Ethical Data Collection for Regular Developers
summary
Describes how the DC Abortion Fund’s case‑management software actually works: teams shred personally-identifiable information after a set time, build filterable lists of risk indicators, and deliberately reversed course on tracking immigration status after ICE activity and another city’s rollout made the threat real. The project considers and rejected predictive modeling for individual-level decisions, cites the ACM code as its baseline, and explains why these concrete choices—what was collected, how it was stored, and what was deleted—matter.
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chapters (25)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:16WHAT WE CAN LEARN ABOUT DATA ETHICS BY PRETENDING TO NOT KNOW WHAT PRINGLES ARE ONLINE
- 1:06DISCUSSION OF DEATH • DISCUSSION OF ABORTION CARE
- 1:46IMAGINE AN INVENTION THAT MAKES TELEPORTATION POSSIBLE
- 2:24BUT THERE IS A COST
- 3:34SURPRISE! THE INVENTION IS CARS
- 4:06DOUBLE SURPRISE! PEOPLE'S DATA IS FUEL
- 4:56EXPERIAN BREACH? • FACEBOOK GOOGLE BREACH OF THE MONTH?? • PALANTIR ROBOCOP ALGORITHMS???
- 6:34REGULAR DEVELOPERS STARE DOWN THESE ETHICAL QUESTIONS ALL THE TIME
- 7:35CRASH COURSE IN ETHICAL REASONING • IDENTIFYING OUR VALUES • A FEW CASE STUDIES
- 8:39ETHICS IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO ACT IN A WAY INFORMED BY SHARED AND PERSONAL VALUES (MORE OR LESS)
- 11:18PROGRAMMER CODES OF ETHICS (LIKE THE ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTING MACHINERY'S) ARE A THING!
- 12:02EVERYONE IS A STAKEHOLDER IN COMPUTING • AVOID HARM AND PROTECT PRIVACY • AVOID YOLO-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT
- 12:49THE DC ABORTION FUND'S VALUES (ROUGHLY): • EMPOWER CLIENTS TO CARRY OUT THEIR CHOICES ASKING SLIGHTLY INTRUSIVE QUESTIONS IS OKAY IF IT COULD IMPROVE HOW WE WORK
- 15:39ASKING FOR DATA IN THE FIRST PLACE • TRACKING IMMIGRATION STATUS • PREDICTIVE MODELING
- 16:31FIRST: THE POWER DYNAMICS OF ASKING FOR DATA IN THE FIRST PLACE
- 17:12DOES IT PUT PEOPLE IN HARM'S WAY?
- 20:03FIRST AND A HALF: THE POWER DYNAMICS OF ASKING FOR DATA IN THE FIRST PLACE (AS A FOR PROFIT BUSINESS)
- 21:12SECOND: TRACKING DANGEROUS DATA LIKE IMMIGRATION STATUS
- 21:57TRACKING IMMIGRATION STATUS BECAUSE IT'S HELPFUL FOR SERVING PATIENTS
- 24:36NOT TRACKING IMMIGRATION STATUS BECAUSE I.C.E. IS A THING NOW
- 27:11SECOND AND A HALF: TRACKING DANGEROUS DATA LIKE IMMIGRATION STATUS (AS A FOR PROFIT BUSINESS)
- 28:35THIRD: THE ALGO AND PREDICTIVE MODELING
- 30:20THIRD AND A HALF: THE ALGO AND PREDICTIVE MODELING (AS A FOR PROFIT BUSINESS)
- 31:46PREPARE TO WORK THROUGH ETHICAL QUESTIONS • THINK HARD ABOUT YOUR VALUES AND POWER • CHARGE IN HEADFIRST
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