Zoom (Talk)
Virtual Talk with Simon Egbert
Abstract
Many organizations are increasingly faced with the challenge of making sense of a seemingly unmanageable mass of data to derive actionable information. In this context, digital platforms play a prominent role, not only as the main creators of this flood of data, but also as the most widely discussed tools for making sense of this flood of data. In particular, data integration and analysis platforms, such as those currently most widely used by the US software company Palantir Technologies, have established themselves as promising technology for data research and analysis. This is true especially for police organizations. Data integration and analysis platforms have been increasingly used in police work in recent years. They promise to simplify database searches by linking numerous as well as heterogeneous data sources. In Germany, Palantir software is already being used or tested in Hesse (hessenDATA), NRW (DAR) and Bavaria (VeRA). As I will discuss in my paper, this development is associated with a platformisation of police work, as these tools intervene in the knowledge production of the police more than other police technologies before and thus will likely have a relevant impact on the work of police officers. As I will argue, these platforms are linked to an association-centered mode of suspicion generation that implies a data-analysis related shift from spear to net fishing. This in turn implies what Brayne calls “dragnet surveillance”, which I will explain in more detail in my talk, referring to empirical data from an ongoing study on the platformization of policing in Germany.
Bio
Simon Egbert is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University, Germany. He works in the ERC-funded research project "The Future of Prediction. Social Consequences of Algorithmic Forecast in Insurance, Medicine and Policing.", in which he is conducting the sub-project on predictive policing. He is also project leader of the DFG project "Visions of Policing. How Visual Technologies Shape Police Oversight and Training". He received his PhD in Sociology at the University of Hamburg in 2018 with a dissertation on "Discourse and Materiality. A dispositive analysis of drug testing." He holds an MA in International Criminology and a BA in Social Sciences. Most recent publication: "In Palantir we trust? Regulation of data analysis platforms in public security, Big Data & Society" (with Lena Ulbricht).
Zoom Registration
The Talk will take place on Wednesday, November 13th, 13:00 CEST.
Please register with office@c3s.uni-frankfurt.de to receive the Zoom login.