Now at first paper session of #FAccT2026 day 4 (last day): Public Sector AI Systems
Conference Programs
programs.sigchi.org
Cynthia Khoo
@cyn-k.bsky.social
👩🏻💻 Tech & human rights lawyer @ tekhnoslaw.ca ⚖️ Senior Fellow @citizenlab.ca | fmr @cippic.bsky.social | fmr @georgetownprivacy.bsky.social 🎓 LLM @cdtsuottawaclts.bsky.social | JD @UVicLaw 🤸🏻♀️ Capoeirista
Now at first paper session of #FAccT2026 day 4 (last day): Public Sector AI Systems
Conference Programs
programs.sigchi.org
@blackskyweb.xyz and @eurosky.social have been mentioned multiple times during #FAccT2026 as inspiring examples of community governed digital infra ✨
FAccT 2027 will be in Portugal!! I actually just flew back from a trip there to make it for #FAccT2026 — one year off haha, darn (and/or foreshadowing?!)
How it feels being off-grid traveling for three weeks vs. coming back to read about C-22 passing, the intro of C-34, the intro of C-36, and respective corresponding discourses, all at once:
it's the last day of #FAccT2026 in Montreal (bonjour hiii), and I'm presenting my paper with Diag Davenport on the promise of #PublicInterestTech clinics for training the next gen of critical sociotechnical thinkers. 🏆 plus we got an honorable mention!? come thru @ 10:45! 📄 tiny.cc/pit-clinics-26
There are too many good events happening simultaneously at this conference!! 😭 #FAccT2026
hello #FAccT2026 friends, we're at the gazebo in Jeanne-Mance Park. we have timbits and bagels!
"What does target generation even mean when the settler-colonial policy is one of elimination? And since Israel has been bombing everything, why hype stories about AI targeting? The focus on target generation minimizes the genocidal intent, painting perpetrators as victims, pawns of the machine."
(But see also: mronline.org/2025/05/01/t... — via @anabrandusescu.bsky.social) #FAccT2026
Hahaha. I couldn't have asked for a better session to get to chair 😅 #FAccT2026
You gotta love a session on war and algorithms, with one paper on Israel's war in Gaza and one on military sponsorship of computer vision research, then one about conflict monitoring with LLMs, and then one from a fed. The range of foreign policy opinions here
For more on Canadian tech complicity w/ ICE & Israel, connected back to Canadian genocide of Indigenous peoples, see this brilliant panel that @kristenthomasen.bsky.social organized earlier this year: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NGr... (And which I livetweeted here: bsky.app/profile/cyn-...) #FAccT2026
Technical Collaborators: Canada's Tech-Facilitated Complicity with ICE and Beyond - Panel Discussion
YouTube video by Windsor Law
youtube.com
Now Prof. Suchman focusing on Palantir's role in military AI. Speaking of which, see below. #FAccT2026 Should have mentioned this on the Canadian AI policy panel too. Conflicts of interest and complicity all the way down.
Suchman's excellent keynote zooms in into modern warfare & the role of AI in the Gaza genocide #FAccT2026 "The most consequential decision are made by systems that cannot explain themselves, supplied by companies that answer to no-one, in conflicts that generate no accountability and no reckoning"
Today in about two hours! #facct2026
Tomorrow (Sat, June 26) I'll be presenting "The Weaponization of Computer Vision" at @facct.bsky.social A work that emerged from the pain of seeing computer vision used for harm and with the hope that we can do better. 📌 17:00-18:00, Ballroom East, Global Conflicts dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
Back from a sunny picnic lunch at the excellent Anti-War, Anti-Carceral, Anti-Fascist Social, in time for Lucy Suchman's keynote! #FAccT2026 Titled "Open Worlds and the Limits of Datafication", in which she sets out to "challenge the idea that AI is the driving technology of our time".
ACM FAccT - 2026 Keynotes
facctconference.org
Arrived in time for second, discussion half of this AI & Climate Change panel, and it's been excellent. Ft @apasek.bsky.social @danicapawlick.bsky.social @tamigraph.bsky.social @sashamtl.bsky.social @strubell.bsky.social Really picking up now! Currently on techcos gaslighting researchers #FAccT2026
Conference Programs
programs.sigchi.org
#FAccT2026 Day 3 - Panel Session (AI and Climate Change) AI and climate change is something I genuinely care about these days 🌍 Five panels are digging into how academia, organizations, communities, and companies can come together for sustainability. (1/5)
It's really notable how much the tech sector has just tossed aside any pretense of ethical, environmental, social, or personal responsibility over the past five years. Explicable, but still head-spinning #facct2026 #facct26
"Ideas such as UBI, the American sovereign wealth fund & other social welfare distribution systems associated with AGI presume that knowledge of human future falls on the shoulders of few technocarats rather than ideas that need to be put forward for democratic deliberation" Shazeda Ahmed #FAccT2026
Last paper at #FAccT2026 session on EU AI Act, "The Accountability Paradox: How platform API restrictions undermine AI transparency mandates" by Florian Burnat & Brit Davidson at U. of Bath — was tempted to photograph slides, but refrained, but at the end they included a QR code to it!! Smart!!
