Criminal Courts
Credit and Finance
Housing
Labor and Employment
Policing
Public Benefits
Across the FieldHighly excitable, but disturbingly calm under pressure. His default answer is always “yes.”
Harlan Yu is the Executive Director of Upturn. Based in Washington D.C., Upturn advances equity and justice in the design, governance, and use of technology. Recently, Harlan has focused on the impact of emerging technologies in policing and the criminal legal system, such as body-worn cameras and mobile device forensic tools, and in particular their disproportionate effects on communities of color.
Harlan has extensive experience working at the intersection of technology and policy. He has previously worked at Google in both engineering and public policy roles, as a technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and at the U.S. Department of Labor. Prior to founding Upturn, his research and projects focused on open government, consumer privacy, and electronic voting.
Harlan holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Princeton University, and a B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science from UC Berkeley. He is a non-resident fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School.
Highly excitable, but disturbingly calm under pressure. His default answer is always “yes.”
Letter to the Biden-Harris Administration on their forthcoming AI Executive Order
As the Biden-Harris administration considers the contents of an Executive Order on artificial intelligence, the undersigned civil rights, technology, policy, and research organizations call on the administration to continue centering civil rights protections.
Read moreFeatured work by Harlan
All work by HarlanWe sent a letter urging the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy to fully incorporate the Biden administration’s commitment to racial equity into its AI and technology priorities.
Across the FieldThis report is the most comprehensive examination of U.S. law enforcement’s use of mobile device forensic tools. Our research shows that every American is at risk of having their phone forensically searched by law enforcement.
PolicingWe are suing the NYPD for records concerning the department’s use of mobile device forensic technology. Upturn is represented on a pro-bono basis by Shearman & Sterling, LLP and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.).
PolicingWe wrote a letter to Axon’s AI Ethics Board to express serious concerns about the direction of Axon’s product development, including the possible integration of real-time face recognition with body-worn camera systems.
Policing