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02/10/2024 21:52:08
camp2023-talk-57026 Latest text of pad camp2023-talk-57026 Saved Feb 10, 2024 |
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[Music]
[Music]
and we're running with a one minute delay welcome good evening welcome to digit Kur tonight we're talking about sax workers versus surveillance if you're on the fetty verse you can add us with the hash CCC cam23 digital K and without further Ado I'm going to leave my fields to the fabulous Maggie Mayhem thank you so much for such a warm introduction and I am so happy to be here and to see so many people who are interested about this topic that is so near and dear to my heart really having a wonderful time thank you so much to the digital courage Village for accepting this talk and giving me this space uh thank you to everyone who has done any work or labor to make this Camp happen I hope everyone has been having as much fun as I have been
[Applause]
my name is Maggie Mayhem and it has been my pleasure to be a companion to people during times of sex birth and death all underscored by 20 years of experience with harm reduction harm reduction is a practice that I think is so important it comes from uh the drug user Community it was created by drug users it's intended by for drug users but It ultimately has a belief that what we need to work for for is any positive change and that is a theme that I hope that um you will all uh consider as I go through this talk I am available on the internet in many forms you will not find me on Facebook I am not there uh I am affiliated with some different organizations I am currently involved with the distributed denial of Secrets I am formerly on the sex worker Outreach project USA board of directors I am also a former train and leader with the Bay Area abortion support team uh and doing reproductive uh rights activism is one of my other many hats today we are going to be talking about sex worker rights these are some of the things that we're going to be going over and one of the reasons that I'm in this room today is because sex workers are a part of this community we're here we have always been here and we are never going away I also think that it is so important for the people who build support and subvert our digital infrastructure to know about this community what our needs are and what some of the challenges we Face are so that we can have a better safer future as we engage with our lives I'm going to be doing a brief introduction to some uh very kind of basic sex worker um rights topics in jargon I'll be talking a little bit about Tech I'll be talking about borders and information bio uh biopolitics and I will be doing a little bit of a talk about subverting surveillance I only have 45 minutes I have a lot of slides I tend to speak very fast so my apologies to anyone who is a German speaker this I'll do my best um this talk is being recorded and it is being streamed but
you can also feel free to take a picture of a slide if there's like a big overwhelming block of text that you want to review uh pictures of me are okay cats out of the bag uh in terms of this content so I feel very comfortable with that as a Content note I will be talking a little bit about um discussion of some human trafficking and abuse so be aware that that is something that might come up and I trust that you will know yourselves and that if you're here today you're prepared to hear some uh conversation about that there is a chant in the sex worker rights uh Community when there has been labor activism and I would like to share that with you uh this came out of a um a unionization struggle at a strip club in San Francisco there were lots of protests and one of those chance was when sex worker rights are under attack what do we do get dressed fight back so let's do that what is sex work sex work is a very Broad umbrella term it covers so many different kinds of Labor there's also a lot of other language some of it is very dehumanizing but people sometimes reclaim it for themselves they may use it as a self- identifier it's also there's some language that is part of criminal legal or penal codes uh that may still be used but it may not be favored by people in the trade themselves there is such a diversity of things that people do in terms of erotic sexual Commerce instead of breaking things down into legal or illegal because there is so much variation about what that might mean in any given location I would like to think about it more in terms of high contact and lower contact but that does not mean visibility necessarily because there are people who have less contact with their clients and their customer base who are very highly visible and that comes with its own risks but in general it is the people who have the highest amount of immediate contact with their clients and their customers who face the brunt of violence and extreme violence at that they also face r
isks of infection exposure um and and also to say that those infections are not necessarily just sexually transmitted infections that includes any possible disease exposure including covid tuberculosis any bug that's going around they are up close and personal with people so the population of people who are performing outdoor sex work are very very visible on our public streets they are subjected to the highest amount of violence uh and they also face the highest amounts of criminalization they're um the people who are really at the center of this conversation um it's also important to note that there is a great deal of intersectionality in terms of who is the brunt of this violence uh people of color especially people who lack citizens uh citizenship status in the place where they are working are particularly at risk people who may be transgender gender non-conforming