Okay Probably a couple years ago. You realize that a lot of the refugees coming up from Syria and North Africa were We're communicating. We're using technology an interesting way to find their way around a lot of the border patrols A lot of the hurdles that were put up in their way In the US we have a similar issue, but it's different in many ways With illegal immigrants trying to stay underneath the radar um Allison McDonald from the University of Michigan is has been studying how Immigrants in the state in the states deal with technology and it's very different from here Her interests are in technology privacy society and human rights, and I think we're gonna have an awesome talk from her So please welcome her and we'll get moving Okay Thanks for coming. I'm Allison from the University of Michigan I'm talking today primarily about Technology in immigration enforcement and specifically about how the immigrant community in the United States is responding to those changes And especially the undocumented community Before we get too far into the details. I just wanted to tell a little bit of a story This is Anna Maria. She is not a real person She's sort of a composite of many people that we spoke to But her story is really representative of of a lot of people that That we know are living in the United States today She and her husband immigrated from Mexico about 12 years ago Into the United States She really wanted to have children, but Couldn't get the fertility support that she needed in Mexico. So she came to the United States And now she and her husband have two children who are Attending US public schools She and her husband are both working and saving up to to buy a house. They pay taxes. They attend church every Sunday They're involved in a lot of community events and are really integrated into into the local community one difference From Anna Maria and a lot of other people is that she's in the United States as an undocumented immigrant What this means is that She either entered the United States without legal authorization or she came on a visa and overstayed the allotted time that means that Day to day she has to worry about being found and Deported back to Mexico removed from her home and This Puts her in quite a precarious situation Trying to live a normal life a life similar to a lot of other people in our communities but with this this constant concern that This life could be taken away from her if she's detected Other than this this one point. She really lives this immigration story that the United States loves to tell We we love to have this narrative of people being able to come to the United States and Build lives for themselves that they might not be able to build in their in their origin countries, and that's exactly what she's done But just as as natural to this immigration story Is the history of a lot of discrimination race racism and xenophobia? All the way back in the the 1700s we've had Legislation that prevents people from becoming citizens based on their origin country We've had for example the immigrant Chinese Exclusion Act preventing people from China Laborers coming to the United States entirely The Asiatic Bard Zone a couple years later just drew a box on a map and said the people in this region can't immigrate to the United States We've also seen things like the Johnson Reed Immigration Act in the 1900s where The the US took census data from before a big wave of immigration Putting a quota system in place that essentially prevented people from eastern and southern Europe from coming to the United States this history of Discrimination and racism continues to today Many of you I'm sure have heard of what's happening now with the the so-called Muslim ban Where a list of seven countries are are now blacklisted immigrants are unable to enter the country and This is just another data point to show the trend that our discourse and immigration policy in the United States is often racialized I want to talk a little bit about what immigration enforcement actually looks like in the United States The the agency that manages enforcement is called the US immigration and customs enforcement or ICE they they're in charge of of Enforcing within the borders once people have already entered the country Finding people without documentation or managing immigration cases Over the last couple of decades, they've really been gaining in in size and power. This is anything from the removal of privacy restrictions on sharing data between federal agencies to an increase in in financial resources after 9-11 And this is happening even today President Trump back in January Had an executive order that is looking to add another 5,000 agents to their current 20,000 Over the next couple of years. So this is an agency that's continuing to be bolstered And another way that they're changing recently is The way that they're integrating technology into their jobs This photo in particular shows a fingerprint scanner The collection of biometric data is becoming really common in the immigration enforcement And it's not just when someone's taken into an immigration office But mobile fingerprint scanners are being taken into communities There are stories of people having their their biometric data taken even without arrest Being stopped in the street or or being near someone who's who's being detained for a particular reason Everyone in the area or everyone in the household having their biometric data taken We've also seen the removal of some restrictions on how this data can be shared between federal agencies In particular President Trump has reinstated the secure communities Program which allows local police officers when they're booking people for local crimes Or in local Jails to take biometric data and cross check it against federal immigration databases and crime databases We're also seeing evidence that So DHS is the