Craig told The Detroit News 
after the approval the decision 
has been discussed for long 
enough and its purpose is to 
help the police department 
protect the community. 
“This is about the victims,” 
Craig 
said. 
“We 
took 
the 
community’s concerns to heart. 
I know some have felt we were 
not transparent during this 
process, but when we purchased 
this $1 million software, we 
had a conversation with City 
Council … so there was nothing 
secret about it.”
LSA senior Hannah Agnew, 
president 
of 
the 
Student 
Executive Committee of the 
Prison Creative Arts Project, 
said 
the 
continued 
use 
of 
facial recognition technology 
will only increase the divide 
between civilians and police.
“With a study the ACLU did, 
there were many issues with 
misidentifying Black folks and 
women,” Agnew said. “And 
with the way we already over-
police people of color, adding 
more surveillance is not going 
to help … People fear it and it 
creates distrust in the police 
system. We could be investing 
that money in services that let 
people prosper and that raises 
them up instead.” 
U.S. 
Rep. 
Rashida 
Tlaib, 
D-District 13, told The Detroit 
News she believed the software 
should be analyzed by only 
African Americans to avoid 
further 
misidentification 
of 
people of color. 
“Analysts need to be African 
Americans, not people that are 
not,” Tlaib said in a Detroit 
News video. “It happens all 
the time, it’s true — I think 
non-African Americans think 
African Americans all look 
the same. I’ve seen it even 
on the House floor, people 
calling Elijah Cummings ‘John 
Lewis,’ and John Lewis ‘Elijah 
Cummings,’ and they’re totally 
different people.” 
Craig told the Detroit News 
he believes Tlaib’s comments 
were 
insulting, 
adding 
all 
department officers and civilian 
employees receive bias training 
and should not be barred from 
jobs involving the software. 
“That’s 
something 
we 
train for, and it’s valuable 
training, but to say people 
should be barred from working 
somewhere because of their 
skin color?” Craig said. “That’s 
racist.”
Law 
student 
Michael 
Goodyear, 
who 
is 
editor-
in-chief 
of 
the 
Michigan 
Technology 
Law 
Review, 
said though the controversy 

surrounding the technology is 
valid, focus should be put on 
the software itself as opposed 
to those analyzing its results. 
“I think she (Tlaib) has a valid 
point, for sure, that visualization 
technology 
can 
be 
helpful, 
but it does have shortcomings 
that are particularly related to 
recognizing people of color,” 
Goodyear 
said. 
“That 
said, 
it is from a more technical 
standpoint, so it should mean 
reworking 
the 
algorithm, 
making sure the algorithm 
correctly identifies individuals, 
which 
obviously 
can 
have 
some biases from the coders 
themselves. But I think it is a 
maybe another separate move 
from what Representative Tlaib 
had said in those comments. So 
it’s not necessarily the person 
who’s using the algorithm, but 
the algorithm itself.” 
Facial recognition technology 
is used in everyday life through 
Facebook photo tagging, airport 
security and even in online 
dating applications. Goodyear 
pointed out it is also being 
used by other governments for 
more 
surveillance 
purposes 
but emphasized a need for 
regulation similar to Detroit’s 
in these situations. 
“The Chinese government 
has 
been 
using 
facial 
recognition 
technology 
to 
track the movements of certain 
Uighur groups in western China 
… that’s kind of the far, not 
great side of this technology,” 
Goodyear said. “The Chinese 
and Hong Kong governments 
have been using it in Hong Kong 
to actually track jaywalking in 
Hong Kong, which is maybe a 
little bit ‘big brother’. So it is 
important to — kind of like in 
what this ordinance is doing 
now — to draw boundaries of 
what’s acceptable behavior and 
what’s not acceptable.”
If 
facial 
recognition 
technology 
were 
to 
be 
implemented in Ann Arbor, 
Agnew said it would have 
similarly detrimental effects on 
the community.
“Anywhere you implement 
this it won’t have a good 
outcome 
because 
of 
over-
policing and over-surveilling,” 
Agnew said. “Ann Arbor likes to 
think of itself as a very liberal 
city, and this would be a way 
to police the already small 
numbers of people of color we 
have here.”
If the software were to be 
implemented in Ann Arbor, 
Goodyear said he hoped it 
would be with clear regulations 
and 
limitations 
in 
part 
produced through community 
engagement. He pointed out 
Ann Arbor’s smaller size and 
said the roles of the Ann Arbor 
Police Department and the 

