and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.).

We filed a legal brief in *Onuoha v. Facebook* about Section 230 and Facebook's Ad Platform.

Together with computer security experts, we filed an amicus brief in support of the unsealing of a judicial opinion regarding the federal government’s attempt to wiretap Facebook Messenger voice calls, which are end-to-end encrypted.

We co-led the Pretrial Risk Management Project of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; as part of this project, we published a critical issue brief on pretrial risk assessment instruments and civil rights concerns.

Bail reform is rapidly underway. But at the same moment that jurisdictions work to reduce the true risks of pretrial release through reform policies, jurisdictions across the country are also adopting statistical tools that will blindly predict such risks remain as high as ever.

We filed comments with the Judicial Council of California on two of its proposed new court rules. We argued that the proposed rules on how courts use pretrial risk assessment tools need significant modifications in order to be constitutionally defensible and to protect civil rights.

In the Harvard Business Review, Miranda explains what we mean when we talk about “hiring algorithms” and why predictive hiring technology is far more likely to erode equity than it is to promote it.

We urged the Subcommittee to ensure that hiring technologies are developed and used in ways that respect people’s civil rights, and offered recommendations concerning transparency and oversight.

A “missing manual” for policy professionals seeking to better understand technology’s impact on financial underwriting and marketing.

We explain how online lead generation works, describe the risks and legal complexities specific to lead generation for online payday loans, document the widespread use of search ads by payday lead generators, and recommend interventions.

After Google’s announcement that it will ban ads for payday loans, Aaron explains why this was a good call.

How much of the public concern and reporting about “social media scores” has come untethered from reality.

We explore the risks and benefits of new types of credit data for historically disadvantaged groups.

Aaron testified that some types of nontraditional data can help underserved consumers access credit.

In Logic Magazine, Emma writes about starter interrupt devices, the small networked devices that are killing car engines and ruining people’s lives.

We argued that HUD’s proposed changes to its disparate impact rule would undermine crucial housing protections for vulnerable communities by reducing plaintiffs’ ability to address discriminatory effects from the use of algorithmic models.

Upturn submitted this testimony supporting the passage of eviction sealing legislation in the District of Columbia and urging the DC Council to amend the bill to require all evictions to be automatically sealed at the point of filing.

We filed a legal brief arguing that Section 230 should not fully immunize Facebook’s Ad Platform from liability under a California antidiscrimination law.

We filed a legal brief arguing that Section 230 should not fully immunize Facebook’s Ad Platform from liability under California and D.C. law prohibiting discrimination. We describe how Facebook itself, independently of its advertisers, participates in the targeting and delivery of financial services ads based on gender and age.

Our empirical research showed that Facebook’s “Special Audiences” ad targeting tool can reflect demographic biases. We provide experimental proof that removing demographic features from a real-world algorithmic system’s inputs can fail to prevent biased outputs.

Our empirical research showed that Facebook’s ad delivery algorithms effectively differentiate the price of reaching a user based on their inferred political alignment with the advertised content, inhibiting political campaigns’ ability to reach voters with diverse political views.

In The Atlantic, we argue that digital platforms — which deliver exponentially more ads than their newsprint predecessors — are making core civil-rights laws increasingly challenging to enforce.

Our empirical research showed that Facebook itself can skew the delivery of job and housing ads along race and gender lines, even when advertisers target broad audiences.

We offered comments to the Federal Trade Commission on the implications of algorithmic decision tools used in consumer advertising and marketing campaigns.

Automated decisions are increasingly part of everyday life, but how can the public scrutinize, understand, and govern them? This Upturn and Omidyar Network report maps out the landscape, providing practical examples and a framework to think about what has worked.

Facebook can and should do more to protect its users from discrimination — especially in civil rights areas like housing, credit, and employment.

How and where, exactly, does big data become a civil rights issue? This report begins to answer that question, highlighting key instances where big data and civil rights intersect.

We wrote a letter to Axon’s AI Ethics Board to express serious concerns about the direction of Axon’s product development, including the possible integration of real-time face recognition with body-worn camera systems.

After St. Louis chose to accept a year of free body-worn cameras from Axon, we argued that the city’s police department needed to significantly strengthen civil rights protections in its BWC policies — particularly around when officers can review footage.

Before the FTC, Aaron describes harm arising from online payday lead generation practices, and explains how many lead generators evade state laws.

Today, most major police departments that use body-worn cameras allow officers unrestricted footage review. This report explains why police departments must carefully limit officers’ review of body-worn camera footage, and calls for “clean reporting” to be adopted by all police departments.

Upturn files an objection to the NYPD’s proposed body-worn camera policy, together with the Leadership Conference, the Center for Media Justice, Color Of Change, and other groups.

Harlan testifies at a hearing held by the Philadelphia City Council Committee on Public Safety on the Philadelphia Police Department’s current body-worn camera policy, which is not meeting national best practices.

Newly released data shows that almost 400,000 people are on Chicago’s “heat list.” Of that group, almost 290,000 have scores that the CPD says will lead to more scrutiny. Our analysis also shows that the most important factor in a person’s score was their age.

Harlan and Malkia Cyril of the Center for Media Justice take a hard look at the impact of police body-worn cameras. “The sad reality is that these cameras mirror the power and the interests of the police, not those of the communities they are sworn to serve,” they write.

Over at Motherboard, Harlan explains why Axon’s offer of free body-worn cameras for every cop in America is dangerous. It creates a perverse incentive for departments to rush to adopt camera systems without thinking through the hard policy challenges.