uh they also face a great deal of violence in what they do there's a lot of overlap in the international day to end violence against sex workers and the transgender um day of remembrance where there are people in the center and those people in the center are just so so important and the rights conversation is really about them and the overlap and why they are facing those types of consequences for work where other people might experience more safety there's also some ambiguity people may engage in multiple forms of sex work over the course of their career uh some people may use different types of personas they may do little bits to keep them separate they may have different names that they use for different forms of work with different uh oh I think it's just a sensitive chord I can keep talking oh we're okay this maybe it needs to be taped down we'll get through it I have an idea let's try that let's see if that little bit of support problem we problem solve it there can be some ambiguity that goes on uh criminalization and stigma also mean that people may hide their participation in the trade so the
y may not be disclosing they may not be as open about what they do people may also need um front not RS fronts or plausible deniability for example I'm a former sex worker I'm absolutely retired never happens anymore that's long in the past you know or as good as the next offer is human trafficking is of significant concern and I want to talk about what that actually is in detail so this is where we're going to have some some real talk going on on there's a spectrum of participation in terms of sex work there are people who um a sensibly are you know part of this trade by choice because it's they they find um enjoyment or pleasure out of it and they are they are real they are part of our trade there are people who are here by circumstance they're kind of in the middle it's the work that they're doing uh because it meets their needs but maybe something better will come along or maybe they'll pay off that debt maybe they'll be more established they'll secure their housing they'll be able to move on to something else something that they would rather be doing and there are people who are in this trade by coercion or by force they may not be consenting adults they may not be over the age of 18 they may be people um who were given a false bill of goods about what kind of work they might be doing in their path of migration uh they might be people who are in an intimate partner violence Rel uh situation in their relationship where a partner or even a parent or a loved one uh compelled them to do this work rights Encompass all of these people rights are not predicated upon empowerment rights are about add addressing the way power imbalances have lethal consequences so rights are necessary for that respectability politics have no currency with me that's not what this struggle is fundamentally about so understanding that there is this range um is is a very important thing um to really think about human trafficking for nonsexual labor represents the overwhelming majority of cas
es and that's simply because there is more labor in this world uh that is nonsexual than there is labor that is sexual human trafficking is also about the food that we eat the clothing that we wear the things that we do every day where we don't have as many people jumping up to talk about their rights and the way that they are being trafficked criminalizing sex work isn't going to have a benefit for the people who are being trafficked in that way those types of laws and penalties don't necessarily correspond or come to support them in the situation that they are facing uh and oftentimes anti-trafficking organizations will really do a lot of shock and awe to talk about how hard and brutal um human trafficking and sexual cases is and I'm not going to deny it it can be absolutely abhorent and it can be brutal and there is that brutality that is present in all forms of human trafficking uh the more you look into that the more that that can be seen when we treat people as disposable when we treat people as um individuals that we can just have do our labor and and disregard and uh throw away bad bad bad things happen there are multiple regulatory models of sex work legalization is one of them and often times it's what a lot of people think would be the best because we have this idea that legal means good illegal means bad but that's not necessarily the case because whenever there is a legal or regulated form of sex work there are going to be people who don't fit into that very well who fall into the cracks and they still face uh significant penalties for their participation uh and in one case I think it's really important to say that that's that's something that's happening here in Germany I've had some conversations with people throughout the day who have been telling me that um this sounds like a very interesting talk but here in Germany we have uh you know some regulated legal forms of sex work so we're doing pretty good this is not necessarily what people who are doin