University police would change 
how such technology could be 
implemented compared to in 
Detroit. 
“I think they’d definitely 
implement it in a different way,” 
Goodyear said. “But hopefully 
they’d do it in a similar way to 
Detroit, where they have public 
forums that allow things to be 
discussed publicly and actually 
create regulations to limit any 
sort of things might be going on 
like in China, or Hong Kong for 
example.”
Deputy 
Chief 
of 
Police 
Melissa 
Overton 
of 
the 
University’s Division of Public 
Safety & Security said the 
department has not discussed 
using 
facial 
recognition 
technology yet.
“We are always reviewing 
the 
latest 
technology 
that 
would assist law enforcement in 
solving crime, however, we have 
not discussed facial recognition 
at this time,” she wrote in an 
email to the Daily.
The 
Ann 
Arbor 
Police 
Department did not respond to 
requests for comment in time 
for publication.
With regards to the primary 
controversy surrounding the 
software, Goodyear believes 
the 
technology 
still 
needs 
improvement. 
However, 
he 
emphasized 
the 
facial 
recognition technology would 
not be able to solely be used to 
indict or imprison a suspect. 
“They 
should 
be 
going 
through 
and 
making 
sure 
that it’s absolutely accurate,” 
Goodyear said. “But … no 
one’s going to be arrested and 
thrown in jail, indicted, based 
purely on their picture. Facial 
recognition technology so far 
is one factor. So under standard 
evidence, you need to have a 
variety of different things that 
kind of show that someone 
did something. In this case, it 
would be good evidence, but in 
and of itself, it’s not enough.”
Agnew argued there would 
be no positive outcomes from 
the 
continued 
use 
of 
the 
technology for both victims and 
those incarcerated. 
“With 
the 
criminal 
justice system we tend to 
disproportionately 
target 
people of color,” she said. “And 
that often doesn’t happen in a 
way that helps victims. They’re 
saying, ‘We’re going to use this 
system of surveillance to help 
victims.’ But how is it going to 
help victims? It’s not providing 
support or help to victims to 
deal 
with 
what 
happened, 
it’s just another way to police 
people.”

“Understanding 
individuals 
from 
communities 
that 
you 
haven’t 
been 
exposed 
to 
is 
critical,” Niemer said. “And most 
importantly, it’s not just about 
understanding them, but about 
developing the skills to learn how 
to understand them. These skills 
are critical for our own individual 
successes and also to the successes 
of our society.”
One of the featured projects 
presented 
at 
the 
event 
was 
introduced 
by 
Public 
Health 
senior Eryka Swank, whose team 
has partnered with the Spectrum 
Center to create an oral history 
project in celebration of the 
Spectrum 
Center’s 
upcoming 
50th anniversary. The two-year 
project will consist of a collection 
of interviews from past and 
current LGBTQ faculty and staff 
and alumni who will share their 
personal stories as members of the 
LGBTQ community.
“Our big hope is that we can 
highlight stories that are not 
typically heard,” Swank said. “We 