The Accountability Paradox — FAccT 2026, Montréal
ACM FAccT 2026 talk in Montréal — The Accountability Paradox: How Platform API Restrictions Undermine AI Transparency Mandates.
links.flonat.com
Public records confirm that the Austrian Ministry of the Interior bought Webloc, a geolocation mass surveillance system based on data from mobile apps and digital advertising = almost certainly illegal under the GDPR. Austria is now - after Hungary - the second EU state known to use such a system.
Das österreichische Innenministerium kauft große Mengen hochsensibler Daten von Smartphone-Apps über die Standorte, Bewegungen und andere Verhaltensweisen der halben Bevölkerung für: Überwachungszwecke. Vermutlich schon seit 2024, illegal nach der DSGVO, verfassungsrechtlich fragwürdig. Thread:
This feed built with love by your local #FAccT2026 publicity chair and #1 fan of @graze.social. If you're interested in fairness and ethics of tech, then like, subscribe, and enjoy all the paper threads and discussion!
It's almost time for this year's conference! 🎉 To follow along with all things #FAccT2026, you can "pin" this feed to your homepage. It matches all uses of the hashtag, tags of @facct.bsky.social, and use of the text string "FAccT" (not case sensitive). Enjoy! bsky.app/profile/did:...
ps many will say they believe women but in practice do not actually believe women they will do things like pick up a both sides argument or rationalize away misogyny or worse, pick up the abusive cycle and deny i was not supported at first when i had this encounter and i will ~never~ forget that
a few years ago, i had a terrible experience with a local non-profit leader in Brighton Park because he was mad he could not control a situation of import to Mayor Johnson today, i talked to a mom who had a horrific experience with the same non-profit leader all i have to say: believe women
Mcllwain now tells the story of Black women early computer visionaries. he describes Julia Beale Williams imaginary 1980s piece, "Computer Magic" and warns "but you won't find her work on the Internet" #FAccT2026
Charlton McIlwain makes such a poignant point at #FAccT2026: what has the decades of work that has measured, documented, & evaluated the failure and bias of AI systems done? we have known the negative impact for decades yet very little has changed
Walked into the conference room, see @cmcilwain.bsky.social's keynote slide already set up with giant bold title, "Why Whitey Is _Still_ On the Moon" — "Oh this will be *good*." #FAccT2026
At #FAccT2026 Charlton McIlwain is on 🔥
CP "has reviewed a manifesto written by the alleged gunman that expresses hatred toward women and calls for violence... @celeste.lgbt said the protest would begin at the memorial for the 1989 Polytechnique massacre [when] a gunman motivated by a hatred for feminism killed 14 women [in engineering]"
Montreal shooting leads to national security investigation on ideological violence | CBC News
A specialized national security unit within the RCMP has opened an investigation into ideologically motivated violent extremism after Monday's midday shooting in Montreal that left three people dead, ...
cbc.ca
I would have kept some of my remarks shorter if it meant @anabrandusescu.bsky.social made it within the time cut-off to ask this question! Inquiring minds wish to know. #FAccT2026
I didn't get to ask my question for the Canadian AI Policy in a Global Context panel at #FAccT2026 so hoping it can be answered on here. Re: @cohere.com's current and/or past partnership with Palantir. What has Cohere learned from choosing to partner with a company complicit in human rights abuses?
Can't wait for our CRAFT workshop on trans AI policy at ACM FAccT this Sunday, June 28 at 2:15 ET, co-organized with @blairaf.com, @jhereia.bsky.social, and @techlissa.bsky.social! programs.sigchi.org/facct/2026/p...
Now in "Crafting Participatory Tech Futures" at #FAccT2026 🛠️ Pushing back on AI-as-inevitable: instead of futures handed down by a tech elite, participants gather to imagine, contest & build justice-oriented AI futures grounded in real societal + ecological needs. 🧵👇