g activism here have to say I'm going to drink some water and Hope all right uh that's not necessarily what the activists here have to say and it it's not my place to speak over the German sex worker rights activists who are doing lots of hard work who are the most informed but some of the things that they have um wanted to address are the fact that licensing creates a uh potential risk for data breaches if you have to apply for a license if you have your information your personal identifying information and a photograph attached to this kind of work you are at risk that's a database of people who are involved in sex work there are some people who might want to get their hands on it who don't have the best intentions that could be very problematic they could be outed um there are exclusionary zones where people can still be penalized and in general just anytime we have a form of policing it is going to Target marginalized identities um and people who are non-citizens may not have full access to the rights and protections that come from a legal framework so if you want to know more in depth about what's happening here in Germany I it is upon me to refer you to German sex workers themselves Hydra is that organization their website is listed and um this is a QR code that goes to a very detailed paper analyzing the policies that are happening here this is uh the one that is in German and this is in the English this uh QR code will not be available for more than two weeks so it's really for those of you who are here in the audience if you're watching this later on you can still get this information on their website full criminalization is what we see in most of the world in most places sex work is prohibited it is criminalized with a full set of laws um detailing what that looks like and the reason that these laws can be so precise they're so detailed is because communication and Association are the only ways that we can distinguish a sex that is commercial from one that
is recreational or relational so ultimately it does become a matter of expression um the way people are communicating it it comes down to the way people are dressing on the street the way they can be visibly identified it has to do with who they're associating with um you know if they're with someone who has already been known or identified as a sex worker and they're in that company you can be held accountable for their actions too or you can be lumped in with them so so the fact that that's such a nebulous issue means that all of these laws are always going to be um are going to have collateral damage and they're going to ultimately uh extend beyond their quote unquote intended targets because it's just not as clear what makes um a legal sex act different from an illegal one other than biases judgments stigmas and perception of the people that you're looking at when you're thinking about it the Nordic model or in demand is the uh it sounds great on paper it's the idea that we could criminalize the purchase of sex only but not the people who are selling it asymmetric enforcement of laws will always infringe upon the fundamental rights of the non-criminal party and one way to explain this is if I told you that we were going to propose a law that it was totally okay and totally legal to attend a concert but not to be a musician playing one that would mean we're not going to have too many concerts because people would not be able to go there they're still going to be surveilled the whole event is going to be shut down it's going to be impossible to do so it does it sounds really really great but it just doesn't work out that way um in practice decriminalization is the idea that we can just take the laws governing um SE forms of sex work off the book and entirely um and just move away from the form of policing full decriminalization is never going to be possible in a world with any form of policing and criminalization in many ways for the same reason that end demand i
s is problematic if we still have laws that criminalize people um then we can't actually accomplish decriminalization but this is the model that has been most preferred by people in the sex trade New Zealand is an example of a place that has had uh success UC F decriminalization happening uh but it also too has its own limits because as I said again when there's anyone in society who is being criminalized then this type of work can still be subject to penalties and punitive reactions we've also been moving away from the idea that we need to criminalize or eliminate sex work because it's a moral bad issue and we're moving on to a new era of humanitarian securitization that's the idea that we're going to have laws and surveillance and policies that aren't necessarily just intended to be mean and bad to people who are in this you know the sex trait or um you know with a moralizing idea but rather for for humanitarian purposes to end trafficking the anti-trafficking movement relies on this but humanitarian securitization is still a form of security securitization it's still the implementation of mass surveillance it's still um another way to justify establishing stronger policing but it sounds good and sometimes people don't realize it's creeping up on them too even though they're not in the sex trade it just means that those apparatuses are emboldened and they have more money they have more power they have further reach rights not rescue is one of the ways that we can address the the wrongs the brutality of trafficking we we really cannot arrest our way out of this kind of violence we need to start establishing a world that provides resources for people regardless of how they came into the sex trade we need to have resources for people who are escaping intimate partner violence that are have very low barriers that are accessible Beyond business hours we need to have a full set of resources and support for people who may have substance use disorders that don't have barr
