Millions in crisis rely on ubiquitous tools that betray them: from social media to Starlink. The deeper shock is when secure tools also exclude them through everyday hurdles like phone verification. In order to have real alternatives, we must reclaim hyper-accessibility. 🔐

People in crisis (war, conflict, repression) are often forced to use the same tools that exploit them, which creates structural dependence by design. Afsaneh Rigot argues that we need to reclaim hyper-accessibility for the public good. 🔐 #dfm #decenter

This is very good...

Millions in crisis rely on ubiquitous tools that betray them: from social media to Starlink. The deeper shock is when secure tools also exclude them through everyday hurdles like phone verification. In order to have real alternatives, we must reclaim hyper-accessibility. 🔐

Israel bombed an Evin, an Iranian prison that housed dissidents and political prisoners. They ended up destroying the trans wing and murdering over 100 trans people incarcerated there, many for simply being queer in Iran. This is unspeakable evil. archive.ph/PA2n5

NEW: Records of hundreds of emergency calls from ICE detention centers obtained by WIRED—including audio recordings—show a system inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowding. Unpaywalled from @dell.bsky.social and @dmehro.bsky.social:

Republicans just took away your healthcare so they can fund their secret police: newrepublic.com/post/197612/...

If the GOP reconciliation bill passes, ICE gets through FY2029: - $45 billion for detention, on top of the current annual budget of $3.4 billion - $14.4 billion for transportation and removal, on top of the current annual budget of $750 million - $8 billion for hiring/retention - Billions more.

With this budget, ICE alone would have nearly as large a detention operation as all 50 states' prison systems combined. Bigger budget than the Marine Corps. Police-state levels of spending

Report it now on 7or -The Palestinian Observatory of Digital Rights Violations 🔗 7or.7amleh.org

Israel’s genocide in Gaza. War in Lebanon. Now Iran — as the US circles in. AI weapons fuel this — tested on Gazans, expanded to Iran, used by ICE. Powered by companies like Palantir & OpenAI. It’s a war on us all! #STOPTHEWAR #NoTechForApartheid #NoTechForICE Photo @alexshams.bsky.social

“A poem by a young Iranian poet Parnia Abbasi who, along with her family, all civilians, was killed today in a brutal and unlawful Israeli attack in the Sattarkhan neighbourhood of Tehran.” www.pamenarpress.com/post/parnia-...

“the world needs more courage, not less. It needs people who choose justice over convenience. […] Loving you is not separate from the struggle for liberation. It is liberation itself. I fight for you, and for every Palestinian child whose life deserves safety, tenderness and freedom.”

About 2,000 transgender people are incarcerated in federal prisons, according to the Bureau of Prisons — a tiny fraction of the federal prison population. But they are disproportionately targeted for abuse and assault.

🧵 Amnesty International’s analysis of satellite imagery and verification of video footage reveals how Israeli forces completely razed what remained of the town of Khuza’a in the southern occupied Gaza Strip over the course of two weeks in May 2025.

“A poem by a young Iranian poet Parnia Abbasi who, along with her family, all civilians, was killed today in a brutal and unlawful Israeli attack in the Sattarkhan neighbourhood of Tehran.” www.pamenarpress.com/post/parnia-...

Our struggles are connected: Palestinians, migrants in LA, families in Tehran, queer folks in Cairo, or Sudanese refugees. The decentered are policed, surveilled, criminalized. Same tools. Same logic. Different uniforms. Identify the decentered, expose the system, break its power. 🔏 1/3

From a queer person in Cairo to a Latino man in LA, the decentered are groups that are marginalized — and then also criminalized — for their mere existence. In our upcoming report, we speak to the decentered from all over the world, and the language of experimentation colors what many of them say. 🔐

Second, the Bill sets the stage for massive privatized, for-profit concentration camps. It will quadruple the capacity of ICE to detain people--giving it capacity to detain, in for-profit arrangements where corporations make money per person per day, at least 100,000 more people.

Too often, communities impacted by AI are left out of conversations that shape its design and deployment. Tomorrow, May 20, join us for a webinar on how participatory practices can change that + how PAI’s Guidance for Inclusive AI can help. Register: partnershiponai-org.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

📣The full agenda for the Palestine Digital Activism Forum 2025! Register now for online attendance: events.ringcentral.com/events/pdaf-... #PDAF #PDAF2025

بمناسبة اليوم العالمي لمناهضة رهاب المثلية الجنسية، ازدواجية الميل الجنسي، والعبور الجنسي أو الجندري، "ايداهوبت"، يسرّنا أن نُقدّم لكم دليل لووم سوانا الجديد والفعّال لمجتمعات الميم عين. اقرأ/ي وحمل/ي الكتيب من هنا: loomswana.org/ar/safetygui...

I wrote about how NGO's working in abortion access and LGBTQ rights could be cutoff from US tech due to Trump issuing sanctions against them. Liberal government's could also find themselves targeted. This is a wake up call. www.thedissident.news/internationa...