know that LGBTQ people are 
oppressed, and that our stories 
and experiences are stigmatized 
so being able to give them platform 
and allow our stories to be 
preserved for generations to come 
and for years to come is a really 
awesome thing.”
Swank said she hopes the 
project will give a voice to those 
who are oppressed even within the 
LGBTQ community.
“We’re trying to get a kind 
of equity of whose stories are 
known. I think it’s important 
to me because the visibility and 
representation on our campus 
I think is really important and 
a lot of times, even within the 
LGBTQ community, there’s still 
privilege and oppression,” she said. 
“Sometimes the stories of the most 
privileged LGBTQ people are the 
ones that we know, and so being 
able to try to get at all of them and 
know all the stories, good and bad, 
all the experiences, good and bad, 
and somewhere in between, is 
really important to me.”
Kim Lijana, director of Center 
for Educational Outreach and 
part 
of 
the 
Undocumented 
Students Knowledge Community, 
introduced 
another 
project. 

Her team’s project intends to 
create a course to help educators 
understand 
and 
support 
undocumented students in their 
pursuit of higher education, both 
on campus and before they arrive 
on campus. The course will consist 
of three modules, titled “What does 
it mean to be undocumented?”, 
“How can we improve college 
access 
for 
undocumented 
students?” and “How can we 
support undocumented students 
to succeed in college?” 
“The first module … is really 
giving 
additional 
information 
for people to better understand 
because it’s very complex, and for 
many educators, it’s like this is their 
first step into better understanding 
that there are even undocumented 
students in their school,” Lijana 
said. “So, we’re sort of thinking 
about this trajectory to make sure 
that we’re providing educators 
the information that they need to 
support student; that we’re really 
empowering them to understand 
that there is something you can do, 
as well as inspiring them to take 
action.” 

Andrew 
Berki, 
director 
of the Office of Campus 
Sustainability and member of 
the President’s Commission 
on 
Carbon 
Neutrality, 
explained these investments 
support 
the 
existing 
infrastructure 
for 
fueling 
vehicles as well powering 
and heating facilities. He 
said the Ann Arbor campus’s 
natural gas plant powers 
and heats Central Campus 
and the athletic facilities. 
The 
University 
contracts 
electricity from DTE Energy 
to 
power 
North 
Campus 
burns natural gas in boiler 
systems 
to 
heat 
North 
Campus buildings. 
According to Berki, the 
Ann Arbor campus emits 
approximately 
640,000 
metric tons of carbon dioxide 
into the atmosphere per year. 
Ninety-eight percent of Ann 
Arbor 
campus 
emissions 
are a result of burning fossil 
fuels to heat and provide 
electricity 
to 
buildings, 
and two percent of campus 
emissions 
come 
from 
the fuel burned to power 
transportation.
University 
President 
Mark Schlissel formed the 
President’s 
Commission 
on 
Carbon 
Neutrality 
to 
create recommendations to 
achieve 
carbon 
neutrality 
on campus. One of the goals 
was to reduce emissions by 
2025 to 26 percent below 
2006 emissions levels. In 
a prior interview with The 
Daily, 
Schlissel 
expressed 
his concern regarding the 
logistics of carbon neutrality. 
“We use steam to heat 
the campus, and the only 
efficient way so far to make 
steam is to burn a fossil fuel 
or to have a nuclear power 
plant, (and) we don’t have 
a 
nuclear 
power 
plant,” 
said Schlissel. “So, we want 
to 
understand 
what 
the 
condition and the cost is if 
we were to say we want to 