Department of Homeland Security the umbrella organization over ICE We have recently seen through a freedom of information request that This organization has used cell site simulators or stingrays Over 1,800 times in the last five years We don't know all of the cases where these have been used And we really can't speculate these these cases are shrouded in secrecy We don't know when and how they're being used, but we do have one case It's actually close to my home in Detroit, Michigan where an undocumented man Ice was able to send a warrant to Facebook To get his phone number and then use that phone number with a cell site simulator to track him to his home and Ended up deporting him to El Salvador We're also seeing this move to start collecting Social media data at the borders. This isn't just for people on temporary visas But also naturalized citizens and people with permanent residence residency cards This might not be So relevant to people who are already in the country because they're not crossing the border regularly but this might be Impactful if they have friends and family crossing borders to visit them and new immigrants as well This is a database that we don't really know what it's being used for yet But there are some hints in the way that for example Ice has been soliciting contracts from big data companies to Create algorithms to do this extreme vetting to be able to find suspicious Activity or suspicious people from troves of social media data In fact, we have already seen some of these contracts being awarded there was a 3 million contract recently given to a company called giant oak who Claims to take big data and find bad guys their creepy slogans we see the people behind the data trademark and This is just another example of the way that technology is being used to In ways that are sort of unpredictable at this point, but have we have many examples where this style of of research can often be discriminatory and It might be expected that at this point in time Technologies ending up integrated into law enforcement in the way that it's being integrated into a lot of different parts of our lives But there's a reason this moment in particular is so frightening This administration is making it abundantly clear what they think of immigration Just in less than a year so far. We've seen the repeal of The deferred action for childhood arrivals program, which you might also hear as the dream act or people here talking about dreamers This is a program that allowed people who entered the country under the age of 16 to Get work permits and driver's licenses and attend university and have their Their immigration cases delayed so long as they're meeting educational goals We've seen the elimination of privacy protections from sharing data between federal agencies and In addition to the to the actual concrete policy changes We're hearing a lot of really nasty rhetoric around immigrants and immigration That's causing a lot of concern Among people who are in the immigrant community or who are allies to the immigrant community about What this means in terms of harassment and hatred even beyond the legal changes We're also seeing a change in in deportation practices While Obama was Prolific in deportations He had a very explicit policy in place that the priority deportations would be people who were National security threats whatever that might mean or people with serious criminal records or people who had just recently entered the United States That policies being removed and we're seeing more and more people who are deported after living in the in the United States for a long time with family and friends and Lives built in the communities Who might have family or children who are US citizens who don't have criminal records? So what does this mean for Anna Maria? For one without a criminal record She previously might have been able to have some high amount of confidence that she wouldn't be a priority target and that confidence is being eroded We're seeing lots of people who Previously weren't wouldn't have been targeted be deported regardless of their clean record and and lack of of Action that really makes them more visible than they have in the past She and her husband are starting to think about what happens to the to their children if they're deported They have to make the decision because the children were born in the United States. They're US citizens They have to decide whether they should give custody to friends and family who can stay in the United States Or if they should take them back to Mexico Rather than letting them stay and get the US education that they want to have She has to be concerned about ice being in her community and outside of her home Possibly having her fingerprints taken if she's in the wrong place at the wrong time She might have to worry about friends and family from Mexico visiting and Crossing the border and having social media data taken from them that I mean as we all know might indicate a lot more than just About the person who's crossing the border our social media lives Give a lot of information about our networks that might expose information about her It's also worth noting that Anna Maria is far from alone There are as many as 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States today Over two-thirds of them have been in the United States for more than 10 years Which means they're integrated into our communities. They own Houses they have jobs. They pay taxes. They live really normal lives to the extent that they can In the United States they've built their lives here so With this context in mind I and some of my collaborators were wondering How this is really changing the way that people use technology or if it is Given the sort of objectively heightened risk that they're facing day-to-day We wanted to know whether or not there's any sort of reaction to those changes happening