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Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance
Not yet published
Expected 17 Mar 26Interrogates how digital self-surveillance can be turned against us by police, prosecutors, and political whims
For consumers living in a digitally-connected world, smart technologies have built an inescapable trap of digital self-surveillance. Smart cars, smart homes, smart watches, and smart medical devices track our most private activities and intimate patterns. While these devices allow users to receive personal insights by monitoring their every move, that data can be accessed by police and prosecutors looking to find incriminating clues. Digital technology exposes everyone, everywhere, all at once and we have few laws to regulate it.
In Your Data Will Be Used Against You, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson warns us of how the rise of sensor-driven technology, social media monitoring, and artificial intelligence can be weaponized against democratic values and personal freedoms. At the same time, that data will solve crimes, radically transforming how criminal cases are prosecuted. Ferguson explores how this proliferation of private data in combination with public surveillance networks promises new ways to solve previously unsolvable crimes but also leaves us vulnerable to governmental overreach and abuse. He argues for legal interventions that address the threat of digital self-surveillance and provides concrete suggestions about how legislators, judges, and communities should respond.
As consumers, citizens, and potential subjects of surveillance, the questions in this book must be confronted now, before the trap of surveillance captures us completely. Providing a stark warning of the dangers of digital self-surveillance, Your Data Will be Used Against You is a defense of civil liberties against the growing threat of data-driven policing.
For consumers living in a digitally-connected world, smart technologies have built an inescapable trap of digital self-surveillance. Smart cars, smart homes, smart watches, and smart medical devices track our most private activities and intimate patterns. While these devices allow users to receive personal insights by monitoring their every move, that data can be accessed by police and prosecutors looking to find incriminating clues. Digital technology exposes everyone, everywhere, all at once and we have few laws to regulate it.
In Your Data Will Be Used Against You, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson warns us of how the rise of sensor-driven technology, social media monitoring, and artificial intelligence can be weaponized against democratic values and personal freedoms. At the same time, that data will solve crimes, radically transforming how criminal cases are prosecuted. Ferguson explores how this proliferation of private data in combination with public surveillance networks promises new ways to solve previously unsolvable crimes but also leaves us vulnerable to governmental overreach and abuse. He argues for legal interventions that address the threat of digital self-surveillance and provides concrete suggestions about how legislators, judges, and communities should respond.
As consumers, citizens, and potential subjects of surveillance, the questions in this book must be confronted now, before the trap of surveillance captures us completely. Providing a stark warning of the dangers of digital self-surveillance, Your Data Will be Used Against You is a defense of civil liberties against the growing threat of data-driven policing.
320 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication March 17, 2026
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50 people want to read
About the author
Andrew Guthrie Ferguson
5 books11 followersAndrew Guthrie Ferguson is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of the District of Columbia's David A. Clarke School of Law. Professor Ferguson teaches and writes in the area of criminal law, criminal procedure, and evidence.
Prior to joining the law faculty, Professor Ferguson worked as a supervising attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. Professor Ferguson is also involved in developing constitutional education projects in the Washington D.C. area.
Prior to joining the law faculty, Professor Ferguson worked as a supervising attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. Professor Ferguson is also involved in developing constitutional education projects in the Washington D.C. area.
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November 27, 2025
Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance takes a new Fourth Amendment angle to examine how digital trails have increased the power of police and how constitutional protections have not caught up. Author Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Professor of Law at George Washington University, is a leading scholar at the intersection of technology, privacy, and criminal justice. He has made a lifelong study of policing, big data surveillance and the Fourth Amendment. Ferguson’s warning is that what we have adopted out of novelty and convenience now threatens to erode the very foundations of American privacy and liberty. His analysis is serious, but not excoriating. Your Data Will Be Used Against You doesn’t blame consumers for wanting convenience, or police for wanting to solve (or prevent!) crimes, or judges who don’t have the time to keep up with all aspects of new technologies. It’s an optimistic book written from the rare vantage point of someone with a deep understanding of technology and law.
