Bryce Newell, Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon will deliver the 15th CRISP online seminar. The seminar is entitled 'Digital Sanctuary: Encoding Digital Refuge into State and Local Sanctuary Efforts' and takes place at 1pm GMT on Wednesday March 18th 2026. To join the seminar, click on the 'Join the Seminar' link at the bottom of this page.  The link will become live 15 minutes before the start of the seminar.

Abstract

Sanctuary has long been associated with creating safe places where immigrants are protected from immigration enforcement. Historically, sanctuary efforts focused on physical places of refuge, including churches, cities, and states. Less attention has been directed at what we call digital sanctuary: digital spaces, processes, or other arrangements at the state or local level wherein data about immigrants or others, or data about these individuals and their communications, activities, relationships, or movements, etc., is shielded from access by immigration enforcement authorities, including through forms of state surveillance. We argue that there is a growing need to incorporate forms of digital sanctuary into sanctuary commitments around the world, including within data privacy legislation and the regulation of surveillance and other emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. We provide examples of how digital sanctuary could be built into state law (including data privacy and data broker registration laws) in the United States and the information practices of state agencies and humanitarian migrant-aid organizations. This paper is co-authored with Dr. Bibo Lin, Assistant Professor at Texas A&M International University.

Biography

Bryce Clayton Newell, PhD, JD, is The David and Nancy Petrone Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. He is also a Co-Director of the Surveillance Studies Network (SSN) and a Dialogue Editor for Surveillance & Society. Bryce is an information scientist and socio-legal scholar whose research investigates the social, legal, and ethical implications of information technologies in society. Bibo Lin, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M International University.

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