in their daily lives we reached out to some Immigration support organizations, so immigrant rights and and activist organizations and Worked with them to be able to communicate with this community in the end We were able to talk to 17 undocumented immigrants in the Midwest We were primarily asking them about how they manage risk in their daily lives offline as well as online and Whether or not that's changing over the last year or two years when this Discourse around immigration is really changing and then whether These changes that we're seeing are causing them to maybe react In the way that they're using technology. I can tell you a little bit about who we spoke to The majority were women 14 of our 17 participants were women Most of them were in their mid 30s Average age 35 and and lots of them had children. So it was a lot of parents Everyone that we spoke to had been in the United States for more than 10 years So they really had their lives and their communities here And most of them were also from Mexico That's about consistent with the immigrant community in the United States, especially from Latin America The majority are from Mexico and then there was a mix of immigration stories some of the people we spoke to had crossed the southern border by foot or otherwise and Some people had overstayed visas had flown to the United States and stayed So we wanted to first get an idea of how they're managing and sort of thinking about risk in their daily lives offline to get a sense of How deeply it impacts the way that they're living What we found across the board is that immigration is A really sort of looming presence in their lives. They think a lot about how they're exposing themselves and That possibly exposing their status to authority figures and And they put like a lot of careful consideration into how to keep a low profile Driving is one really good example of this cost risk cost benefit analysis that they're doing Most people we spoke to talked about driving one way or another and about half chose to drive and have chose not to Most of the people don't have driver's licenses for the United States because it's difficult to get them without legal immigration papers So the risk with driving is that if you're stopped if you're pulled over even if you didn't have a traffic violation If you stop for a tail light or something the routine is to ask for for a documentation of your license And if you don't have that there might be more questions and in the end you could expose yourself to immigration or other legal Law enforcement Some people really thought that The risk was worth it to live Their their lives how they want to they're going to try to just not think about the risk and do what they need to do day to day Other people felt that the risk was too great And chose not to drive at all and that's a significant sacrifice Especially in the United States where our public transportation systems aren't fantastic This might mean that they can't set their own work schedules or they can't take their kids to school if they miss the bus So it's a significant risk But it's also a big sacrifice if they choose not to drive People also think a lot about how they're exposing themselves to authority figures as One example The decision to file taxes or not is a big risk. So in the United States you don't need You don't need to have any sort of government ID to file taxes. You just need a tax ID So a lot of these people are filing taxes But In order to do that they are giving up to the federal government their names their addresses their employment history contact information and And some people think that that risk is worth it right because this person for example feels like By paying taxes every year. They're able to establish a good history of of Upstanding behavior. They can maybe have a better case for getting a legal status if the time comes when that's an option And another example of You know exposing information to authorities might be Filing for for benefits for us born children or even library of cards or local ID cards And the risk is going to be different in each case depending on what they're exposing Some people chose to forgo significant benefits to avoid giving that information to authorities This person is talking about DACA the deferred action for childhood arrival program This would make it much easier for their son to go to college Give their son. Hopefully if they trust the program a much more reliable Immigration status, they wouldn't technically have a legal immigration status, but they would be Sort of assured that Their status or rather their immigration case is a low priority. They wouldn't be targeted as long as they're attending universities They could have confidence So the program says that that they wouldn't be targeted The these people were concerned because in order to file that that paperwork for their son they had to give up a lot of information about themselves their phone numbers their names their addresses and in the end they decided not to do it and Unfortunately only weeks after we spoke to this person the DACA program was repealed This is led a lot of people to be concerned because the people who did apply for the program have given that information to the government to immigration services in particular and At this point in time. We have no assurances that that information won't be used in immigration cases At the at the moment There's just a sort of FAQ page that says that says we we don't use this information now But we reserve the right to change that at any time without telling anyone People are also really feeling the changes that are happening in the last couple of months Spend too many months the last year and a half They're feeling the pressure in their communities for immigration services being our immigration enforcement being more present and less predictable of one person