iers so the moment that they're ready to start detoxing or enter recovery there's a place for them that's open that has a bed where they feel safe those places all of these places have to be ready to handle people of all identities of all genders of all Races of all kinds of relationship statuses they have to be safe spaces and there has to be enough of them they must be well funded they cannot just be something that are done cheaply or um with so many barriers they just don't work for the people who need those resources all raids are going to be violent and rescue is just a nice way of saying a raid that's all that it is it's just a euphemism there are no teddy bears and hot cocoa when they come in to shut these things down the un uh un AIDS the World Health Organization and Amnesty International have all recognized that the rights not rescue model is what is important and that decriminalization is a step that will help protect the rights the dignity the health and the safety of people who are in the sex trade so it's not just me um it's some very big organizations and experts who do work in human rights uh it's also important to note that rescue Industries receive most of the money and most of the funds and there is a lot on the table they get a lot of money for a lot of programs and a lot of that will go to their overhead or their staff budget and it doesn't necessarily go to a full range of services in the United States there's a very big anti-trafficking organization called Polaris they they get millions upon millions of dollars and uh very often they would refer people who were looking to get information or support um who were in the sex trade uh to the swap USA hotline and we funded that with volunteer hours and a very small budget from our like meager ability to fund raise so we were doing work that they claim to be doing without getting any of that monetary support to do it uh we simply are just not necessarily eligible for the same kind of Grants or we're
not trusted to be able to do this work within the community uh police militarization budgets have all gotten so much bigger they get a lot more money to get a lot more tools um and so there's all this money is not going to sex workers themselves having these types of laws can Rel result in a lot of censorship limited speech for everybody who is communic ating the more surveillance networks we have the more people who will be caught in that kind of a drag net no matter what you're talking about so sexual speech and sexual education um is all going to be uh potentially at risk and we are definitely seeing consequences of that in the United States this also means that reproductive health information is going to be limited and we are seeing this as a consequence as well uh information for people who are looking for transgender resources or queer resources they're going to lose lose those because it could possibly be Associated or people are going to be afraid to possibly be associated with trafficking for having any of the buzzwords or the keywords um that are the same or held in common so this collateral damage is important because these are resources that we need that need to be um really fully fleshed out because people have a right to information unrestricted information they need to get the best tools that they need to live their best lives and in response to these shifts in public perception a lot of religious organizations have actually started to do some deceptive things in their marketing and their practices so they may sound like a secular organization but they're not they're actually far-right Christian organizations uh the um uh Moral Majority was a group that started in the United States in the 1960s they are Evangelical Christians they are now rebranded as the National Coalition um to oppose um sexual exploitation of children and they chose that t their name because it was so similar to another organization that had been long established to help children w
ho were missing or vulnerable who are exploited but the difference between those orgs is in their ideological agenda the legitimate one was really working with the hard reality that children who um go missing or are exploited are often being harmed by someone they know know and love it is often a parent it is often someone in their family and it's not because there was a big bad sex traffic or who threw them in a van it's because there was someone they loved who was hurting them and um often times it's also as simple as a custody dispute issue where parents have split and one parent has decided they don't like the arrangement or how things have worked out and they're going to come take their kid and go somewhere else far away that may not be safe or the best place for them one great example is there is a movie that is Making Waves in the US I don't know if it's out here yet but it's called the sound of freedom and uh it it's simply um a propaganda piece that has a lot of very very bad information and it comes from some very bad practices uh I don't know if anyone here is familiar with pizzagate that was a problem in the United States it was a conservative political just nightmare where some people on the internet suggested that there was a pizza parlor that was responsible for sex trafficking children they were being held in the basement by Hillary Clinton uh and it was going to be necessary to storm the pizza parlor to save the children and this was a bad tip there there were no children in the basement it was just a pizza parlor and someone showed up with a very large weapon and um there was no one there to rescue that was what was happening with the people who were making this happen they actually started by traveling to um the Caribbean and they would try to set up their own stings they were not professionals they didn't have a background in this they really didn't know what they were doing they were possibly driving up the demand for child SE trafficking by eve
