FYI Londoners: a timely event connecting global perspectives on #digitalID. I'll share new work w Andreas Hack on 'the imposter economy': how refugees borrow or modify identities and locations to navigate exclusion from digital platforms, while targeted by resettlement, study, and employment scams.

📣 Registration is open for our event Reimagining Digital ID @mediacomgold.bsky.social @goldsmithsuol.bsky.social w/ findings from our www.redid.net project and talks by colleagues working on implications of Digital ID in Global South, migrant & refugee contexts explore.gold/digital-id All welcome! ⬇️

Last week at @periodismomigra.bsky.social we had a great conversation w @gonzalofanjul.bsky.social @josebautista.bsky.social about development agencies and EU funds in externalization policies. I wrote about the surveillance component of this EU approach to cooperation gr.boell.org/en/2025/09/3...

Somalis abroad send hundreds of millions of dollars home each year, more than official aid flows. Read: ⬇️

A video I recorded w/Women in Identity underlining the dangers of universal #digitalidentity, the significant impact of these rapidly evolving technologies & the (un)intended consequences they will have in challenging people's right to exist & citizenship. www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBV1...

Read this excellent summary of our article on the proposed UK #digitalidentity system. Thanks Antonella @svaroschi.bsky.social #Britcard

In July, Keren Weitzberg, @empo11on.bsky.social and @margchee.bsky.social wrote about the digital ID proposal. The three experts say that the current proposal presents a false choice between digital exclusion and mass surveillance. A few key points 🧵 blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp...

Public criticism of compulsory ID has a long history in the UK, which predates the advent of Twitter/X (in fact, it even predates the Blair-era controversy over biometric ID cards in the early 2000s). Also, criticism of the new scheme is coming from BOTH the right & left of the political spectrum.

what a time to be alive

It appears the UK Labor government is moving forward with plans to introduce digital IDs to address complex migration challenges www.ft.com/content/f2b3... In July, @margchee.bsky.social, @kerenweitzberg.bsky.social and I wrote about the challenges that lie ahead blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp...

How aid distribution turned lethal - the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation www.economist.com/interactive/...

“Cryptocurrency, once just a niche financial curiosity, is now at the forefront of economic warfare,” argue Adam Zarazinski and Bruno Faviero.

New paper out in @bigdatasoc.bsky.social on #humanitarian #data #sovereignty💥 doi.org/10.1177/2053... My deep gratitude to @kerenweitzberg.bsky.social, @margchee.bsky.social, @emryss.bsky.social, Quito Tsui, Paul Currion, @sophiebt.bsky.social, and @massimomarelli.bsky.social for the inspiration ❤️

Data Protection in Humanitarian Action: Responding to Crises in a Data-Driven World www.routledge.com/Data-Protect...

New blog based on our research with humanitarians navigating the current funding crisis. What should the future of humanitarian data management look like? caribou.global/publications... @emryss.bsky.social

New blog with the team @kerenweitzberg.bsky.social @empo11on.bsky.social about the concerns we have about the proposed mandatory UK digital ID system blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp... @lseblogs.bsky.social

Our latest on Labour's ill-advised "Britcard" blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp... with @empo11on.bsky.social and @margchee.bsky.social

"digital identity as an object of knowledge is not coterminous with how migrants make and perceive themselves as subjects. This latter is in part shaped by the multiple bordering mechanisms and by violent extractive processes"

Digital borders operate within humanitarian spaces, not just at national frontiers. @kerenweitzberg.bsky.social's new paper: how humanitarian biometric systems don't only track refugees - they actively exclude people from citizenship rights. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Very proud to share our project website 'Reimagining Digital Identity systems among Karen refugees in Thailand'. www.redid.net The site is in S'gaw Karen & English - we wanted to foreground the language of our participants as our research is primarily for them, not just English-speaking audiences

'On July 15th the government will launch “digital IDs” for use on the internet, shifting responsibility for online verification from private firms to the government. This is a potentially huge change in the state’s control over data.' www.economist.com/china/2025/0...

Just updated my diagram of Trump’s crypto entanglements based on his most recent financial disclosures 😵‍💫

When humanitarians adopt low earth orbit connectivity (like Musk's Starlink) for critical activities, what are the risks? www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/02/06/2... @empo11on.bsky.social & Quito Tsui

New ways of funding refugee aid... a financial product where crypto 'staking' rewards are automatically donated to UNHCR www.globenewswire.com/news-release...