described Feeling like instead of coming to take a particular person. They're just coming and looking for anyone who might be undocumented Many people that we spoke to had negative experiences with ICE Including if it weren't if they hadn't had the experience themselves lots of people had friends and family who had negative experiences And they're feeling this increase in presence of enforcement in their communities And this is leading them to make significant changes to the way that they're living their lives For example one person we spoke to talked about how they won't leave their child at home alone anymore because they're worried that While they're out their child If they're picked up while they're out in the child's at home alone They might be left there or ICE might even show up at the house while the child's there alone They don't want either of those things to happen So people are changing a lot of the ways that they that they live day to day And this is a very present concern in the way that they talk about Their daily lives, so we were wondering if this is true when they think about the way that they use technology and what they're doing online First let me just give you an overview of what sort of technologies they primarily use This community is really mobile heavy Some people had computers in the home a lot of people had access to computers through local libraries and things But everyone had a smartphone and they were very dependent on it some people used email but when they spoke about email it was mostly to do with Communicating with their kids schools or doctor's appointments. It wasn't really a social thing So the majority of what we spoke to people about were social media tools in particular All but one of our participants were active users of Facebook Most people were using WhatsApp And Facebook Messenger as well. These are the three primary tools that people had the most to say about There were some other tools that they were on Instagram Twitter and and snapchat But really the overarching Sort of sense that people had about these tools is that it's bringing significant benefits to their daily lives Especially when you think about this community being separated Permanently from a lot of their friends and family back home Or their their former home their origin country What they had to do before maybe sending photos in the mail or through postcards buying international calling cards Being able to call people with video chat now is a significant improvement to their ability to keep in touch with people back in In in Mexico or in wherever their their origin country is People also talked about how it's improving their lives in other ways For example being able to organize their own work schedules and and have more control over the way that they're employed The the benefits go on and on and it's a lot of the same things that we've experienced over the last decade And the way that our lives have changed for the better because we're able to use these technologies When we ask people about risk The things that really pop into their heads first are hackers They're really concerned about fraud and identity theft and they think a lot about Their children contacting strangers on the internet or accessing inappropriate content But that's not to say that Concerns related to their to their status their legal status were absent. They're just much less certain, you know It's easy to to think about the Consequences of identity theft that's sort of concrete, but a lot of these status-related concerns were less less concrete People talked about harassment as well being something that's increasing in the real world as well as online in particular Participating in communities or in conversations online that maybe exposed their immigration status This harassment has moved online. They're experiencing in the real world as well, but They're you know, they're hearing stories or having stories themselves about people threatening them with immigration enforcement That's that's increasing over the last year or so. There are a couple of ways that people manage these risks Primarily what what we found people really thought about as their their concrete steps to managing their privacy online were fairly basic things like Making sure that they only accept friends and family on Facebook They might have Set their profile to private, but they're really not fiddling with these more fine-grained privacy settings They're not you know sharing particular posts only to particular people or using that they were talking about they didn't tell us about using these like private groups or anything like that to sort of create separate spheres of of Friends and family and Channel management just in the sense that like even though they had they think about Curating this like close network of friends and family. They're still really thoughtful about what they post in which in which channel Whether like it's safe to put a photo for example on their wall or you know in their timeline versus sending it directly to family This person for example Even after they post something publicly publicly being you know within their Facebook You know wall They'll still go back to a couple days later and just delete everything because they're not totally confident that that's private another really interesting thing is that In all of this the conversations we had No one really expressed the sense that they understood that They're really living on Facebook The tools that they're using most like almost exclusively are all owned by the same company No one also expressed any sort of sense that these companies are entities in themselves that might have Interest and access to their data Much less one that cooperates with law enforcement That concern didn't appear in any of our conversations They tend to think about these platforms as being sort of a medium to communicate