n trying to facilitate this or make it happen and they would storm the situation with guns and they would terrify those kids they would Pat themselves on the back but they didn't make sure that those children were safe afterwards no one heard where they went or what happened to them no one made sure they were okay After experiencing that um and they're just very misleading and when we have these propaganda pieces we're not able to do the work that we need to do to get people out of these situations and into something safer here's some example of some of these organizations this is just one that I picked because I like to pick on them um the nationville anti um anti um human trafficking Coalition and they also encourage just a lot of religious volunteers to jump into work that they are not trained or ready to do um so they have uh this may not be clear on the slide but at their their level four the highest honor is after you've volunteered enough and done enough Church work you too can join in on the rescue um so again people who just aren't ready to do this work and they can make situations worse some of these organizations have also done a little bit of what we might call tourism of various sex trade districts where they would get people together in prayer groups to get in a shuttle and go by outdoor sex markets to look and gawk at the people who were there and you know pray the rosary um but really that's that's just uh that's not helpful and it's degrading it's absolutely degrading uh they also collaborate with law enforcement so they they may not actually be in law enforcement but they they like to work with them and sometimes law enforcement really likes these groups because these groups can do things that they wouldn't necessarily be able to do because they don't have the same types of policies or um body cams or accountability so there is that little bit of a joint partnership there with the rank amateurs who make everything worse there's a fantastic project
called rate that rescue it is a sex worker-led project it does cover rescues internationally and it analyz es what the budgets are what the outcomes are and whether or not the people who were involved felt that their life was better as a result of that rescue the US Department of Homeland Security is of course very concerned with human trafficking because they want to have um a you know good way to justify a lot of surveillance that they're doing that is extending um as far as possible to extend that reach and I want to focus in particular with what they were doing with the hospital ality industry they were doing a lot of mandatory training with hotel chains um to help people there spot the scourge of trafficking and here are some of the indicators of human trafficking and um some of these might whether or not you're in the trade might sound familiar such as simply leaving the do not disturb sign up for multiple days in a row having lots of technical devices anyone travel with a few computers or some extra things like that very suspicious good reason to check in you could be a trafficker um so some of these things might actually be kind of accurate and helpful but a lot of them are also quite obvious um sometimes their guides will have things like you know if there's a child who's you know talking about overt sexual acts and looking for money in the lobby um be suspicious and yes perhaps that is suspicious um but it's interesting to see the other things that get thrown in there as reasonable cause for a search or reasonable cause to call law enforcement in to investigate the situation the private sector of course is coming in to charge you know every kind of business possible with their model of training so lots of these companies are opening up and they have their own how to spot and stop human trafficking um they're making a lot of money off of this industry and we have no way to tell if they're actually doing anything to prevent it they just sell C our es and cer
tification for people palente teer they're fun we all love paler uh I think they are definitely being uh making fantastic use of the human trafficking rhetoric to justify the expanded scope of um the surveillance that they have been doing everywhere that they possibly can and um one of the the things they they wrote in this article I thought that was quite interesting is to give non-technical people a view of the world as discreet objects relationships and they describing data and that's a good thing right we're all just data and relationships that can be mined and pulled for different purposes but they can expand the scope they can uh keep growing especially when they have this type of um a project that they can push to the Forefront we're not here to invade your digital privacy and your rights we're just trying to find the bad gu guys and that's all we'll do and they're getting some major contracts um with the US government and they are absolutely putting that to the Forefront of their website and their promotional materials they're spending a lot of time going into conferences and occupying a lot of space in this domain but I think we all have some questions about what their intentions really are this is a poster that was made by traffic brothel workers in Thailand and these are people who were experiencing some of the worst outcomes of trafficking and they had an opportunity to um to share some of that and what it was and this is some of the text that they wrote to transcribe it in case it was hard to read on the poster and this was the experience of people who were in the midst of trafficking who were doing work that they wouldn't have chosen otherwise um who were looking for a different or a better kind of life and they made it a point to say that their their income their saving their money was seized that they were locked up that they were intain detained that they were interrogated by many people for many long hours that they were forced and compelled to be
