Ben Snyder

It's publication day for my new book Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore's Surveillance Experiment @ucpress. Let me tell you a bit about what's in it.

The 100th episode of People's and Things?!? It was a blast talking to @STS_News about my book Spy Plane on this very special episode of the 'ol P-n-T. athenaeum.vt.domains/peoplesandthin… @ucpress

“[Technology] makes mistakes and we’re willing to tolerate that in the civilian world…but when it comes to the battlefield a mistake can mean life or death. And it’s very easy for a machine to mistake a target. “ – @marywareham @hrw @UN_News_Centre youtube.com/watch?v=VqCMkX…

“Slaveholders were often willing to pay a great deal of money to have an enslaved person incarcerated and tortured by a professional jailer.” buff.ly/3X1Mwat

I was deeply honored to speak with @SashaLilley on the legendary @kpfaradio show Against the Grain (@radioagainst) about my book Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore's Surveillance Experiment. If you missed it live, you can check it out here: buff.ly/4fQ5cR8

It was such an honor to chat with @bsoderberg.bsky.social at one of my favorite places on planet earth: @redemmas.org If you missed it, you can watch a recording here buff.ly/4gPOSkj

So excited for my conversation with @notrivia tonight and so happy to be back in Baltimore 🧡

Baltimore! This is on Tuesday, come through if you're around. Ben's book is fascinating and there will be some interesting spy plane footage to check out during the talk. redemmas.org/events/benjami…

Join @notrivia and me @redemmas on December 10th. We'll be talking about my new book Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore's Surveillance Experiment. RSVP here buff.ly/3AssgGU

Folks also deserve an answer to why CCTV, Shotspotter, social media surveillance, etc. have not improved case closure rates or been the silver bullet for crime they were promised to be. Why is the city spending so much money on this stuff and not getting much in return?

Couldn't agree more with this op-ed by outgoing Baltimore councilman Kristerfer Burnett. Baltimore needs community control over police technology to protect citizens' privacy rights, and this bill would have been a step in the right direction. buff.ly/4fID3Mi

@MMGrady @notrivia @redemmas I believe it will be posted to the YouTube channel afterward.

@benjaminhsnyder @notrivia @redemmas Will there be a livestream and/or video posted afterward?

ATTN Qual Researchers: Here are some resources I’ve compiled on trauma-informed research practices. I used them to train my incredible team of RAs, who conducted 120+ interviews with violence-involved men in Chicago. As researchers of crime and poverty, we often bear witness to people’s most challenging moments—probing, documenting, and analyzing their experiences. This work demands careful reflection: how we approach it can either perpetuate harm or foster healing and connection. The solution isn’t to avoid tough questions but to thoughtfully consider their impact—on our subjects, ourselves, and our teams. I’m still learning and would love to hear from others with similar experiences. Let’s keep this conversation going—here or beyond—and collaborate on ways to share knowledge on this front. Access here: shorturl.at/jCyWt

Proud to share the full text of my paper w/ @UMassSociology student Venus Green in @SREJournal "The Ruse of Recognition: Black Labor in the Afterlife of Slavery" @ASA_SREM academia.edu/123328094/The_… via @academia

Proud to co-author this essay with @UMassSociology PhD student Venus Green in the @WIPsociology blog: “Anti-Blackness and the Historical Limits of Progressive Trade Unionism” - wipsociology.org/2024/11/11/ant…

This is now giving them a second life domestically. They call sell their unreliable and glitchy product to NYPD a second time as something “new” and “cutting edge” bc it has just come off the battlefields abroad.

Struggling companies like ShotSpotter have expanded internationally by jumping on the trend of merging lightweight drones with their sensors and weapons. Same tech, new packaging.

Y’all know the imperial boomerang? That’s when a country’s military efforts abroad develop repressive techniques that are then brought back home and deployed on its own people. theguardian.com/technology/202…