change the way we heat and 
cool the campus: would it 
cost us $100 million, would it 
cost us $1 billion?”
Berki described some of 
the efforts the University 
has taken in its push toward 
reducing 
emissions 
and 
achieving carbon neutrality. 
According 
to 
Berki, 
the 
University has already signed 
a commitment with DTE 
Energy to receive 200,000 
megawatt-hours 
of 
wind-
powered energy in the near 
future, which will reduce 
emissions by about 100,000 
metric 
tons 
of 
carbon 
dioxide. 
The 
President’s 
Commission 
on 
Carbon 
Neutrality is also the process 
of hiring a firm to analyze 
the current infrastructure of 
how the University heats and 
powers Central, North and 
the Medical campuses. 
“They’re 
going 
to 
be 
coming up with strategies 
on how to move away from 
fossil fuels and possibly fuel 
our campus with carbon 
neutral options,” said Berki. 
“Of course, those strategies 
and options will have to 
meet the scale and reliability 
requirements to meet the 
mission of the institution, but 
that’s a huge effort that the 
PCCN has pushed forward, 
and we’re excited about it.” 
Jonathan 
Morris, 
a 
Rackham 
student 
in 
the 
School 
for 
Earth 
and 
Environmental Studies, was 
skeptical of the University’s 
ability to take meaningful 
action on reducing its carbon 
footprint.
“I think the President’s 
Commission 
on 
Carbon 
Neutrality is a good thing,” 
Morris said. “I would be 
a lot more excited if the 
University 
administration 
showed evidence that it will 
actually make a difference. 
While other universities are 
taking the climate crisis very 
seriously and fundamentally 
changing the way they do 
business, 
the 
University 
of Michigan seems more 
concerned with protecting 
its 
image 
and 
arresting 

students who are raising 
these issues.” 
Morris 
criticized 
how 
the 
previous 
University 
president’s 
Greenhouse 
Gas Reduction Committee 
created a 2015 report of 
recommendations 
that, 
according to Morris, was 
largely ignored.
“From my perspective, I 
don’t see anything different 
between that committee and 
the new PCCN in terms of 
accountability,” Morris said. 
“It would be wonderful for 
the PCCN to come out with 
bold recommendations for 
rapidly 
achieving 
carbon 
neutrality, 
but 
without 
any 
formal 
accountability 
measures 
in 
place, 
the 
University 
administration 
could just cherry pick a few 
things to improve the image 
of the University without 
taking 
meaningful 
steps 
toward decarbonization, as it 
did before.”
Elkolaly 
outlined 
what 
the University can do for 
improvement. 
“The 
U-M 
Carbon 
Neutrality 
Commission 
needs 
to 
be 
establishing 
dialogue, first and foremost,” 
Elkolaly said. “Students and 
staff have been completely 
in the dark and have only 
been 
responded 
to 
with 
unjust legal action. Once 
they actually agree to sit 
down and communicate with 
us about our concerns, we 
can take further, actionable 
steps.”
Berki 
argued 
reducing 
emissions and reliance on 
fossil fuels is a collective 
effort. 
All 
off-campus 
housing, he noted, is also 
fueled by fossil fuels, so 
reducing energy use off-
campus 
and 
individual 
actions remains important to 
limiting emissions. 
“I think it’s all of our 
responsibilities 
— 
faculty, 
students and staff — to 
take ownership around the 
issue and to do what we can 
individually to help attack 
this problem that we have,” 
Berki said.

Marijuana 
micro-businesses 
cultivate up to 150 plants and 
process, package and sell cannabis 
products to adults over 21, retail 
dispensaries and consumption 
centers.
Councilmember Jeff Hayner, 
D-Ward 1, said he voted for 
legalization in 2018 because he was 
a proponent of decriminalization, 
not because he wanted more 
facilities opening up in Ann Arbor. 

“I didn’t vote for Prop 1 to have 
600 distribution and consumption 
facilities open in my community,” 
Hayner said. “And I have had 
people come up to me and say 
they have legitimate concerns 
about the placement of these, and 
legitimate concerns about large 
money flowing to the cities that 
do allow this use and it driving 
out other businesses that serve a 
broader portion of the community.”
Current businesses in Ann 
Arbor that sell cannabis products 
have city permits they must renew 
on an annual basis. The new points-
based application system will affect 

