Systems of Dehumanization: The Digital Frontlines of the War Against Bodily Autonomy

Daly Barnett, a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, presents surveillance aimed at abortion access, sex work and trans rights as one connected problem. The talk opens with the historical roots of this monitoring, tracing it back to Victorian-era postal enforcement against obscene material, before moving to present-day threats drawn from privacy and security training with affected organizers, abortion funds and providers.

The middle section covers concrete cases. Location data and license plate reader records have been used in prosecutions tied to abortion, and a company's promised deletion of sensitive location data was later found to be incomplete. Doxing sites repurpose public licensing and business records to target clinicians and activists. For sex workers, the 2018 FOSTA-SESTA laws pushed platforms to over-moderate, removing safety and health resources and pushing people back onto the street, while facial recognition tools were used in arrests. For trans people, the speaker described removed government health pages, school monitoring software that flagged LGBT content, and enforcement schemes that reward informants.

Barnett closes with practical steps: extending protest-style security habits into everyday life, expecting platforms to hand over user data, anticipating harassment, and pushing for comprehensive federal privacy law while opposing age verification mandates. The question round covered prescription drug monitoring programs, censorship circumvention and how activists can answer well-funded opposition messaging.