Vanessa Taylor

Biometric identification — of which DNA testing is a form of along with fingerprinting, facial recognition, etc. — was not created in a race-neutral vacuum

While touting tech ‘advancements’ as being explicitly based in eugenics or scientific racism may be out of fashion, that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

Social media is reshaping the medical industry’s abuse or, at least, the extent to which that abuse can be shared. It also provides a platform where workers can reinforce dangerous beliefs.

On Tuesday, 2020 hopeful Elizabeth Warren announced her plan to combat white nationalism, and while it has key distinctions from the strategies other Democratic candidates have floated, there's still concern over how effective it will be.

We cannot come to Crawford and demand that she separates Houston from herself. We cannot demand that she is quiet for our own comfort, so we never have to trouble our perceptions of our idols.

The Black girl is sexually defiant because she is a Black girl. The Black girl who fucks has, somehow, climbed down lower than worthlessness.

Maybe they could’ve gotten away with it if they picked another girl out of those cells or if somebody paid attention to their cultural sensitivity training to know enough to give pause. But at the end of the day, their mistake was simple: they sent her body to the masjid.

Debates around facial recognition technology have continued to heat up — and it has even resulted in cities like San Francisco banning the tech's use by local government. Now, a new study has confirmed yet another one of the technology's shortcomings: facial recognition can't classify transgender or non-binary people. As more government agencies and private companies explore facial recognition, the technology's failures leave already vulnerable populations open to increased risk.

Throughout the month of October, wildfires have raged in California, putting thousands of people and their homes at risk. On Sunday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a statewide emergency due to both the fires and the high winds in the area, which help the blazes spread rapidly. While Newsom's official proclamation only came Sunday, for weeks now Californians have been facing down massive fires and the related consequences, like power outages and supply shortages.

Across industries, the use of algorithms is becoming increasingly common to automate often complicated or cumbersome tasks. However, these algorithms are not benefiting everyone equally. A new study has found that a widely used health care algorithm was biased against Black patients, making them substantially less likely than white ones to receive important treatment.

Democratic hopefuls claim the Countering Violent Extremism program can help stop white supremacist terror. But since 2014, it has been used to spy on innocent Muslims.

A surveillance network has expanded right under our noses in one of the places you may least expect — people's doorbells. Since acquiring smart-doorbell company Ring in February 2018, Amazon's built an extensive network of cameras across the country, and it's sharing the information it gets. Now, 36 civil rights groups demand Amazon's police partnerships end in an open letter released yesterday.

With a history of its own programs literally labeling Black people as animals, Google contractors relying on dehumanizing methods to collect facial data shows that tech has severe problems in how it conceptualizes and interacts with Blackness.

One of the most frightening aspects of technology today is its ability to bend reality. Recently, a study by cyber-security company Deeptrace found that Deepfake videos have nearly doubled in nine months. What's most worrying is the type of deepfake that's beginning to dominate the internet.

However, there's a potentially dangerous undertone to NASA's own description of its mission, further evidenced by the companies involved: space colonization.