with other people You know the way that they use it is is To talk to other individuals or groups of individuals, but the the platform doesn't seem to be like a repository for data In fact, they're expressing significant trust in Facebook Facebook in particular A lot of people were grateful for the changes that Facebook's made over the last year or so or two in terms of account management, so They're grateful that if there's a suspicious login attempt, they'll be able to stop it That's helped a lot of people and that sort of generates trust in these platforms And this sense that Facebook really has their back In addition to Sort of managing there the way that they're sharing information We did see some people choosing to abstain from sharing Especially when it came to topics around immigration some people chose to not join You know public Facebook groups or get information from certain places because they were afraid that by associating with these groups They might indicate something publicly about their status And that's frustrating for a lot of people who want to participate in these conversations and especially because The discourse around immigration is so toxic in the United States to Some people express this feeling that they they have to just sit there and take this This discourse happening around them without participating because they're worried about being targeted or harassed Or maybe even like having physical consequences being followed or being having immigration sent to their house if someone were to find them Some people expressed the opposite though Which is encouraging right some people felt that Even though the risk is there they it's more important for them to share their thoughts Than it is for them to be tiptoeing around immigration enforcement This is also really interesting because this sort of Exposes sometimes family tensions about these topics This is a really it's a mixed status community meaning that sometimes parents will be undocumented and children will be us citizens or Lots of people have friends and family who have a different legal status than they do so Risk is really distributed. You know, it's not just individual. It's within families and within communities and There can be a lot of tension between you know children and parents or friends, you know siblings About how they share information on these platforms and some people are much more conservative with what they share and This quote also reveals something else kind of interesting When we talk to people about Concerns about immigration It's very rarely that they talk about whether immigration will be able to investigate them as much as is about when Which is this this final point that there's really this sense of resignation in the community about what information immigration enforcement has about them Lots of people feel like It doesn't really matter what they do Immigration can can know where they are and and what they're doing They can find them if they just decide to it's just a matter of whether immigration enforcement is going to choose to come after them Rather than whether they can This is also true with the way that they think about technology They have a sense that There's really no privacy if if immigration decided to They would be able to see the messages on Facebook. They could see what was physically on their phones That they have this sort of all-powerful, you know toolkit to access their digital information And honestly this story in particular This sense of surveillance comes from experience often This person had a really negative experience with with ice You know coming and talking to her family and ice knowing things that they hadn't told anyone Somehow they ice had known things that they were keeping very private And so there's this assumption that well, it's happened to me before I've seen it happen to my friends They probably could know anything they want to but it's not all Negative it's not all resignation Another thing that we saw many people not everyone but maybe half of the people we spoke to had this really strong sense that there was this Responsibility to share things in the community to help each other. There's this growing sense of community identity and this might mean sharing information about Resources for the immigrant community or sharing information about workshops or events vigils But also information about Immigration enforcement if if ice is in a particular community They might tell their friends and family avoid this area until further notice. They're they're helping each other They're sending information so it can't be total resignation There's still this sort of beam of hope that they're helping each other and they must have hope that they can do something because they are This is this has been something that has become faster and easier with technology to write It's much easier to to send a message than it is to to call or to spread information before we had you know smartphones But all of this really leads to the question considering how much they inconvenience themselves in their daily lives offline Why are they doing comparatively little online to change their practices or to to reduce their visibility? I Don't think it's enough that Although lots of people expressed this sense that they're like relatively Low-tech literate That in and of itself isn't really enough of an explanation right There are so many different factors into the way that they're making these decisions and they're thinking carefully about the decisions they do make So we have some thoughts on this It really can't be understated how much of a benefit technology is to this community It's making a significant different in the way that they difference in the way that they live their lives So the choice to abstain is Not trivial Um the risk that they're facing by using like Facebook by putting phone numbers on