Little did doctoral candidate Kainen Bell know in 2013 when he was an undergraduate studying abroad in Brazil that the country would play a major role in his future dissertation research. Since his first trip, he has returned to Brazil multiple times, even completing a Fulbright study and working for a community-based organization in the country. Now, Bell is preparing to return again, this time to spend ten months conducting research as a recipient of the prestigious Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellowship.
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, the Fulbright-Hays DDRA program provides opportunities for PhD candidates to engage in full-time dissertation research abroad for up to one year. Applicants must be U.S. citizens, nationals, or permanent residents who are proficient in the foreign language(s) to be used to conduct their research. Bell, who is fluent in Portuguese, will travel to Rio de Janeiro and Salvador to continue the fieldwork he has been doing in Brazil over the past four months. Of the eighty-four awards given nationwide, Bell was one of just five Brazil-based projects selected and the only recipient from the University of Illinois.
For his dissertation, "Resisting Digital Surveillance in Brazil: Facial Recognition Technologies and Grassroots Activism from Afro Brazilian Leaders," he is investigating initiatives such as public awareness campaigns, data activism protests, and collective actions by grassroots organizations. His goal is to understand how community stakeholders—nonprofit organizations, research institutes, policy makers, and community members—collaborate to prevent the use of surveillance technologies in their communities.
Bell developed an interest in digital surveillance the summer before he began his PhD, when he had to use facial recognition at the airport to board his flight in Brazil.
"After my face was scanned, all my personal details and seat information were presented. I began to wonder what other places were using facial recognition in Brazil, and for the next few years, I conducted literature reviews and small studies investigating this topic. While completing a FLAS [Foreign Language & Area Studies] fellowship in Recife, I learned about major facial recognition projects in the city and how activists are raising awareness around the potential harms and risks and advocating to ban such projects," he said.
According to Bell, while there are a growing number of initiatives in Brazilian cities to invest in large-scale facial recognition camera projects to improve public safety, these projects can have negative effects. Examples include increasing reports of innocent people being arrested due to misidentifications and studies revealing the overuse of facial recognition by police on Afro-Brazilian populations. During his time in Brazil, Bell was able to experience firsthand how facial recognition was integrated into society: airports, schools, gyms, apartment complexes, street cameras, and even restaurants.
"A new Sports Law in Brazil requires stadiums that have capacity of over 20,000 people to use facial recognition systems for their security," said Bell. "Before I arrived in Brazil last summer, there was a major case in which a 23-year-old Black man named João Antônio was falsely arrested by police while watching a professional soccer match in Sergipe, Brazil. They accused him of committing a crime and said that facial recognition identified him as the criminal, and he was escorted out, arrested, and embarrassed. Later, they admitted that it was a mistake. Despite this, national stadiums are still implementing facial recognition."
Bell looks forward to growing the relationships he built last summer during his fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro and expanding to a new research site in Salvador, Bahia (the most surveilled region in Brazil) as well as working with groups he met online. This next round of fieldwork will allow him the opportunity to observe the use of facial recognition at large events like Carnival and festivals.
"The national anti-surveillance campaign in Brazil, Tire Meu Rosto Da Sua Mira! (Get My Face Out of Your Sight!), is launching a workshop and manual to teach local communities their rights when police approach them using facial recognition. I will attend these workshops and planning meetings, document this as a form of resistance, and interview the organizers on the planning process and lessons learned," he said.
Bell plans to meet with Afro-Brazilian activists and organizations working in Bahia to learn more about their efforts and collaborate. He is excited about the opportunity to study firsthand the implementation of Brazil's new AI Bill (Bill 2.338/2023), which is currently under review in the National Congress.
"Spending ten months in Brazil next year during these major moments and transitions will not only be beneficial for my study but special because of my personal journey and connection to Brazil," said Bell.