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surveillance
In the Struggle for Undocumented Liberation, US Citizenship Is Not the Answer
When we reject the state’s power to define who belongs, and instead build systems of care that honor all people’s right to exist and thrive, we move toward real justice.
Feb 28, 2025
I am one of the 11 million undocumented immigrants who refuse to live in the shadows of the United States. Now that President Donald Trump’s policies are violently escalating, it’s critical to understand that none of this is new. Family separations, concentration camps, and the displacement of people are part of a long history of ethnic cleansing disguised as immigration policy. U.S. citizens are only now seeing it for what it’s always been.
I once believed anti-immigrant sentiment stemmed from a misunderstanding or a lack of empathy. But over the last decade, I’ve begun to accept what I need other undocumented people and allies to understand: U.S. citizenship is not the answer. True liberation for undocumented people will never come from assimilating into a colonial system built on our oppression. Instead, we must center the fight for Indigenous sovereignty, recognizing that dismantling these colonial ways of existing in the world—not gaining U.S. citizenship—is the key to our collective liberation.
At its core, U.S. citizenship is a legal and political status that grants individuals rights and privileges in exchange for adhering to certain laws and being loyal to its institutions. While it’s often framed as a beacon of belonging, security, and inclusion, in practice citizenship has functioned as a tool of exclusion. Programs like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), introduced by former President Barack Obama in 2012, highlight this tension, offering relief to some while reinforcing the “good immigrant” versus “bad immigrant” narrative.
Citizenship alone won’t free us—but solidarity will.
I was sitting in my high school English class when the program was first announced. What started as hope quickly devolved into disappointment when I realized I was ineligible due to when I arrived in the United States. To qualify, applicants must have arrived before age 16, lived in the U.S. continuously since 2007, and meet education or military service requirements. They must also pass background checks. These requirements underscore that only undocumented individuals who contribute to the U.S. economy through intellectual achievements or who advance the nation’s war machine are deemed worthy of living without the constant fear of deportation.
While DACA has shifted the material realities of some young undocumented people by providing work permits, it simultaneously puts them in danger. Recipients must voluntarily disclose their undocumented status to federal authorities, submitting fingerprints, addresses, and other personal information—a process that must be renewed every two years. Despite being billed as a relief program, DACA inadvertently creates a new system of surveillance targeting undocumented youth.
The disclosure of personal information not only risks recipients’ safety but also discourages resistance. With their standing in the U.S. contingent on being “productive” and “deserving,” DACA recipients are pressured to become complacent and silent about the broader criminalization of undocumented people. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has targeted undocumented activists from across the country in retaliation for their advocacy efforts. Thus, DACA is not merely a program meant to protect; it also functions as a system to surveil and neutralize a whole generation of young people.
At the same time Obama instituted the DACA program, his administration also militarized the border and expanded deportations. The actions of the so-called “Deporter-in-Chief” demonstrate that programs like DACA are insidiously compatible with anti-immigrant sentiment. By creating a distinction between so-called “good” and “bad” immigrants, citizenship divides our community and reinforces the narrative that our worth is conditional. We are reduced to exploitable and expendable resources, mere cogs in a capitalist system.
Moving forward, we must center the material realities of undocumented people who don’t have an immediate path toward legal citizenship on the horizon. As a short-term strategy, we must continue to support harm-reducing legislation such as the New Way Forward Act, which severs ties between the immigration and carceral systems. In the longer term, we must also attend to Land Back movements, acknowledging that Indigenous people are the rightful stewards of this land.
Citizenship alone won’t free us—but solidarity will. When we reject the state’s power to define who belongs, and instead build systems of care that honor all people’s right to exist and thrive, we move toward real justice. Our futures are intertwined, and only by dismantling these violent structures together can we create the world we all deserve.
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'Corporate War Machine': With Trump in Office, Google Drops Pledge Not to Use AI to Develop Weapons
"Google will probably now work on deploying technology directly that can kill people," said one former ethical AI staffer at the tech giant.
Feb 05, 2025
Weeks into U.S. President Donald Trump's second term, Google on Tuesday removed from its Responsible AI principles a commitment to not use artificial intelligence to develop technologies that could cause "overall harm," including weapons and surveillance—walking back a pledge that employees pushed for seven years ago as they reminded the company of its motto at the time: "Don't be evil."
That maxim was deleted from the company's code of conduct shortly after thousands of employees demanded Google end its collaboration with the Pentagon on potential drone technology in 2018, and this week officials at the Silicon Valley giant announced they can no longer promise they'll refraining from AI weapons development.
James Manyika, senior vice president for research, technology, and society, and Demis Hassabis, CEO of the company's AI research lab DeepMind, wrote in a blog post on progress in "Responsible AI" that in "an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape... democracies should lead in AI development, guided by core values like freedom, equality, and respect for human rights."
