We See It All
Liberty and Justice in an Age of Perpetual Surveillance
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
This investigation into the legal, political, and moral issues surrounding how the police and justice system use surveillance technology asks the question: what are citizens of a free country willing to tolerate in the name of public safety?
As we rethink the scope of police power, Jon Fasman’s chilling examination of how the police and the justice system use the unparalleled power of surveillance technology—how it affects privacy, liberty, and civil rights—becomes more urgent by the day. Embedding himself within police departments on both coasts, Fasman explores the moral, legal, and political questions posed by these techniques and tools.
By zeroing in on how facial recognition, automatic license-plate readers, drones, predictive algorithms, and encryption affect us personally, Fasman vividly illustrates what is at stake and explains how to think through issues of privacy rights, civil liberties, and public safety. How do these technologies impact how police operate in our society? How should archaic privacy laws written for an obsolete era—that of the landline and postbox—be updated?
Fasman looks closely at what can happen when surveillance technologies are combined and put in the hands of governments with scant regard for citizens’ civil liberties, pushing us to ask: Is our democratic culture strong enough to stop us from turning into China, with its architecture of control?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Fasman (The Unpossessed City) delivers a deeply reported and sometimes chilling look at mass surveillance technologies in the American justice system. He notes that police departments in more than 100 cities use Shotspotter, an app that employs acoustic sensors mounted on traffic lights to identify and locate the sound of gunfire; speaks to an aeronautical engineer whose company makes drone-mounted camera systems that can surveil an entire city; and visits an Israeli security firm wanting to equip cameras that automatically read license plates with voice and facial recognition software and sell them to private citizens. Because many of these technologies are new, Fasman explains, there are few policies in place to regulate them, and even fewer penalties for ignoring the policies that do exist. A section on China's "tech-enabled repression" of Uyghur Muslims and its financing and building of Ecuador's emergency response network illustrates the threat of mass surveillance in countries with "weak institutions or scant regard for civil liberties," while a portrait of citizen activists in Oakland, Calif., who fought back against a planned citywide monitoring system offers lessons on how to "forestall the surveillance state." Fasman avoids alarmism while making a strong case for greater public awareness and tighter regulations around these technologies. This illuminating account issues an essential warning about a rising threat to America's civil liberties.