Please check out our sister org, @loom4swana.bsky.social, new booklet and solid resource. Important and Impactful 👇

Support @theappeal.org, a worker-led newsroom exposing the institutional violence of criminalization. Independent journalism like this is more vital now than ever.

Important insight and a call to action for technologists:

Across most of the hundreds of years the formal practice of law has existed, lawyers failed to draw a distinction between what was legal and what was just. It may be time to technologists to consider doing the same. More in our most recent newsletter, by our own @jessicafjeld.bsky.social

This is the same admin that violently fearmongers about "foreign threats" & boasts abt pouring billions into “advanced tech” for "national security." Subscribe to @micahflee.com and see how the Israeli chat app used by Trump officials was hacked within 15 mins. bsky.app/profile/jose...

As immigration controls are violently targeting pro #Palestine students & other migrants, their low-tech tactics remain the most dangerous & authoritarian, Afsaneh Rigot writes.“The oppressed know the oppressor better than it knows itself.” We can outsmart them. the-decenter.ghost.io/dehumanized-...

Together, over the course of this year our new colleagues will interrogate technology, surveillance, and migration. Follow their work and stay tuned for updates about their projects! www.migrationtechmonitor.com/2025fellows Sign up for our newsletter: www.migrationtechmonitor.com/newsletter

In these difficult times, we know it can be hard to keep up hope. But some happy news to share: @refugeelab.ca's @migrationtechmonitor.com launches our THIRD fellowship. Can't wait to work with 5 amazing colleagues from all over the world Learn more about their work and get in touch to collaborate!

Thousands show solidarity at #TransRightsAreHumanRights Demo in Parliament Square.

Guidance on Inclusive AI by @partnershipai.bsky.social is out!Design From the Margins has thoughtfully been framed as one of the main practices here. Afsaneh Rigot, our founder, and numerous brilliant experts formed the task force that supported the creation of the guides. 🔐 Check it out.

“Accountability cannot happen unless you start looking at their wallets as well [&] financial accountability is going to be the only way we hold them accountable, because that’s the only thing a lot of these people care about.”Listen to @esraa.bsky.social 👏🏽 www.projectcensored.org/eyes-tech-ty...

Vital work from @dairinstitute.bsky.social “Effective Moderation of Social Media to Curb Genocidal Content”

🔇🔇🔇Announcing new work from DAIR which is very close to my heart, 3 years in the making. When #TigrayGenocide, the deadliest genocide of the 21st century thus far, started in November 2020, it was 1 month before I got fired from Google. 🧵 english.elpais.com/internationa...

Check out our new pilot project: #CrossCommunityJournalism incubated at the @refugeelab.ca's @migrationtechmonitor.com, @fromsea2city.bsky.social and @rosaluxstiftung.bsky.social! Watch this space as we grow this initiative!

"Understanding a regime’s mechanics – like repression of speech on Palestine movements and migrants’ rights – is key. These times call for movement technologists to know how criminalization actually works, including the low-tech tactics" writes Afsaneh Rigot for @thedecenter.bsky.social

On Trans Day of Visibility — and every day — we stand in solidarity with the leadership of trans communities around the world. Their genius has given birth to many important harm reduction methods in tech.

Trans women are women. States worldwide have continue to criminalize trans existence, but queer communities will always resist and thrive. Trans people have always led the fight for liberation and always will. 🏳️‍⚧️ #TransRights

One of hundreds of people abducted by ICE and sold to slavery in El Salvador was a 19 year old with no criminal record in the US or Venezuela and no tattoos of any kind. An ICE kidnapper who grabbed him outside his house said, "He's not the one." The other said, "Take him anyway." So they did.

The Trump admin has just detained Mohsen Mahdawi, who: –has green card –was Columbia Buddhist club president –saw his best friend shot & killed by Israeli soldier –said "we are against antisemitism because antisemitism is a form of injustice, and injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

Here is a “target list” Betar told the Free Beacon it gave to Trump: Mahmoud Khalil Momodou Taal Mohsen Mahdawi Mosab Abu Toha freebeacon.com/campus/trump...

It was my deep honor to file an amicus brief on behalf of 61 media organizations and press freedom advocates in the Perkins Coie litigation, arguing that President Trump's threats to lawyers will chill the press and harm the public. theintercept.com/2025/04/09/t...

As immigration controls are violently targeting pro #Palestine students & other migrants, their low-tech tactics remain the most dangerous & authoritarian, Afsaneh Rigot writes.“The oppressed know the oppressor better than it knows itself.” We can outsmart them. the-decenter.ghost.io/dehumanized-...

Our latest: Anyone who has ever been a part of a decentered group and dealt directly with criminalization understands these tactics. It is important that we do not overstate these powers in our collective imagination. Instead, we can study their mechanics. 🔐

On Trans Day of Visibility — and every day — we stand in solidarity with the leadership of trans communities around the world. Their genius has given birth to many important harm reduction methods in tech.