Surveilled (Reclaiming our lives from the data industrial complex)

A critical examination of the threats to our bodily and digital autonomy under government and corporate surveillance and how we can delay, disrupt, and deconstruct the data industrial complex.

From our smartphones and watches to our credit card taps in the subway and Bluetooth in our cars, we are tracked almost everywhere we go. Yet we only have an oblique notion of how closely we are watched—and why it matters.

Only ten years ago, it was rare to have digital evidence presented in a courtroom. Today, it is the norm. Phones and computers are handed over by suspects, or data is subpoenaed directly from the technology companies. Google searches and Facebook messages have been used to prosecute crimes, in addition to phone calls, texts and emails. This helps to build cases that in the past would not have had enough evidence to go forward. In the context of increasingly oppressive changes in the law by our current administration both at the local and national level, this unholy alliance between technology and criminalization threatens all of us. Whether we are the parent of a trans child or a woman seeking an abortion, our “private” messages are far from it, and when our communications pertain to our choices about our bodies, it can be especially terrifying.

Longtime public defender in Brooklyn, Legal Aid Society attorney, and Technology Fellow at the Ford Foundation, Cynthia Conti-Cook has been on the front lines as technology has been weaponized against her clients. Weaving social and legal history with courtroom experience and a deep understanding of technology’s reach, she explores the trajectory of criminalization, surveillance, and the conservative legislators that are coming for our basic rights.

Conti-Cook’s urgent call to arms is more than just a warning. Surveilled will arm the reader with a clear strategy to delay, disrupt, and deconstruct the surveillance state.