Biometric warehousing for migrant children's future crimes www.wired.com/story/cbp-dn...

Biometric aid proposed in Gaza idtechwire.com/palestinians...

⏰ Apply by tomorrow! ⏰ 🚨 Opportunity to support our work investigating and exposing the use of data and technology in the migration context. If you are a legal researcher interested in migration, please apply before EOD 30th May 2025: privacyinternational.org/opportunitie...

Crypto ransoms on the rise

With @kerenweitzberg.bsky.social, I've been exploring the intersection of AI governance & #digitalidentity. In an essay in the new #openaccess 𝗥𝗲𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗜 collection, we reflect on how companies like @world.org are resignifying #biometrics in the AI age libraopen.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/...

Protecting the Digital Rights of Asylum Seekers and Refugees Organised by @hertiecfr.bsky.social with @profccostello.bsky.social (moderator), @francescapalmiotto.bsky.social, @deryaozkul.bsky.social, Joanna Parkin, Eleftherios Chelioudakis More information: cpdp.be/2851 #CPDP.ai #CPDP2025 #asylum

More on the shady organisation aiming to replace UN's role in Gaza aid distribution www.ft.com/content/ae19...

Thrilled to share that the Cambridge Global Handbook of Financial Infrastructure, co-edited with Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn and Barbara Brandl, has been published! You can find all chapters open access: doi.org/10.1017/9781...

Reducing Reliance on U.S. Tech and Finance: A Matter of Survival www.thedissident.news/internationa...

For EU countries that have long wrestled with the difficulty of deporting migrants, a digital tool created by @iom.int, has promised much. But critics fear it is accelerating flawed deportation processes that are prone to rights abuses and short on safeguards.🧵

Consultancy opportunity with @privacyinternational.org investigating how tech is used against migrants privacyinternational.org/opportunitie...

A must-read for anyone invested in tackling issues around identification, digital ID, and migration.

Proud to announce the launch of our report on the challenges that refugees and migrants in Kenya face accessing state-issued identification, generously funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung, and co-produced w/ Haki na Sheria w/ support from Caribou Digital www.cariboudigital.net/publication/...

Good morning, Did you know that the cloud has a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry? That a single data center can consume the equivalent electricity of 50,000 homes? thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-staggeri...

NEW: 404 Media has seen parts of a Palantir-powered ICE database that allows for highly specific filtering of people, which allows for searches of students, people with tattoos, from specific countries, by visa status, etc: www.404media.co/inside-a-pow...

Highlight from Prague's Poetics of Encryption exhibit. Impressive research visualisation covering 550 years of critical developments in tech. Something to spend ages starting at & share with students. calculatingempires.net?pos=12869.55... @katecrawford.bsky.social & Vladan Joler

Indigo Rumbelow: 'We do not remember the shopkeepers who could not open their stores on Oxford Street after the suffragettes had smashed their windows, or the people who could not watch rugby matches as anti-apartheid demonstrators stormed the pitch.' www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Applications are now open for 20 interdisciplinary jobs in AI at King’s College London: King’s AI+ Academic Fellowships, advancing AI across *all* disciplines (yes, inc. Arts & Hums — come and work with me!). www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/role/ki... @kingsdh.bsky.social @kings-dfi.bsky.social

this new book takes a much needed ethnographic approach to Freedom(s) of Speech. campanthropology.org/2025/03/24/e...

Join us this time next week! An in-person talk exploring scams and debt in the digital economy. @kingsdh.bsky.social

📣 Just out in Surveillance & Society's special issue on authoritarian surveillance with @ubisurv.net, " Towards a Critical Political Economy of Surveillance and Digital Authoritarianism."

‘Spreadsheets of empire’: #surveillance #accounting systems are the oldest preserved writings we have www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

The data streams that underpin humanitarian response are about to collapse: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2025...

The ‘freedom railway’: China’s new plan to take on the US in Africa https://www.ft.com/content/23e56860-7115-41c1-b5a7-93420e52c8b8

Trump's #crypto reserve: 'aside from people who personally hold cryptocurrencies and stand to profit, how is this a good thing? How is this useful to the country and most of its citizens, rather than just one specific industry?'... it isn't @molly.wiki