Creating a Blockfile

Rebuttal can be hard, and when we see top-tier debaters deliver speeches - we may be confused as to how they have so many pieces of information about a certain topic. Fortunately for us, they don’t memorize the information they have. Rather, they make use of a “blockfile” or a document of pre-prepared responses.

Here is an example of what we call a “block” (or a singular response). Note that the following block is from the 2023 TOC. This response to the argument on how Facial Recognition Technology Deters crime is directly below:

A/T Crime

• Delink: FRT is easily tricked. Read 22’ explained “Although there are many positive outcomes arising from the use of FRT, there are a variety of security concerns linked to its use. Factors including camera angles can affect the technology’s ability to recognize people’s faces. People wearing disguises or slightly changing their appearance can throw off facial recognition technology.”
• Turn: These technologies are biased against communities of color. NYT 22’ explains how The findings of government tests released in December show that the type of facial recognition used in police investigations tends to produce more false positive results when evaluating images of black women.
• Delink: FRT is rarely accurate NYT 22’ “the shortcomings of facial recognition have proved problematic, a study in London found that of the 42 matches the tool suggested during tests, only eight were verifiably correct.”

• This has happened empirically in Welsh: The Guardian 18’ “South Wales police began trialing the technology in June of 2017 in an attempt to catch more criminals, however, 92% of matches were proven to be false positives”

• Implicate this as a turn: wrongful incarceration is both economically costly to the individual and the state. Having a record permanently alters the individual’s economic mobility, outweigh this on scop, insofar as the harm impacts a significantly larger percentage than the benefit, it’s net offense for us.