The book makes for pleasantly balanced reading. Ferguson acknowledges that data has revolutionised criminal investigation and prosecution. Contrary to my initial expectations, its argument is not fearful of technology, but rather deeply concerned about how the legal system has not caught up to technology. These same tools expose citizens to governmental overreach and abuse. He asks us to think of even some local corrupt official or officer abusing their access to such huge amounts of data. His argument is not a criticism of over policing and he acknowledges that many such works already exist. This is rather a legal and civic reckoning with the consequences of self-surveillance, in what he describes as a “Smart Home Panopticon.” He calls for deliberate interventions through changes to legislation, restricting the use of warrants, and boosting community safeguards capable of restraining the power of the state. He argues that “Judges are not technologists, and many do not have the time or inclination to rethink foundational theories of constitutional law. Yet, without a judicial response to a world where everything is evidence, the Fourth Amendment, and therefore our individual rights, will continue to weaken as digital surveillance increases. It is not beyond the role of judges to ask how the Fourth Amendment should apply to new forms of data collection and surveillance.”
Smart cars, homes, watches, and medical devices monitor deeply private moments, promising insight and efficiency while quietly constructing a highly accessible record of our lives. This book made me pause and think about everything I have in the cloud, hosted here and there and the time my cardiologist recommended a smart watch. For the ordinary consumer, it can be difficult to resist or avoid such purchases. That record, Ferguson shows, is readily available to prosecutors. Predictive analytics, facial recognition, and citywide camera networks have created a surveillance ecosystem in which exposure is constant, universal, and largely unregulated. Many recent judicial decisions are based on weak comparisons, say the difference between what a neighbour could see over a fence compared to drone being repeatedly flown over your house. The scale of the problem is technological, but its implications are constitutional.
The first part of this book examines how criminal prosecution is being reshaped by the proliferation of self surveillance technologies are increasingly gathered as evidence. The second part turns to the risks of this transformation, highlighting the profound shifts in power and privacy that follow when police and prosecutors gain access to the intimate data of daily life. Through this he refers back to the founding generation of Americans and how they would have felt about such general warrants and invasions of personal papers. I was a bit on edge about any reference to the founding generation, because it’s often used for anyone to make an argument for pretty much anything, but he kept it firmly rooted in historical legal arguments and discussions. He additionally looks back to how certain groups have been targeted in U.S. history, as well as forward to see how the vulnerability of reproductive health data in states criminalising abortion and the troubling expansion of facial recognition. I was completely unaware that prosecutors don’t have to share with the defence that say, a facial recognition technology identified other individuals as just as or more likely to be the perpetrator. What Ferguson makes clear is that no part of the political spectrum is immune from the reach of digital surveillance. The same ‘shopping history’ infrastructure that can expose trans youth seeking gender affirming care in states where such treatment has been criminalised can just as easily be turned against gun owners who fear gun registries. Social media posts, geolocation data, health apps, and consumer purchases all generate evidence that investigators can exploit. Surveillance is not partisan. It is a structural condition and once the machinery exists, the only variable is who becomes the target. These cases underscore the fragility of constitutional protections in the digital age, where the Fourth Amendment has yet to catch up with the realities of pervasive monitoring and massive amounts of data collection.
The final section offers remedies, insisting that judges, legislatures, and communities must adjust the balance between security and liberty. Ferguson proposes substantive checks on warrants, requiring courts to weigh the reasonableness of exposing an individual’s digital life against the gravity of the alleged crime. This here goes straight back to the founding fathers and their hatred of anyone ‘rummaging’ through papers. He presents these reforms within a broader critique of policing culture, where technological fixes are often embraced as substitutes for addressing structural inequality. He argues that “… much of the allure of smart surveillance is that it gives police chiefs a way to answer an otherwise unanswerable question: “What are you going to do about crime?” A truthful answer would require them to confront the fact that police can respond to crime but cannot fix its root causes— like structural inequality, housing and education discrimination, and a lack of economic or social opportunity— without dramatically transforming their mandate. It is much easier to tout a shiny new technological fix than fund social services programs that address poverty and inequality directly.” By tracing the role of pilot programs, federal grants and local budgets in fuelling surveillance, Ferguson warns us to wary of how these initiatives are launched. Even services made with the best intentions may cause harm, if they were not created with input from legal experts and community members. For example, I was surprised to read that technology which supposedly reports the location of gunshots could only display the nearest business addresses, not the actual point of the sound, but the police often acted as if the report was completely accurate. What does it mean to have the police expecting a gun at the wrong location?
Occasionally I wished for more examples, such as those drawn from fields like insurance or corporate training, where similar surveillance or analysis methods are being used. Too often the conclusions fizzle out slightly on mentioning possibilities (“it could be,” “one might imagine”), when stronger evidence might have shown how these potentials are not speculative but already fully in use. Ferguson’s focus remains largely within the United States, and while he mentions cases abroad, such as the dense camera networks of Chongqing, China or the surveillance of dating apps by Egyptian police, the book is not a comparative study and does not give much space to surveillance issues outside the U.S. I have mixed feelings about this choice. American readers may dismiss foreign examples as irrelevant to their own “exceptional” context. However, a broader view might have shown how surveillance technologies are profiting internationally and how these methods are completely in operation elsewhere, and are not the stuff of science fiction. That, however, might be beyond the scope of this book.
