The Data Dilemma of Racial Profiling

A Native American man gets pulled over for driving a nice car, a black man is arrested in front of his family for a crime he didn’t commit – innocent people are at risk because of racial profiling. But to stop profiling, you have to first identify it, and that’s not as easy as it seems. Liberty and Scott are going deep into data in this episode, investigating how data is used against marginalized communities, and how it should be used to protect and serve them. They go to the experts to find out which methods are failing, what solutions can mitigate the dangers of facial recognition technology and smart policing, and how we know we’ve succeeded in ending profiling.  Liberty and Scott speak with Craig Watkins, Martin Luther King Jr. visiting professor at MIT; and Brandon Del Pozo, former police chief in NYC and Vermont.   Data Nation is a production of the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and Voxtopica. 

Om Podcasten

We face many overwhelming challenges in America today: systemic racism, data privacy, and political misinformation. These are big problems, and there are a lot of opinions and ideas on how to fix them. Scholars and industry experts often disagree on how to find solutions. So, how can we find the right way to move forward? We let the data speak for itself. Join hosts Liberty Vittert and Munther Dahleh as they gather data and get the facts about today’s most pressing problems to find out: are solutions even possible? They’ll investigate with MIT professors dedicated to researching these issues, and talk with the people on the ground encountering these problems every day so that we can find the best solutions that triumph over these challenges and solve America’s biggest problems. Data Nation is a production of MIT's Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.