Event Thursday: In Poverty, Under Surveillance

New America’s Open Technology Institute, Asset Building Program, and Breadwinners and Caregivers Program are teaming up to host an event this week to explore the interconnected issues of privacy and poverty, specifically as they play out in the public assistance system.

Families and individuals accessing the public benefits system are required to provide extensive personal and financial information as a condition of receiving benefits. Depending on the requirements of individual programs, they may also have to endure unannounced home visits, fingerprinting or drug testing, and other routinized violations of privacy that more privileged members of society have come to expect. These intrusions are often justified by policymakers as measures to “reduce fraud” or to ensure that only the most desperate people access the programs.

This logic flies in the face of the central concepts of the asset building field – that all members of society deserve an opportunity to advance economically, and that our public programs should be designed to help, not hinder this process.

These practices are also deeply concerning because they acknowledge that there are different standards of legal treatment rather than a universal expectation of privacy protections.  This raises important questions that we’ll be exploring during the event:

• What are the implications of different standards of privacy based on financial status?
• Under what circumstances can our privacy be transacted away, and where are the limits to these transactions?
• What responsibility do government agencies have to protect personal information? Do they have the capacity to protect our information? 
• Is technology keeping our information safer, or putting it more at risk?

Please join us in person on Thursday at our D.C. office. If you’re out of the area, bookmark this link to watch the live web stream and tweet your questions in advance using #PoorPrivacy.