Trial by File Formats: Exploring public defenders' challenges working with novel surveillance data

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Public defenders, lawyers assigned to people accused of crimes who can not afford a private attorney, serve as an essential bulwark against wrongful arrest and incarceration for low-income and marginalized people. Public defenders have long been overworked and under-resourced, however these issues have been compounded by boosts in the volume and complexity of data in modern criminal defense cases. We explore the technology needs of public defenders through a series of semi-structured interviews with public defenders and the people who work with them. We find that public defenders' ability to reason about novel surveillance data is woefully inadequate not only due to a lack of resources and knowledge, but also due to the structure of the criminal justice system, which gives prosecutors and police (in partnership with private companies) far more control than defense attorneys over the type of information used in criminal cases. We found that public defenders may be able to create fairer situations for their clients with more data access and better tools for data interpretation. Therefore, we call on technologists to keep the potential future needs of public defenders and the people they represent in mind when designing systems that collect data about people. Our findings illuminate constraints that technologists and privacy advocates should consider as they pursue solutions, for instance our work complicates notions of individual privacy as the only value in protecting users' rights and demonstrates the importance's of data interpretation along side data visibility. As data sources become more complex, control over the data cannot be separated from access to experts and technology who can make sense of it. The growing surveillance data ecosystem may systematically oppress not only those who are most closely observed, but groups of people whose communities and advocates have been deprived of the storytelling power over their information.