Facebook or sharing photos of of their family and friends and like building these online networks is Really the risk involved in that is uncertain right at this point. We have really sparse data about Direct connections between the use of technology or the use of social media and immigration enforcement and consequences Maybe that will change but at this point it's unclear which changes might be actually beneficial, right? because there's not a direct connection between using this tool putting this information online and immigration enforcement showing up There's also the significant trust in in the platforms that they're using and their peers are using as well and There just tends to be less critical thought about the safety of using platforms when There's already this component of trust Facebook has done a lot for Account security for example over the last couple of years and and that's built trust in this community And as well as having you know all of your community on a tool When they're all there together, there's like less of a less critical thought about whether they're it's safe to be there and There is this component of resignation When we sort of push people to think really explicitly about the risk with immigration enforcement Being in sharing information on social media or using technology There was this sense that If they wanted to they could have the information I mean they already have it in a lot of ways when they're filing taxes or or just you know It's accessible to authorities Is the general sense of regardless of what they do online? So this kind of in in combination with the uncertain risk makes it really hard to make concrete steps towards Changes that might be helpful so Finally, I just wanted to share a couple of things that I learned especially as a Digital security trainer and doing this this study Most importantly everyone that we spoke to was really excited to learn That's just general like tech literacy, but also security and privacy people really care and They're excited and everyone expressed Gratitude that we were talking to them about this topic there. They care a lot But so what was difficult for me having a background in trainings was still being surprised by things that In these conversations that thinking I knew what they wanted or what they needed And that not being the case so one thing I would say is you know, don't assume that you know What's best for them or or even what they want or need go and talk to people. They're really You'll learn a lot from talking to people about what they think their risk is versus what they're doing For example something that I was surprised to learn is that They're really not using online resources when they have concerns about online privacy They're talking to their kids and they're talking to their neighbors and their friends so For this community in particular it would be really much more effective to go into an in-person training a training in Spanish in this case or in the language that they're Naturally speaking And have like in-person resources that will get you much further than you know compiling lists of Ideas or tools or or strategies that'll probably never be accessed and As a vehicle to do this one we had a really positive experience working with support organizations On the front end that allowed us to build trust with the community So by working with people who they already trusted and who already knew them. Well I Really think we were able to talk to people much more openly and much with much more trust than they would have Otherwise whether they would have spoken to us at all is a question They also were a great a great resource for us as we were developing Interview materials and also like training materials afterwards when we went back to communities and Conducted digital trainings They helped us develop, you know culturally sensitive language and and We were able to just ask, you know, is this Location is this style of presentation is this length is this time? What should we do? You know, they they were a resource to us to make sure that the things that we were developing were most accessible to the people that we were talking to and They also themselves From what I've seen have a lot of questions about the way that they're using technology That's a great place to go And talk to people about, you know, organizational practices And you might find that it's a lot easier to get people to change their practices if they're in sort of an organizational setting Where there's peer pressure or maybe some hierarchy of of people who are really encouraging them to use more secure More secure tools or to to think carefully about data. They're collecting about people that they contact So Working with these organizations also might be an opportunity to do trainings with With activists and with lawyers and with other people who are working alongside this community Finally Which is always a difficult thing to hear as a trainer The people we spoke to you probably aren't going to be adopting new tools for one it might not be safe It's hard to make that calculus right but a tool that's specifically designed for a community at risk or In order to do a particular function that would be of interest to for example the undocumented community or some other vulnerable community Might increase visibility depending on the threat model If they're found with a particular app or if the app is like exposing number of users or location of users for example And it's not to say that we should stop developing new tools We should always think about ways to make better and safer and more private Resources, but it's worth thinking especially if you're going to be working with communities or building resources for communities that We should think also about how to make sure that they're using the tools. They are already used more effectively and more safely That