Your face was scanned 14 times before breakfast.
Consent: not required
Your location was sold to 87 partners.
Retention: indefinite
Your loan was denied. No reason given.
Appeal: unavailable
Your résumé was rejected. No human read it.
Reviewed by a person: no
Four decisions were made about you before dinner. You never met anyone who made them.
Civil rights are decided in code now.
AI, biometrics, and automated decision-making already govern who gets hired, housed, policed, and believed. DCRC translates civil and human rights principles into the way those systems are actually built and governed — in the room, before deployment, with the communities they will judge.
Research, convenings, public education, and global partnership. Six years of it, from the White House to Accra to Tokyo.
One test for every system: does it leave people more free than it found them?
None of it works alone
Access
Nobody gets left outside
We educate communities at the margin so emerging technology does not arrive as something done to them. Digital literacy is a fundamental right, not an upgrade.
Accountability
If it can accuse you, audit it
We hold companies and law enforcement to account for AI and facial recognition that disadvantages people by race, religion, or gender identity — with policy that has teeth and evidence that holds up.
Advancement
Build the table yourself
We equip our community to build their own technology products — and to own them. Generational wealth is a civil rights outcome, not a side effect.
Every dollar buys a room where the decision hasn't been made yet.
We took facial recognition into the White House.
In 2024 DCRC convened policymakers, technologists, civil society leaders, and legal experts at the White House complex on the civil liberties and economic consequences of biometric surveillance. Not a panel — a working session with the people who sign the rules.
Read the case study →Different rooms.
The same argument.
Follow the coalition
The receipts.
Published in the open. Read it, cite it, bring it to the hearing.
02
Toolkit · Necessary Trouble
Breathing Room
Civic education that makes police accountability structures legible — and then actionable.
03
Legal convening · National Bar Association
Pressuring firms on diversity
How procurement power reshapes professional responsibility inside the legal profession.
Nobody in the room understood what was being built.
Founded in 2019 to close the gap between civil rights principle and technical practice. Today that work runs from Washington to Accra to Tokyo.
What we actually do
We put the people who build high-risk systems and the people those systems are built on in the same room, on the record. We publish the research that makes bias measurable. We teach communities to read the machine. And we back founders who would rather own the technology than petition it.
A world where all people freely, openly, and intentionally exercise digital citizenship.
Translate rights into governance that engineers, regulators, and courts can act on.
A 501(c)(3) nonprofit coalition. Independent of the platforms we hold to account.
The receipts, year by year
A Congressional Black Caucus briefing with Reps. Yvette D. Clarke and Troy Carter — the coalition’s first work on the Hill.
DCRC is founded as biometric and predictive systems move into everyday government and commerce.
A National Bar Association convening on how technology clients reshape diversity practice inside law firms.
The Necessary Trouble Toolkit makes police accountability structures legible to a neighbourhood.
A convening at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on facial recognition and its consequences.
A Ghana AI leadership breakfast hosted by board members Ben Crump and Julie Wenah.
Cross-border governance roundtables at the University of Tokyo and Kyoto Law School.
Women Creating Change NYC: panels, keynotes and strategy sessions on gender equity, economic justice, safety, education, reproductive justice and civic participation.
At BESLA: business and law as the instruments for connecting the diaspora through sport, fashion and entertainment.
A Black Women in Venture Capital retreat panel on network power — when the network decides who gets seen, funded, and able to build ownership.
The future of HR and innovation — what changes for people inside an institution when hiring and evaluation become automated.
A fireside chat on the future of the workforce and academia’s role in it — who trains for the jobs these systems create.
Babel Tower: Building a New World, with Zeke Ultra — on broken systems carrying into younger generations, and what to build instead.
The record continues
Access.
Accountability.
Advancement.
Three pillars, nine programs, one test: does this technology leave people more free than it found them?
Nobody gets left on the wrong side of the interface.
Digital literacy is a fundamental right. We build the education that arrives before the technology does, so communities meet new systems as participants rather than subjects.
Fund this work →Practical curriculum on data, identity, and consent for communities at the margin.
Public sessions that translate technical policy into what it means on your street.
Early-warning briefings for advocates and local officials on what is about to be deployed.
If a system can accuse you, it can be audited.
Facial recognition, risk scoring, and automated screening already make decisions that used to require a person and a reason. We make those systems answerable.
Fund this work →From the 2024 White House convening to state-level limits on biometric deployment.
Eyes Off My Data, with Partnership on AI and Apple — measure bias without harvesting demographics.
The Necessary Trouble Toolkit: accountability structures made legible and actionable.
Stop asking for a seat. Build the table.
Representation in someone else's product roadmap is not power. Ownership is. We move our community from users to builders to owners.
Fund this work →Routes into technology building for people the industry keeps overlooking.
Hands-on labs where community teams ship real tools, not prototypes for a pitch day.
Generational wealth treated as a civil rights outcome, not a side effect.
Nobody wins this alone.
Researchers, law schools, bar associations, legislators, and community organisations — assembled around specific technologies, not general goodwill.
Every room,
the same argument
How the coalition works
| Role | What they bring | Where it shows up |
|---|---|---|
| Research partners | Methods that make harm measurable | Eyes Off My Data, bias assessment frameworks |
| Legal partners | Standing, precedent, professional pressure | National Bar Association convenings, amicus work |
| Academic partners | Cross-border governance scholarship | University of Tokyo and Kyoto Law School roundtables |
| Legislative allies | Hearings, briefings, statutory language | Congressional Black Caucus briefing, 2018 |
| Community organisations | The lived record of what deployment does | Digital literacy programs, Necessary Trouble Toolkit |
The rules are being written right now.
Fund the side you want writing them — then take one of the actions below.
Fund the fight
Your contribution funds the research, community education, and policy advocacy that protects digital rights for the people least able to opt out. DCRC is a 501(c)(3); your gift may be tax-deductible.
Money is not the only thing we need
Sign the Digital Declaration of Rights
Put your name to clear boundaries for technology in society — and we take the list to the hearing.
Take action →Attend a convening
Sit in the room with the people deciding how these systems get deployed — before they get deployed.
See dates →Bring your organisation in
Research, legal, academic, legislative, community — there is a seat at the table for each of them.
Join us →Teach a literacy session
Run a data-and-consent workshop in your own neighbourhood. We supply the curriculum.
Get the kit →Write your representative
One letter, prewritten, on biometric limits in your state. Two minutes and your name is on the record.
Send it →Become a monthly supporter
Recurring money is what lets us commit to a fight before we know how long it runs.
Give monthly →Know before it ships
We send the briefing the week a system goes up for procurement — not the month after it is deployed.
Stay informed
Policy developments, research drops, and openings to act — no filler.
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The library
Published research, toolkits, and convening records — plus how to reach us for press.
Press
For interviews, background briefings, or comment on biometric and algorithmic policy, reach the team directly. We respond to journalists first.
info@digitalcivilrights.com