The Future of Digital Surveillance

Are humans hard-wired to make good decisions about managing their privacy in an increasingly public world? Or are we helpless victims of surveillance through our use of invasive digital media? Exploring the chasm between the tyranny of surveillance and the ideal of privacy, this book traces the origins of personal data collection in digital technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) embedded in social network sites, search engines, mobile apps, the web, and email. The Future of Digital Surveillance argues against a technologically deterministic view—digital technologies by nature do not cause surveillance. Instead, the shaping of surveillance technologies is embedded in a complex set of individual psychology, institutional behaviors, and policy principles.

Praise / Awards

• "Yong Jin Park has produced a remarkably nuanced, balanced, and engaging analysis of the polarized debate about privacy in the digital age. This isn’t a rhetorical collection of anecdotes. It is thoughtfully crafted social science. Park’s explanation of how artificial intelligence and algorithms enter the mix make the book unique."
  —W. Russell Neuman, New York University
   
• “With deep insight and conceptual clarity, Professor Park constructs a rich map of the modern privacy terrain. Resisting caricature and simplistic diagnoses, he teases out the complex interplay between individual agency and institutional drivers within the modern political, economic, social, and technological ecosystems. This book is an illuminating read for all who care about the future of privacy in an increasingly algorithmic world.”
  —Jerry Kang, Distinguished Professor of Law and (by courtesy) Asian American Studies, UCLA
   
• “Professor Park has produced a comprehensive and quite timely engagement with the technological, social, economic, and political influences in the current status and likely future of the privacy that individuals and collectives can hope to enjoy. His presentation of critical issues, concerns, and potential responses deserves wide readership.”
  —Oscar Gandy, University of Pennsylvania
• “While the end of privacy as we know it is a certainty, privacy is not doomed. In this analytically strong book, Yong Jin Park shows that regulatory solutions are available, at least in the US and the EU. The strongest achievement of this book is the full integration of the individual perspective of privacy and the institutional drive of surveillance enabled by AI and Big Data.”
  —Jan A.G.M. van Dijk, Professor of Communication Science and the Information Society at the University of Twente and author of The Network Society (1999/2020)