might mean sitting down with someone for a while and and going through their privacy settings on Facebook or You know making sure that their settings on WhatsApp make don't back up data to the cloud or Expose phone numbers to people. They don't know But there's a lot to do in both of these directions and Especially if you're going to be moving into Working with these communities. This is something to keep in mind that I thought was especially poignant For that I can take questions So we have Four microphones in this room. I see one is already occupied with somebody May I remind you that a question is typically one to two sentences and ends with a question mark And with that I'll take we'll take microphone for Hi, thanks You mentioned that these communities are reluctant to adopt new tools Were there any exceptions to that or were there any like attributes of new tools that you think? They would be more likely to adopt Yeah, that's a good question. I I've been thinking about this. I would say that this is absolutely true what I said about Reluctance to adopt new tools when it's when we're talking about social media So it's difficult to like move people to signal for example from WhatsApp or Facebook messenger because the people they talk to are Already on these tools and it's not just moving one person, but like a community If we start to think about tools that might be Special purpose we didn't talk to anyone who mentioned this app, but I know in the past There have been discussions about ways being used. It's like a crowdsourced map system being used to like track law enforcement Like I said, we didn't talk to anyone who used that app But possibly if there's like a specific utility in it There could be some critical mass of people who spread the word in a in a smaller community Yeah, it's something to think about I don't think it's impossible, but I would say it it would be challenging I assume that the baby doesn't want to speak on microphone one. So I'm going to go to microphone three I have two questions. Is that okay? Yeah, thank you The first one is kind of a nitty-gritty academic question and that is can you tell us anything about your IRB approval process? What you're doing to protect subjects data because this is very sensitive and I'm curious how you've approached that Yeah, absolutely. So we did have IRB approval before we spoke to anyone We actually got an exemption For collecting data about participants, so we compensated for each interview that we did we gave participants $20 We were not required to collect any proof of payment We recorded the interviews and encrypted them locally They were translated by people in our our research group and then transcribed with all identifying location and name data redacted and That those were all stored encrypted on our personal drives and then in a university drive All the data has been deleted now all of the original data as well. Awesome. Thanks The other one is a big picture scatterbrained question, which is about how This is a technological solution to a political problem. Do you feel that? Directing or helping immigrants understand how to protect themselves technologically is the answer or necessarily part of the answer or Do you feel like maybe eventually our community needs to be helping people exit places like the US that are increasingly hostile to immigrants? That's a good question. I don't think that Helping people be more safe online is really a solution. I mean the solution is going to be in Policy and in law I think the utility really in the short term is like making sure people feel safe and like have more control over disclosure To the extent that they can but I don't think that's going to I Don't think that's a winning, you know single pronged battle As for leaving the United States. That's kind of a funny question considering How much people have sacrificed to come to the US and especially having emigrated into communities already A lot of the people I spoke about today were long-term residents I mean everyone was a long-term resident, so they've sort of built their lives in the US But there has been a significant decrease in the number of people immigrating to the US without authorization That's thanks to Obama era policies of like You know return immediately at the border So whether people are now moving to other countries is a good question and whether we should encourage that is And I don't know interesting Thank you microphone to hi So I have a question. Are there any initiatives to help? the people in the way that so The fact that they don't They feel like they are less risk online and they don't perceive the risk as much and Do you feel that helping them understanding those risks and maybe trying to be more secure online would actually help them or is their Resignation towards the government accurate if you're thinking about specific people I think Maybe one individual's information is going to be accessible In the long run if if immigration enforcement really chooses to maybe that that sense of Resignation to some extent is accurate, but lots of people aren't necessarily on the radar and I think What's most beneficial about helping people? Understand how to use technology more effectively and like that's really just increasing confidence It's this uncertainty and like choosing to abstain from participating in conversations because they just don't trust that they can be sick like Private enough, you know or that their personal information their home addresses that they they're still at risk of this harassment like that's that lack of confidence and confidence in privacy is really what I think can be helped and Sorry, I had another point Yeah, but it's worthwhile, you know thinking about how you can contribute to to helping I mean even even outside of like Privacy work a lot of people really just are eager to learn more about how to use technology