"And we believe that companies, governments, and organizations sharing these values should work together to create AI that protects people, promotes global growth, and supports national security," they said.
Until Tuesday, Google pledged that "applications we will not pursue" with AI included weapons, surveillance, technologies that "cause or are likely to cause overall harm," and uses that violate international law and human rights.
"Is this as terrifying as it sounds?" asked one journalist and author as the mention of those applications disappeared from the campany's AI Principles page, where it had been included as recently as last week.
Margaret Mitchell, who previously co-led Google's ethical AI team, toldBloomberg that the removal of the principles "is erasing the work that so many people in the ethical AI space and the activist space as well had done at Google, and more problematically it means Google will probably now work on deploying technology directly that can kill people."
"It's deeply concerning to see Google drop its commitment to the ethical use of AI technology without input from its employees or the broader public."
The company's updated AI Principles page says it will implement "appropriate human oversight" to align its work with "widely accepted principles of international law and human rights" and that it will use testing and monitoring "to mitigate unintended or harmful outcomes and avoid unfair bias."
But with Google aligning itself with the Trump administration, human rights advocate Sarah Leah Whitson of Democracy for the Arab World Now called the company a "corporate war machine" following Tuesday's announcement.
Google donated $1 million to his inaugural committee along with other tech giants and sent CEO Sundar Pichai to Trump's inauguration, where he sat next to the president's top ally in the industry, Elon Musk.
Since Trump won the election in November, tech companies have also distanced themselves from previous pledges to strive for diversity, equity, and inclusion in their hiring and workplace practices, as Trump has directly targeted DEI programs in the federal government.
"It's deeply concerning to see Google drop its commitment to the ethical use of AI technology without input from its employees or the broader public," Parul Koul, a Google software engineer and president of the Alphabet Union Workers-CWA, toldWired on Tuesday.
At Google, said Koul, there is still "long-standing employee sentiment that the company should not be in the business of war."
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Experts Warn Cybercrime Treaty Gives Governments New Powers to Crush Dissent
"States should not ratify this treaty," said Deborah Brown of Human Rights Watch.
Dec 30, 2024
A technology expert at Human Rights Watch on Monday urged countries not to ratify a first-of-its-kind cybercrime treaty that the United Nations General Assembly adopted without a vote last week, warning that the measure would give governments additional powers with which to crack down on journalists, whistleblowers, and peaceful protesters.
Deborah Brown, HRW's deputy director of technology, rights, and investigations, said that the Convention Against Cybercrime "extends far beyond addressing cybercrime—malicious attacks on computer networks, systems, and data."
"It obligates states to establish broad electronic surveillance powers to investigate and cooperate on a wide range of crimes, including those that don't involve information and communication systems. And it does so without adequate human rights safeguards," Brown warned, noting that "years of heated negotiations" produced a "deeply problematic outcome" backed by the United States and other major governments that had previously expressed opposition.
Brown explained that the newly adopted convention—which is set to take effect 90 days after 40 nations ratify it—"will obligate governments to collect electronic evidence and share it with foreign authorities for any 'serious crime,' defined as an offense punishable by at least four years of imprisonment under domestic law."
"Many governments treat activities protected by international human rights law as serious offenses, such as criticism of the government, peaceful protest, same-sex relationships, investigative journalism, and whistleblowing," Brown wrote. "Additionally, the convention could be misused to criminalize the conduct of children in certain consensual relationships as well as the ordinary activities of security researchers and journalists."
"The U.N. Cybercrime Convention is excessively broad and introduces significant legal uncertainty."
The U.N. General Assembly's adoption of the treaty last week brought to an end a five-year negotiation process during which civil society organizations voiced deep concerns about the emerging document.
In October, a coalition of groups including HRW, Amnesty International, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation urged the U.N. General Assembly to oppose the treaty, warning that its adoption and ratification would undermine "democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, endangering a wide range of communities and jeopardizing the safety and privacy of Internet users globally."
"The U.N. Cybercrime Convention is excessively broad and introduces significant legal uncertainty," the coalition said. "It provides for states to leverage highly intrusive domestic and cross-border surveillance powers for the purpose of a broadly defined list of criminal offenses which bear only a minimal nexus to information and communications technology systems and go far beyond the scope of core cyber-dependent crimes."
The groups pointed specifically to Article 23 of the convention, which they said mandates "the collection of e-evidence on a wide range of crimes, even those that don't involve information and communication systems." Such a requirement, the coalition warned, could easily be "misused by governments to stifle dissent."
Brown echoed that concern on Monday and argued that the human rights safeguards embedded in the treaty are limited and "many are optional."
"Others lack any means of enforcement, which provides no confidence that international human rights standards will prevail over abusive state practices," Brown added. "States should not ratify this treaty and those that do should take significant measures through domestic law and negotiations over the protocol to ensure it will be implemented in a way that respects human rights in practice, not just on paper."
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