Recent Blog Posts
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AI, the labor-saving device
The discussion about AI, specifically about generative AI (whether it’s labeled as such, or just “AI”), revolves around what it means to be human, and it’s doing my head in. Not because I have trouble grappling with the subject matter– my academic research revolved around intuitions we have about invisible agency, specifically how those intuitions…
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Content design for a nonprofit community makerspace: MakeICT
What even is a makerspace? If you’re not familiar with makerspaces, here’s a definition: they’re spaces where people make things. Literally, that’s it– you could make pretty much anything at a makerspace, with the primary constraints being your own imagination, and what you can get away with. Makerspaces come in many varieties, from university fabrication…
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Letter to the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee regarding CBP One
Dear Committee Members, specifically Chairman Green, I would like to know why, in numerous published statements, Chairman Green has claimed that Anna Giaritelli published a “groundbreaking scoop showing that the criminal cartels had hijacked the CBP One app using virtual private networks (VPNs), and were exploiting the app to make even more money by scheduling…
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J.D. Vance’s weird, dumb, little racist jab at CBP One
Note: All quotes from the debate in this post are pulled from CBS News’s transcript, for which I am incredibly grateful. In the vice presidential debate on Tuesday, J.D. Vance brought up the CBP One app out of nowhere, which has inspired a wave of misinformation spread by people who’d never heard of the app…
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AI Facial Recognition Technology in CBP One™
My review of the mobile app, CBP One™: The Border in Your Pocket, considered factors in the development of CBP One’s facial recognition engine, the Traveler Verification Service (TVS), that render it unsuitable for CBP One’s current usage in collecting information from migrants at the border. This post takes a closer look at how CBP…
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CBP One™: The Border in Your Pocket
In August of 2018, in light of the growing number of apps under Customs and Border Protection, the agency’s Office of Field Operations (OFO) announced that it would develop the CBP One mobile application in collaboration with the Office of Information Technology (OIT). The app would prevent the confusion that comes with travelers needing to…