how 
these 
already-established 
marijuana facilities comply with 
the city’s licensing rules as well as 
their annual renewals.
According to the Marijuana 
Regulatory Agency, failure to 
comply with the department’s laws 
may result in nonrenewal of the 
business’s license. 
“A 
state 
operating 
license 
shall not be renewed unless the 
department has determined that 
the individual qualifications of 
each person required by the act 
and these rules is eligible, qualified, 
and suitable as part of the license 
renewal in accordance with the 
relevant 
licensing 
standards 
set forth in the act and these 
rules,” the Michigan Marijuana 
Regulatory Agency wrote in the 
policy statement. 
This 
shifting 
legal 
aspect 
of regulations will also impact 
businesses looking to enter into the 
Ann Arbor marijuana market. 
Once the policy is set, if the 
state starts to receive more license 
applications than the limit of 
28, it will mean an increase in 
competition between the new 
cannabis businesses looking to 
set up shop in Ann Arbor. The 
decision of selecting applicants is 
at the discretion of the city, rather 
than the state, and according to 
McDonald, whether applicants are 
“best suited” to operate in the city 
will depend on the compliances 
of the Michigan Regulation and 
Taxation of Marihuana Act. 
Recreational 
marijuana 
businesses need a city permit 
in addition to state licensing to 
operate, with the annual city fee 
being $5,000. Michigan will start 
accepting 
license 
applications 
starting Nov. 1 of this year. 

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Wednesday, October 9, 2019 — 3A

“Under 
some 
circumstances, even probing 
for weaknesses may result in 
severe penalties, up to and 
including 
expulsion, 
civil 
fines, and jail time,” the 
description 
explains. 
“Our 
class policy is that you must 
respect 
legal 
and 
ethical 
boundaries of vulnerability 
testing at all times, or else you 
will fail the course.”
Voatz, 
a 
Boston-based 
mobile 
elections 
company, 
uses blockchain and current 
smartphone 
technology 
to 
make it possible for voters 
to 
participate 
in 
various 
elections 
through 
their 
phones. The company was 
founded in 2015 and has since 
processed nearly 80,000 votes 
in 30 separate elections.
During the 2018 election 
cycle, 
it 
was 
revealed 
that 
Voatz 
experienced 
an 
unsuccessful 
security 
breach targeted at votes in 

West Virginia. Since 2018, 
West Virginia has permitted 
members of the military and 
those living overseas to vote 
through Voatz. At a press 
conference on Oct. 1, CNN 
reported Mike Stuart, the U.S. 
Attorney for the Southern 
District of West Virginia, was 
told the IP addresses matched 
those at the University.
“During the 2018 election 
cycle, 
Secretary 
of 
State 
Warner referred to my office 
what he perceived to be an 
attempted intrusion by an 
outside party into the West 
Virginia 
military 
mobile 
voting system,” Stuart said 
at the press conference. “No 
legal conclusions whatsoever 
have been made regarding 
the conduct of the activity or 
whether any federal laws were 
violated.”
Nimit 
Sawhney, 
Voatz 
CEO and co-founder, wrote 
in a statement to The Daily 
there 
was 
no 
detectable 
security breach, but the FBI’s 
intervention is necessary to 
avoid any potential hacks in 

the future. 
“The Voatz system worked 
as designed and intended,” 
Sawhney wrote. “The attempt 
was detected, thwarted at 
the gate and reported to the 
authorities. We fully support 
the West Virginia Secretary 
of State’s office and the law 
enforcement 
agencies 
in 
their 
investigations 
under 
the purview of the law. Given 
that elections infrastructure 
is 
classified 
as 
critical 
infrastructure 
under 
the 
Department 
of 
Homeland 
Security, we will continue to 
report any such attempts in 
the future.”
University 
spokesman 
Rick Fitzgerald declined to 
comment further on the issue, 
noting the details have not 
been uncovered yet. 
“It’s not clear what someone 
may actually have attempted,” 
Fitzgerald wrote in an email 
to The Daily. 
This 
is 
a 
developing 
story. Please check back at 
michigandaily.com for more 
information.

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