Fighting Digital Stop-and-frisk FOUNDER, CRYPTOHARLEM

Over-policing of marginalized neighborhoods doesn’t just happen on the streets: It’s a serious issue online, too. After the murder of George Floyd, cops routinely scoured social media for protester names and locations, a phenomenon Mitchell calls “digital stop and frisk.”

Since 2013, Mitchell has run a clinic in Manhattan called Cryptoharlem, providing encryption tools and cybersecurity workshops. During last summer’s racial reckoning, Cryptoharlem created guides to help protesters across the country protect their digital identities. “As hackers, we don’t have the most faith in laws and how they are enforced,” says Mitchell, a former data journalist at The New York Times. “But we know that policy and law is an important front of the fight against surveillance.”

Mitchell believes that Black communities act as beta-testers for powerful surveillance tools that might soon become ubiquitous. Cryptoharlem works with the American Civil Liberties Union on surveillance and privacy legislation, such as the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act, which New York City passed in 2020 to increase transparency in police surveillance. “Now we just have a hard time enforcing it and getting the NYPD to cooperate,” Mitchell says. “So Cryptoharlem is on the streets taking photos, researching tech, making sure what we see is what has been declared.” —M.G.