---
title: "Computer Scientist: We Can’t Ignore How Our Work Hurts Marginalized Groups"
description: "Cryptographer Seny Kamara urges his peers in computer science to assume responsibility for how their work is used, especially against marginalized groups."
date: "2020-08-31"
modified: "2020-08-31"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/computer-scientist-cant-ignore-hurts-marginalized-groups"
categories:
  - "Future Society"
tags:
  - "computer science"
  - "cryptography"
  - "tech ethics"
  - "the digest"
---

# Computer Scientist: We Can’t Ignore How Our Work Hurts Marginalized Groups

![Cryptographer Seny Kamara urges his peers in computer science to assume responsibility for how their work is used, especially against marginalized groups.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/computer-scientist-cant-ignore-hurts-marginalized-groups.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: Image via Freepik\</em\>*

## Wake Up Call

Speaking at the prestigious International Association for Cryptologic Research's Crypto conference, Brown University cryptographer Seny Kamara issued an urgent message: Computer scientists need to stop ignoring the ways that their work harms or oppresses already-marginalized communities.

Kamara's speech stood out from the conference's usual keynote addresses, which tend to focus on extremely technical developments, *[Wired](<https://www.wired.com/story/seny-kamara-crypto-encryption-underserved-communities/>)*[ reports](<https://www.wired.com/story/seny-kamara-crypto-encryption-underserved-communities/>). But he believed it's urgent that his peers stop thinking about their work as abstract problem solving and to begin accounting for how it affects the [society around them](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/spying-protestors-make-public-distrust-surveillance>).

## Downstream Effects

Take, for example, Kamara's work auditing databases that law enforcement uses to track possible gang members. In 2015, *Wired* reports, Kamara found one such database called CalGang, which was used by California, included 42 people who were less than a year old. Even among the adults, a large percentage were wrongly included — an error that disproportionately harmed people of color.

Kamara told *Wired* that "there are also problems and adversarial models that are unique to marginalized groups, and those problems are not being investigated. For example, not everyone ends up in a gang database, and certainly very few cryptographers or academic computer science researchers end up in gang databases."

## Gaining Traction

Kamara joked to *Wired* that he was glad he had tenure, because his argument that computer scientists need to take responsibility for how their work is used goes against the [dogma of the field](<https://futurism.com/expert-online-disinfo-covid-black-lives-matter>).

"We don’t work in a vacuum and we’re not pure mathematicians," University of California, Davis cryptographer Phillip Rogaway told *Wired*.

**READ MORE:** [How Cryptography Lets Down Marginalized Communities](<https://www.wired.com/story/seny-kamara-crypto-encryption-underserved-communities/>) \[*Wired*\]

**More on the impacts of tech:** *[Oh No, Spying on Protestors Might Make The Public Distrust Surveillance](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/spying-protestors-make-public-distrust-surveillance>)*

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)