The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and The Future of Law Enforcement - Author Talk with Andrew Ferguson
Surveillance technology is a civil rights issue and a democracy issue, and we are not paying attention. Big data technologies are revolutionizing policing. The Rise of Big Data Policing explores how data-driven surveillance technologies impact the “who,” “where”, “when,” and “how” of everyday policing. The book critically examines the future of these digital technologies with particular focus on concerns about racial bias, transparency, and the erosion of constitutional rights. Big data policing has a “black data” problem as the legacy issues of racial discrimination, opacity, and distortions to constitutional protections threaten to undermine the legitimacy of these law enforcement innovations.
Written by a local law professor and national expert in predictive policing and surveillance, this book seeks to explain how citizens, police administrators, communities, lawyers, technologists, activists, and everyone else should respond to the growth of big data policing. It is the first book to offer a critical examination of the legal impact of these new technologies, as well as a strategy to use the same big data innovations to improve police accountability and remedy the underlying socio-economic risk factors that encourage crime.
Andrew Guthrie Ferguson is a Professor of Law at the UDC David A. Clarke School of Law. Professor Ferguson teaches and writes about the intersection of technology and the criminal justice system. He is the author of THE RISE OF BIG DATA POLICING: SURVEILLANCE, RACE, AND THE FUTURE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT (NYU Press 2017) and a national expert on predictive policing and the Fourth Amendment. His legal commentary has been featured in numerous media outlets, including CNN, NPR, The New York Times, The Economist, the Washington Post, USA Today, the ABA Journal, The Atlantic (digital), The Huffington Post, and other national and international newspapers, magazines, and media sites.
Professor Ferguson has been voted “Professor of the Year” three times. In 2016, he received a University-wide Certificate of Commendation for his teaching and service. Professor Ferguson recently co-authored the law professors’ amicus brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of the Petitioner in Carpenter v. U.S., involving the warrantless collection of cell-site tracking data. Prior to joining the law faculty, Professor Ferguson worked as a supervising attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School (summa cum laude) and has a L.L.M. (Masters in Advocacy) from Georgetown Law Center. Professor Ferguson’s first book Why Jury Duty Matters: A Citizen’s Guide to Constitutional
Action (NYU Press) is the first book written for jurors on jury duty. (Book Review). He stars in the “Welcome To Jury Duty Video” in D.C.