Witnesses even if that might be dangerous for them that they were held until their court case and did not have the ability to move freely in the place where they were living that they were forced into retraining into industries that they didn't necessarily find any better for example the Garment industry that we're going to save you and pull you out of the sex trade and now you're going to go work in front of a sewing machine um not necessarily for much more money in fact often times less than they were making before they were not compensated by anyone for their loss of wages or income their family was then having to do more work to help support everybody they were of course worried because they're out of contact and they don't know where their loved one is they had to deal with the stigma and Judgment of people after being subjected to a raid if you are pulled out by a lot of police and dragged through town um people tend to make some pretty big judgments about that um soldiers and other people were looking for more information about them and therefore asking questions of their friends and their family uh and people in their Community bribes have to be paid they're sent back home where it could be dangerous to have this kind of um uh you know experience and this knowledge in your community where people might um really have some serious judgment about that um their family then maybe some more debt to pay and that regardless of whether or not they were rescued they had to find a way to get back because that was the way the only means that they had to keep making a living was to go back into really bad brothel conditions and since nothing improved all they could do is go through the arduous Journey once again go back into those conditions once again just recycling The Experience ret traumatizing over and over this is what raids look like um and this is what rescues look like uh I just have a few examples taken from the media um about the dehumanizing type of photos th
at are used uh and the way that people who are victims are being treated um Detroit Michigan this is Anaheim um these guys look so friendly isn't this exactly who you would want to see if you were having a really bad day um this is London this raid in particular was in SoHo and they actually called the police or the media ahead of time to document what they were doing I haven't included any of the photos that they were using of the people inside but they were of course in their work gear and their negl um so they were very vulnerable they were very exposed and this was about gentrification about upsetting that type of Industry not because they were worried about anyone in it but because the real estate was really valuable of course in India again here's some more of the dehum izing stock footage that is used they have used that handcuff picture for like pretty much any um uh nonwestern raid like that's the raid photo you see so that's probably not from that exact raid and you can see the people who are arrested um and what their ages were and um whether or not they were victims is really not fully taken into consideration in New York there was a raid that went very very very horribly wrong and this was yang song who was in an Asian massage parlor that's where she worked she had had previous negative experiences of sexual violence from the police um and they were so bad they were so traumatic that when she was experiencing a raid once again rather than just kind of comply with what they were saying and go along with them she jumped out of a four-story window where she was working and she died uh to any members of law enforcement who may be here with us today or watching from the comfort of Their Own homes I strongly suggest that you find new employment because someday there may be people who come to rescue them too sex worker rights really are inextricably linked to migrant rights because often times this is the only work that people have when they are not considered
full citizens in the places that they are going it is just simply the only possible form of income that is available and that really has to be um the important focus of of what we're doing because migration is something that has happened for a long time and it's something that we're going to see more and more of with climate change we're going to see more people who are going to be forced to leave their Homeland not by choice but because they are facing extreme danger or a total lack of resources of course some more um the ways that sex trafficking and sex work can be linked to a lot of uh xenophobia and a lot of our anti-migrant sentiments um for example the Twitter count the Border Observer um complaining about the sex workers who are available and the the rhetoric that they're using you can see is really it's not one of care or concern or love it's about we need to stop this because these people are coming and that's their intent and that is their dehumanizing tone and again deportation is a big consequence of these laws there is no guarantee for a victim that they will be given safety and a chance to stay in the place that they have moved to in the long term they will not be granted housing um they're simply deported so we have to ask when people are rescued because they were traffi what were they offered what happened to them let's follow up on that story we can't just end the sentence with they were rescued we have to ask what does rescue mean uh another example of a Ukrainian only fans model who was barred from being able to evacuate from war because she was linked to her um information and couldn't get over the borders so there is a lot of Border problems that are happening right now where people simply cannot move because they are being associated with sex work um from their digital footprint so the criminalization of sex work it does not alter or remedy the socioeconomic context that precipitates entry into the trade whether that is by choice coercion or
