Sweeney ‘goes to avoid wasting the world from know-how gone loopy,’ says Joanne Donovan, analysis director of the Shorenstein Heart and affiliated assistant lecturer on the Tech Lab. “Not solely does it train know-how ethics and values, however it additionally reveals college students how you can create know-how that has social that means past monetization. ” Donovan, an knowledgeable in media manipulation and disinformation campaigns, explains: “I used to be capable of attend a number of of his courses, the place college students debate the true problems with technological design, not simply from a crucial viewpoint. They need to prototype how you can make issues work with out ignoring the inconvenient fact. Expertise is each a course of and a product, helpful and dangerous, and most significantly, intentional design can mitigate danger.
Kathy Pham, a senior fellow on the Shorenstein Heart and affiliate of the Public Curiosity Expertise Lab, additionally highlights how Sweeney is uniquely suited to steer the lab, along with her expertise as a pc scientist and former chief technologist on the Federal Commerce Fee. “Once I consider Dr. Sweeney, I consider the epitome of public curiosity know-how,” Pham says. As a pc scientist herself — who was named deputy chief know-how officer of the Federal Commerce Fee in 2021 — Pham attracts inspiration from Sweeney, who, she says, has been a pioneer within the subject for a few years , “rethinking how know-how impacts democracy.” » Pham explains: “She performed all these roles. She brings in-depth and distinctive expertise.
Drawing on his deep and different expertise and information, Sweeney positioned the lab as a hub for connecting with others finishing up public curiosity know-how tasks. For instance, it’s a part of the Public Curiosity Expertise College Community, which incorporates about 50 universities the place college students and school do one of these work. The lab additionally sponsors the Expertise Science Analysis Community, comprised of students from throughout the nation who examine technological society points, set up occasions, practice college students, and publish analysis. Community researchers contribute to The Journal of Technological Sciencesof which Sweeney is the founding editor.
By way of the Public Curiosity Expertise Lab, college students, workers and school have developed a spread of instruments and platforms that clear up public issues, from bettering voting safety to serving to folks with out entry to the Web to schedule their vaccinations, to understanding how huge social media corporations form conversations.
Credit score Monitoring for Elections
One instrument that Sweeney is happy about is VoteFlare. The concept emerged in 2016 throughout certainly one of his “save the world” courses when college students requested him how they might empower voters throughout the political spectrum. Sweeney, together with Harvard doctoral scholar Jinyan Zang and Information Privateness Lab researcher Ji Su Yoo, found how simple it was for fraudsters to alter voter registration data, doubtlessly disrupting elections. In A Technological sciences paper, they shared their findings: In 2016, web sites in 35 states and Washington, D.C., have been weak to voter identification theft, whereby impostors may change voter registration data. All they wanted was a number of key items of knowledge, most of which may very well be seen publicly or obtained by knowledge brokers or darknet marketplaces.
Sweeney and his college students puzzled how you can clear up this downside. The reply they developed was VoteFlare, a instrument Sweeney likens to credit score monitoring for voting data. Individuals who join the VoteFlare app are notified with an “alert” within the type of a textual content message, telephone name or electronic mail if their data is modified on-line, to allow them to can take corrective motion if warranted.
VoteFlare was efficiently examined in 2020 throughout the Georgia runoff elections and was additionally used within the 2022 Texas main. The workforce plans to deploy it nationwide earlier than the overall election, significantly in areas the place voter suppression is a danger. Josh Visnaw, challenge supervisor for VoteFlare, says the instrument “permits people to resolve points earlier than it is too late, guaranteeing they’re able to take part within the democratic course of.” He says, “We envision this know-how complementing the nice religion efforts of election officers and civil society teams throughout the nation as we method the 2022 midterm elections.”