Upturn files an objection to the NYPD’s proposed body-worn camera policy, together with the Leadership Conference, the Center for Media Justice, Color Of Change, and other groups.

Together with the Leadership Conference, Upturn releases the latest version of our scorecard that evaluates the police body-worn camera policies in 75 major U.S. cities. It continues to show a nationwide failure to protect the civil rights and privacy of surveilled communities.

We find that at least 20 of the nation’s 50 largest police forces have used a predictive policing system, with at least an additional 11 actively exploring options to do so. Vendors shield the technology in secrecy, and informed public debate is rare. Early research findings suggest that these systems may not actually make people safer.

At the inaugural Color of Surveillance conference at Georgetown Law, Harlan examines how the U.S. government has monitored African American communities from the colonial era to the present day. In his talk, Harlan discusses how police departments nationwide are using body-worn cameras to surveil communities of color.

The list aims to predict who will be involved in future shootings. Its growing role in Chicago policing is a taste of what’s ahead.

Law enforcement’s blind faith in a tool that doesn’t always work — a tool that can easily finger the wrong person, with terrible results — provides the central tension for that blockbuster film, and a vital lesson for our present.

In a piece published in Slate, Logan argues that popular analysis of predictive policing systems too often focuses on their predictions about the future, and less about the historical data upon which they rely.

Upturn, Data & Society, and the Leadership Conference host a major conference that explores the intersection of technology and criminal justice for law enforcement officers, government agencies, technology companies, civil rights leaders, technologists, and researchers.

Upturn coordinated the development of a shared set of civil rights principles for body-worn cameras. The principles were endorsed by a major coalition of 34 local and national organizations, including the NAACP, National Council of La Raza, National Urban League, Center for Media Justice, ACLU, and others.

We looked at police shootings from 2017 to see whether video was released to the public, after how long, and under what circumstances — and found that too often, these videos stay hidden.

In the first rigorous, independent evaluation of Facebook’s new ad transparency plans, we urge the company to improve its ad transparency tools to enable meaningful public scrutiny.

Without active measures to mitigate them, bias will arise in predictive hiring tools by default. This report describes popular tools that many employers currently use, explores how these tools affect equity throughout the entire hiring process, and offers reflections and recommendations on where we go from here.

In this report, we investigate how large hourly employers are using technology to hire for low-wage hourly jobs. We scrutinize 15 online application processes, raise concerns with selection procedures like personality tests, and offer recommendations for employers and policymakers.

This project maps the ways that data at scale may pose risks to philanthropic priorities and beneficiaries, identifies key questions that funders and grantees should consider before undertaking data-intensive work, and offers recommendations for funders to address emergent data ethics issues.

A technical assessment of the present and potential future monitoring capabilities available to internet service providers.

We sent a letter urging the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy to fully incorporate the Biden administration’s commitment to racial equity into its AI and technology priorities.

In this brief, we explain how the Government’s remarkable technical assertions — that mobile device forensic tools can only extract all data off of a cellphone and cannot perform a narrower search — are incorrect.

This amicus brief urges the Fourth Circuit to preserve critical and longstanding obligations under the Fair Credit Reporting Act that require consumer reporting agencies to ensure the accuracy of records used to make decisions about people’s access to housing, employment, credit, and other basic needs.

We filed a legal brief in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania describing the capabilities of mobile device forensics tools (MDFTs) and how they facilitatate invasive searches of cellphones.

We sent a memo on technology's role in hiring discrimination to agency leaders within the Biden administration.

We sent a memo to agency leaders in the Biden administration on technology's role in housing discrimination.

We sent a memo on technology's role in financial services discrimination to agency leaders within the Biden administration.

Upturn supported New York Legal Assistance Group in its settlement of a lawsuit against the Social Security Administration regarding its wrongful terminations of Supplement Security Income beneficiaries.

We submitted comments in response to the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s request for information on public and private sector uses of biometric technologies.

Together with other amici, we argue that Facebook is governed by the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act, even though it does not charge its users a cash price.

Tinuola testified on MPD use of mobile device forensic tools and consent searches at the 2021-2022 Metropolitan Police Department Performance Oversight Hearing.

We filed an amicus brief in a case before the Connecticut State Supreme Court arguing that the Court should develop specific rules for the issuance and execution of cellphone search warrants.

We submitted comments in response to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ request for information on Access to Care and Coverage for People Enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. These comments focus on the ways that the technology used to administer Medicaid — in particular, Medicaid Long-Term Services & Supports — can increase barriers to accessing care.

We submitted comments to Seattle City Council on their Surveillance Ordinance implementation process, explaining the technical capabilities of MDFTs and urging the Council to restrict the ways that Seattle PD can use them.

We wrote an issue brief offering guidance and recommendations for advocates and policymakers who seek to draft or support eviction record sealing laws.

Our empirical assessment of racial inference methodologies, using self-reported demographic information from Uber riders.

Our op-ed in Shelterforce on how tenant screening and eviction records drive housing insecurity.

Emma Weil co-authored this piece about digital evidence and abortion prosecutions.

We participated in a virtual teach-in with the ACLU of Washington to explain how law enforcement uses digital forensic tools to search cellphones.

We’re partnering with Legal Aid of Arkansas and the National Health Law Program to provide tools for advocates to fight harmful benefits technology and to build a community of advocates and technologists working to challenge tech that keeps people from accessing benefits.