Congratulations to Dr. Daniel Konikoff, who successfully defended his doctoral thesis "Automating the Thin Blue Line: Controversy, Knowledge, and the Governance of Police Technology in Canada," on April 3, 2024.
Daniel wrote an excellent thesis examining police technology governance on municipal, provincial, and federal levels across Canada. Drawing on many months of ethnographic observations, scores of interviews, and content analysis of nearly 100 documents, the dissertation demonstrates the politics of knowledge and secrecy around use of controversial technologies like facial recognition software, and how myriad institutional actors—from investigative journalists and civil society watchdogs to privacy commissioners and technology vendors--play important and heretofore unexamined roles in co-producing regulatory regimes that may not serve the best interests of the public. - Professor Beatrice Jauregui
As supervisor, Beatrice Jauregui would like to thank the members of the examining committee, including Professor Keith Guzik, (External Examiner, University of Colorado Denver), Professor Patrick Watson (Internal/External Examiner, Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies), Co-Supervisor, Professor Mary Mitchell (Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies), and committee member Professor Akwasi Owusu-Bempah (Department of Sociology), as well as the Defence Chair, Professor Adriano Senatore (Department of Cell and Systems Biology).