The Dark Side of Digital Convenience: How Our Data Exposes Us
As we embrace the digital conveniences of modern life, we may be inadvertently compromising our right to privacy. Explore the risks of self-surveillance and the legal challenges surrounding personal data.
Our digital devices have brought us unprecedented convenience, but at what cost? In a world where we willingly share vast amounts of personal data, legal professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson warns that this information could be used against us by law enforcement and the judicial system. In his new book, Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance, Ferguson delves into the emerging challenges surrounding the right to privacy in the digital age.
Before the era of Google Maps and Siri-enabled smart phones, navigating unfamiliar places was far less convenient. Today, we eagerly embrace a wide range of digital conveniences, from fitness tracking apps to digitally connected home appliances and security systems like Nest cameras. But in the process, we are creating a vast trove of private personal data that could potentially be used against us.
Ferguson, an expert on new surveillance technologies, policing, and criminal justice, has previously written about the rise of data-driven policing and predictive policing. In his latest work, he shifts his focus to the concept of self-surveillance - how the data we generate through our digital devices and activities can expose us to incrimination, despite the lack of clear legal frameworks to regulate this emerging landscape.
{{IMAGE_PLACEHOLDER}}Source: Ars Technica
