Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

Eubanks, the author of Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor, is a political science professor at the University at Albany, SUNY. Her specialties include the intersection of technology with society and its economic consequences; her career includes not only writing and researching, but also labor activism and political journalism.

Eubanks was a founding member of the American think tank New America and contributed to the Our Data Bodies Project, which explores concerns about social justice within communities that are heavily surveilled using technological tools. She was also a founding member of the welfare justice group Our Knowledge, Our Power. Her prior book, Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age, also dealt with the topics of human equality and technology.

Sophie is a young girl with cerebral palsy who has a gastronomy tube and requires extra medical and educational support. The Stipeses operate a farm; after Sophie’s father Kevin lost his job in the 2008 economic crisis, the whole family, including seven children, lost health insurance benefits.

During the Indiana welfare experiment, Sophie lost Medicaid benefits. Although her mother Kim applied for low-income healthcare assistance, the automated eligibility system flagged something as incorrect.