Force all sex workers all workers benefit from rights and solidarity and desigm destigmatization protection from violence protection from the police and the freedom of movement the world that we live in is what shapes our choices and we cannot prosecute our way out of an inequitable world we simply can't we have to change our world we have to make it better for the people who are trying to live Thrive and survive in it so how do sex bers use technology many different ways I'm running out of time so I'm going to really be rushing through this um but they've had a long history of finding Innovations at the Forefront of technology to facilitate their work um and they also help Advance things like streaming video um digital uh Anonymous currencies uh a lot of technologies that people use were really developed um from the use of sex workers and of course all those technologies have the other side of harm and ways that there can be negative outcomes simply from um how prevalent they can be uh banking banss are increasingly um a big one that that may not be a form of criminalization but if you can't have a bank account you really can't function in the place where you live um automated license plate readers deep web search tools all of these things can be used to create harm in the lives of people in the sex trade and we can see a positive effect for example this is a study on Craigslist effect on violence against women in the United States where um Craigslist was associated with a 177% reduction in the homicide rate for women uh in the country 17% for all women and most of those was understood to be involved in the sex trade some people have said this could be a correlation or causation but I can tell you as an Outreach worker that when Craigslist went down that we saw an eight-fold increase in outdoor sex workers that people were using phones to book ads and I don't have to tell this crowd that um opening an email can sometimes have a negative outcome but it is always saf
er to open an email than it is to stick your head in a car window in a remote part of town where no one can hear you or come help you so having that distance and ability to move indoors is very protective um here's a migrant sex worker who benefited and was actually able to move out of a trafficking situation through her adoption of Technology um she was able to move away from um brothel and outdoor work and what is she using it's kind of blurry but she's using a phone and she's able to own clients and although she's still ambivalent being in the sex trade she's having a much safer experience of it and she's making enough money to support her family so not perfect but better project doxy spotting is another example of the way people are using technology to harass sex workers they're using um Google search kind of images to identify and make a giant database and of course there are always going to be some limits and uh our government this is a quote from president bar former President Barack Obama about using technology specifically um to Target traffickers but they really mean sex workers in general these are some examples of border crossing issues that people are facing um all over where they're finding that um just going Court they are being identified and they are being halted and they are being denied entry and this is happening more and more and more as Ai and facial recognition software gets more sophisticated so even though it may not be a parent they um are being recognized simply from these um these smarter Machine Tools cesa fasta in 2018 has had a major Global impact because we live on an American dominated internet so companies that are based in America of course have to answer to the policies that they have there so cloudflare for example based in the US does a lot of hosting and they certainly um have to answer to this and people are being discriminated against not just for uh using uh being doing Commerce but for using these tools um I still have two
minutes I'm going to rush I see they're getting ready to kick me out um digital safety has many interdependent axes and we have to reconceive of the fact that we don't just have external territorial borders anymore our borders are internal they are omnipresent they are always watching us and they are distinguishing fit citizens from unfit citizens so we can't just think of them as a place that we cross one time this is is going to rush through this um one of some of the key things if you're traveling and you are a sex worker um say as little as you possibly can know as much as possible what about what your Crossing process will be um understand that there is going to be a lot more involuntary facial recognition I experienced that on my flight from San Francisco over here for the first time um being uh about to board my plane I had to undergo facial recognition Biometrics literally right before boarding so that's going to be happening to everybody um so please use some of these um practical steps uh please look at the this the show later to see what they are and remember that borders are systems of domination but not absolute domination we can figure out some ways to get around it this was a great paper got me real hot that some of these uh facial recognition aren't always insurmountable so don't tell me the odds because the odds are really bad this is some big technology it's very widespread instead please let's talk about the goal and the goal is that people need to live freely in this world and we need to support others in living freely in this world too that's our goal these are pictures of me from my work in Moria Camp I was there in 2015 before it burned to the ground and I am never going to forget the people that I met and the work that I did there many of those people are going to go on to do sex work voluntary or involuntary um and I hope that they have the best lives possible and that by teaching these things that can that can happen for them thank you so
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