Kainen Bell, awardee of the Global Policy Fellowship 2024 and affiliate of the Center for Global studies, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies, discussed his education and work regarding surveillance technologies.

I am a PhD student in the School of Information Sciences, advised by Anita Say Chan. My research follows the work of digital activists and organizers of anti-surveillance campaigns in Brazil who protest the use of facial recognition cameras for monitoring public security. My goal is to learn how Afro- Brazilian communities collaborate to resist and prevent the abuse of surveillance technologies.

I was born in Austin Texas, but raised in Tacoma, Washington by my mother, who was the first in her family to graduate from college. I followed in her trailblazing footsteps and am the first to pursue a PhD. I completed my undergraduate schooling with a double degree in business: information systems and social work from the University of Washington in Seattle. During that time I studied abroad in Brazil twice developing lifelong friendships and growing my love for the country. After graduating I completed a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University, with an interest in philanthropy and nonprofit management.

I continued my international travel fever and conducted a Fulbright research fellowship in Brazil learning about the financial sustainability and fundraising strategies of NGOs in that country. From this experience I interviewed multiple organizations that work with youth in sports or education including love.fútbol, a multinational organization that builds community soccer fields that serve as community centers to provide children with safe places to play.

I initially volunteered with love.fútbol but soon after they created a full-time job for me to work in international fundraising and database management. And for the next three years, from 2018-2021, I worked and lived in Recife, Brazil. My experiences there learning about community-based work and previous interests at the intersections of social justice, technology, and digital inclusion, led me to apply for the PhD program in information sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Those intersections between social justice, critical technology studies, and community engagement have always been an interest of mine, stemming from my undergraduate and masters’ degrees. However, my specific interest in researching surveillance technologies and AI bias grew during my time living in Brazil. During the summer of 2021, before starting my PhD, I traveled back to Brazil and for the first time experienced a facial recognition scanner in order to board my flight. After this experience I began wondering where else facial recognition technology was being used in Brazil and that thought developed into my research topic. A few weeks later, while watching the local Brazilian news, I learned about plans to expand facial recognition to all major airports. Although this seemed like a futuristic and cool idea, I had heard of Black and transgender individuals being misidentified by facial recognition cameras. Being misidentified in the airport is risky because it has historically been a place where racial minorities, immigrants, and transgender communities have felt unsafe and targeted.

The following summer after completing my first year of the PhD I received a FLAS fellowship to study advanced Portuguese in Brazil and I learned about a local anti-facial recognition campaign in Recife. On their Instagram page and website they shared the dangers of using facial recognition which aligned with my previous research, and I became interested in following this and other anti-surveillance campaigns in Brazil.

Over the next two years of my PhD work I conducted research, published on the topic, attended conferences, and met activists, scholars, and organizers of anti-surveillance campaigns and learned how I could be an ally to their efforts. While in São Paulo at a digital rights conference, I met the coordinator of the national anti-facial recognition campaign (Tire Meu Rosto da Sua Mira). She expressed how educating the public outside of Brazil and providing exposure of their movement and efforts are what is needed. Not many people know that Facial Recognition Technologies in Brazil are often imported from the Global North and China, and can replicate social and racial inequalities.

I wanted to use my platform and resources at the U. of I. to build more exposure and create an international dialogue around these issues, and I created a speaker series on AI Bias and Racial Justice in Brazil. The Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies was open and accepting of my idea and willing to sponsor the funds to host and invite one of my speakers to campus. I also applied for the Global Intersections Grant through the Center for Global Studies to have a collaborative event with the Luso Brazil student organization and fund an honorarium for the speakers.

In the Spring 2024 semester we had two Afro Brazilian researchers, lawyers, and activists working at the forefront of activism efforts to regulate AI and facial recognition in Brazil, speak about their work and create a dialogue, Dr. Bianca Kremer and Horara Moreira. Over 100 students, faculty, and community members from different states attended the events, and it was very successful.

Recently, I was one of 18 researchers world-wide selected to be a Global Policy Fellow at The Institute for Technology and Society (ITS) in Rio, to participate in an intensive four-week program, meeting their partners, researchers, and policy makers in the area of digital privacy.

The mission of ITS is to ensure that Brazil and the Global South respond creatively and appropriately to the opportunities provided by technology in the digital age and that the potential benefits are broadly shared across society. They are connected to a network of national and international partners and have, among its main activities, debates on privacy and personal data, human rights, internet governance, technology, and intellectual property.

The work of ITS is aligned with my dissertation research because of their focus area and access to stakeholders and experts working in AI regulation and debates of facial recognition technology use. During the summer of 2024, I will conduct a four-month exploratory study documenting growing manifestations of resistance to digital surveillance technologies in Brazil by following organizers of anti-surveillance campaigns in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Recife. The Global Policy Fellowship will facilitate this study and provide me with opportunities to meet stakeholders involved in policy-making and digital surveillance campaigns.

I am very grateful to have my dissertation research funded this summer through the CLACS (Center for Latin America and Caribbean Studies) Summer Research Fellowship, and next academic year through the Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies Graduate Fellowship. For four months I will conduct up to 30 semi-structured interviews with multiple stakeholders including civil society organizations, community members, research institutions, municipal representatives, and the private sector.

Starting in July 2024, I will travel to Rio De Janeiro and stay for one month to complete the Global Policy Fellowship at ITS, then travel to São Paulo and Recife over the next three months. I will focus on learning how Afro-Brazilian communities collaborate to resist and prevent the abuse of surveillance technologies in their neighborhoods. I will interview and follow organizers of a local anti-surveillance campaign in Recife, and a national anti- surveillance campaign fighting to stop the installation of 20,000 facial recognition cameras in São Paulo. I will return at the end of October to the U.S to organize, transcribe, and analyze my data.

To supplement my four-month field experience, I will return in January for two additional months to conduct follow-up interviews in person or ones that I was unable to conduct, as well as observe the uses of Facial Recognition Cameras at the 2025 Carnaval celebration in Recife and document any concerns or misidentifications that arise.

Using ethnographic and community-based research methods, I intend to support the design of frameworks for collaboration between academic scholars and impacted communities. As similar projects emerge, this study will be the foundation for a model for supporting anti-surveillance campaigns in Brazil.

Upon graduation, I hope to open a community-based research center where I can collaborate with community members and organizations in the US and Brazil around questions of digital inclusion and anti-surveillance. I am also interested in working at a research institution as a community researcher or working at a foundation as a specialist in community-based grantmaking in Latin America.