Symposium

The Georgetown Law Technology Review (GLTR) will host its biennial Symposium on Friday, January 30, 2026, at 500 First Street NW Floor 9 on the Georgetown Law campus. The day-long event will bring together scholars, practitioners, and advocates for a series of panels and a keynote discussion centered on this year’s theme, Data, Power, and Authoritarianism.

Data, Power, and Authoritarianism will explore how digital technologies, data-driven systems, and platform economies are shaping political and social life in the United States and beyond. Through conversations on data governance, labor, surveillance, and the public sphere, participants will examine how power is concentrated in digital systems and what legal, policy, and organizing strategies might help build more accountable and democratic technological infrastructures.

The Symposium is organized by Laythan Oweis, the Senior Symposium Editor of Georgetown Law Technology Review. Laythan’s vision, dedication, and passion for privacy law has made this Symposium possible, with the assistance of Charlotte Kim, the Editor-in-Chief, and GLTR’s faculty advisors—Mary Pat Dwyer, Julie Cohen, and Paul Ohm. We are deeply grateful to all our moderators and speakers, Symposium Editors, and the countless other individuals who have helped us.

Please RSVP here by January 25, 2026.

Symposium Programming

Fireside Chat

Panels

[Panel 1] Data Governance and Economic Power

This panel will examine how control over data has become a central mechanism through which economic and political power is consolidated in contemporary society. Moving beyond conventional framings of privacy, innovation, or market competition, panelists will approach data governance as a constitutional question—one that impacts sovereignty, democratic accountability, and our ecological future. Panelists will explore what democratic governance requires to meet the moment, how those systems might be reclaimed for collective self-determination, and what resistance already looks like in our own communities.

The following materials informed the development of Panel 1

Oligarchy, State, and Cryptopia by Julie Cohen

The Right Understands That All Governance Is Data Governance by Salomé Viljoen

DOGE Plan to Push AI Across the US Federal Government is Wildly Dangerous by Ben Green

Anatomy of an AI Coup by Eryk Salvaggio

Data Colonialism Comes Home To The US: Resistance Must Too by Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias

How Big Tech Became Part of the State by Cédric Durand, Evgeny Morozov & Susan Watkins

Artificial Power: 2025 Landscape Report by AI Now Institute

Data Centers Are a Climate Enemy w/ Ketan Joshi by Tech Won’t Save Us

We All Suffer from OpenAI’s Pursuit of Scale w/ Karen Hao by Tech Won’t Save Us

Generative AI is Not Inevitable w/ Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender by Tech Won’t Save Us

[Panel 2] Precarious by Design: Labor in the Age of Algorithmic Power

This panel will center labor as a key site where data extraction and algorithmic governance translate into lived experiences of control, instability, and dispossession. Panelists will explore how workplace technologies reconfigure power relations between workers and employers, obscure lines of accountability, and weaken collective organizing. The conversation will also explore emerging forms of resistance and legal reform, asking how labor law, unions, and democratic institutions might respond to restore worker dignity and collective power.

The following materials informed the development of Panel 2

AI, Gig Workers, and the Erosion of Democracies by Luca Belli

Algorithmic Management: Restraining Workplace Surveillance by AI Now Institute

How Major Labor Unions are Positioning on AI by Chris Mills Rodrigo

The Trump Administration’s Latest Assault on Workers by Sandeep Vaheesan & Alvaro Bedoya

Empowered Workers Are a Bulwark Against Illegal Monopoly by Stephen McMurtry

Considering Trump’s AI Plan and the Future It Portends by Justin Hendrix

Data and Algorithms at Work: The Case for Worker Technology Rights by Annette Bernhardt, Lisa Kresge & Reem Suleiman

Ifeoma Ajunwa on the Quantified Worker by Justin Hendrix

The Quantified Worker by Ifeoma Ajunwa

Data and Democracy at Work by Brishen Rogers

[Panel 3] AI & Empire: Resisting the Surveillance State

This panel will examine how AI-driven surveillance has become a central infrastructure of contemporary authoritarian governance, linking domestic policing, immigrant deportations, and political repression to broader projects of militarization and empire. Panelists will explore the deepening entanglement between technology corporations, security agencies, and the military-industrial complex, and how this paradigm union is eroding civil rights, due process, and democratic accountability. The conversation will also explore what it takes to confront surveillance as a governing strategy rather than a policy failure, and how collective alternatives grounded in justice, care, and democratic control might be built.

The following materials informed the development of Panel 3

Booming Military Spending on AI is a Windfall for Tech—and a Blow to Democracy by Brian J. Chen, Tina M. Park & Alex Pasternack

Republican Budget Bill Signals New Era in Federal Surveillance by Dean Jackson & Justin Hendrix

Big Tech is Powering Trump’s Immigration Crackdown by Ulises A. Mejias

Google Has Chosen a Side in Trump’s Mass Deportation Effort by Joseph Cox

Digitized Captivity: AI Surveillance and the Global Fabric of Policing by Susan Aboeid

The New Military Industry Complex w/ Sam Biddle by Tech Won’t Save Us

Campus Police Are Using Israeli Spy Tech to Crack Down on Student Protest by Tara Goodarzi & Brian Dolinar

Watched, Tracked, and Targeted – Life in Gaza under Israel’s All-Encompassing Surveillance Regime by Mohammed R. Mhawish

Artificial Intelligence and the Orchestration of Palestinian Life and Death by Sarah Fathallah

How the US Weaponizes Tech in the Middle East w/ Laleh Khalili by Tech Won’t Save Us

[Panel 4] Digital Colonization & the Collapse of Collective Life

This panel will explore how platform-mediated information infrastructures are hollowing out the conditions necessary for democratic life. Panelists will analyze how social media platforms fuel misinformation, harassment, and cynicism, weaken journalistic and civic institutions, and normalize forms of governance exercised through private platforms rather than democratic processes. The discussion asks what it would take to rebuild civic and informational infrastructure on democratic rather than commercial terms, and what dominant myths about technology must be abandoned to restore collective political imagination.