like To to help their lives Right, so the other thing I was going to say was We also put significant thought into whether or not You know how to have these conversations with people and like how to ask questions about, you know The risks online without really freaking them out Because we didn't really have solutions It's not like at the end of an interview we could say like well We have a solution for you just install this app and you'll be safe So it's sort of this balance between making sure that people still, you know use tools in The way that's so helpful for their lives, right? Like we don't want them to stop using Facebook if it means that they stop talking to their parents back in Mexico We don't want them to stop using email if it means that they can't talk to their kids teachers anymore So it's this balance between like Being aware of the risk and being confident that you're doing as much as you can while not choosing to abstain So I'm hiding here in the corner because I'm trying to see whether somebody's a number four there There's somebody there. Yes, so Mike four, please. Thanks Hi, so I was wondering since Facebook is the most popular tool that they use and they probably won't change it Did you find anything that the people at Facebook could do to help? Undocumented immigrants more Yeah, I think I think the things that Facebook can think about are really generalizable to a lot of vulnerable communities People there were a few things in particular that some people are really uncomfortable with For example, what's up? If you're added to like a group of people your phone number is exposed to everyone else in the group Without your consent and that might be the case with like group SMS and things but like the fact that what's up even uses a phone number is kind of Something that should we should migrate out of right? Facebook collecting phone numbers and collecting, you know location data regardless of of how easy it is to opt in and out and So this this is primarily an academic work That's going to appear at the at Kai is a human computer interaction conference and we talk a lot in the paper about what these bigger services can do and Really like we as a community can advocate for Facebook Resisting cooperating with law enforcement, right? I mean it shouldn't really matter to Facebook where you live or or how you got there their social media platform, they shouldn't be you know helping Immigration move people around physical borders. They should they should be totally, you know border agnostic So advocating for that kind of Attitude shift would be helpful Microphone to So thank you for the very interesting talk and I have a question that sort of picks up on the previous one and Because it's you talked about that Facebook has become such an important sort of a political Actor in this in this arena I'm wondering if you've been following up on that as a sort of a research problem like what's what is there? What is it that they are doing and is this something that that's happening? Unwittingly or is there something about? The General strategy of Facebook that surf helps create this kind of trust and I'm also wondering Go taking that question further. Sorry. It's more than a sentence that that if you're if if if If you've been thinking about this if you see anything sort of Suddenly eroding that trust in the future and I'm specifically thinking about this now this question about how it was possible for all this Russian Money to go into Facebook advertisements and that's sort of That's kind of points in the direction of Pressure for Facebook to be less less serve general in in in their trust and picking up on certain on specific political issues which could also be immigration and Disclosing some information that they already have Do you question about whether there could be a shift in trust in the future if something could trigger that? The example in Detroit right where law enforcement was able to get a phone number from Facebook with a warrant and then Track the person with his phone number if there are more and more cases of of social media data being used in immigration cases and there's There's evidence the thing that that might happen it's possible that that That narrative might overtake this sense that people have right now that Facebook's looking out for them by keeping their account You know there's that letting them control it In terms of Facebook picking up immigration as a Sort of an activist or a political topic that they're interested in I would not hold my breath on that one But We'll see So we have time for exactly one more question and that is on Mike one. Hi Did you collect any information or study anything about how the These people were using financial services and so things like online payments Where did they have bank accounts where they can send out their financial privacy? Yeah Actually people The concerns they had with Privacy in terms of the way that they were using like online banking because people were I mean Using credit cards and online banking and paying rent, you know, or utilities online They didn't talk about privacy much in that context except that they have this concern about their their financial information being stolen by hackers Right, like the concern is for other people rather than the entities that are that are providing these services And and I think a lot of the concern there is coming from the fact that they have a lot to lose and very few legal protection Should something bad happen to them? But Yeah, so so just generally like people were using online banking and had bank accounts and and we're using these online financial services Some people were opting out, but it wasn't due to privacy concerns It was because they were worried about using their credit card on the internet So with that I'd like you to help me thank our speaker Allison for this wonderful talk