Ferguson beautifully describes the legal process for those unfamiliar with how things work. “Judges are the least obvious artists in our society. They may look like bureaucrats in robes, but underneath those robes are creative figures who paint with words. A judicial opinion begins on a blank canvas, onto which is sketched the structure of a story and an argument. The final image will be recognisable, borrowing as it does from other artists who came before, but the choices of color, depth, shading, and symbolism, even the mistakes evident in the brushwork, are the artist’s own.” It is with these types of introductions to each chapter that he eases the reader into understanding the finer points of legal opinions. Additionally, he recommends a number of other books, including Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States and Your Face Belongs to Us, so this book helpfully steers the reader towards other books covering similar issues. The final sections conclude with a basic overview of how to protect your own privacy, listings of advocacy group and a call to protect journalists. In strengthening such movements, this book is a valuable tool. Although it is written with the U.S. legal system in mind, I believe that the questions raised within are general enough to be of interest to other nationalities.
Ferguson’s book is a warning that “criminal” is not a fixed category, but a shifting concept, too often defined by political motives and public fears. Technologies designed to combat violent crime can be swiftly repurposed for repression, and American history is quite full of examples of dissenters, reformers, and marginalised communities being controlled, monitored and targeted. Today, the expansion of police surveillance powers is accelerating far more quickly than constitutional protections, leaving individuals extremely vulnerable. The tools of self surveillance are already woven through our daily lives through the conveniences we have embraced. Your Data Will Be Used Against You argues that without imaginative legal responses, the smart home panopticon we have built for ourselves will continue to erode liberty, and the next target could be you.
This book was provided by NYU Press for review.
The book makes for pleasantly balanced reading. Ferguson acknowledges that data has revolutionised criminal investigation and prosecution. Contrary to my initial expectations, its argument is not fearful of technology, but rather deeply concerned about how the legal system has not caught up to technology. These same tools expose citizens to governmental overreach and abuse. He asks us to think of even some local corrupt official or officer abusing their access to such huge amounts of data. His argument is not a criticism of over policing and he acknowledges that many such works already exist. This is rather a legal and civic reckoning with the consequences of self-surveillance, in what he describes as a “Smart Home Panopticon.” He calls for deliberate interventions through changes to legislation, restricting the use of warrants, and boosting community safeguards capable of restraining the power of the state. He argues that “Judges are not technologists, and many do not have the time or inclination to rethink foundational theories of constitutional law. Yet, without a judicial response to a world where everything is evidence, the Fourth Amendment, and therefore our individual rights, will continue to weaken as digital surveillance increases. It is not beyond the role of judges to ask how the Fourth Amendment should apply to new forms of data collection and surveillance.”
Smart cars, homes, watches, and medical devices monitor deeply private moments, promising insight and efficiency while quietly constructing a highly accessible record of our lives. This book made me pause and think about everything I have in the cloud, hosted here and there and the time my cardiologist recommended a smart watch. For the ordinary consumer, it can be difficult to resist or avoid such purchases. That record, Ferguson shows, is readily available to prosecutors. Predictive analytics, facial recognition, and citywide camera networks have created a surveillance ecosystem in which exposure is constant, universal, and largely unregulated. Many recent judicial decisions are based on weak comparisons, say the difference between what a neighbour could see over a fence compared to drone being repeatedly flown over your house. The scale of the problem is technological, but its implications are constitutional.
The first part of this book examines how criminal prosecution is being reshaped by the proliferation of self surveillance technologies are increasingly gathered as evidence. The second part turns to the risks of this transformation, highlighting the profound shifts in power and privacy that follow when police and prosecutors gain access to the intimate data of daily life. Through this he refers back to the founding generation of Americans and how they would have felt about such general warrants and invasions of personal papers. I was a bit on edge about any reference to the founding generation, because it’s often used for anyone to make an argument for pretty much anything, but he kept it firmly rooted in historical legal arguments and discussions. He additionally looks back to how certain groups have been targeted in U.S. history, as well as forward to see how the vulnerability of reproductive health data in states criminalising abortion and the troubling expansion of facial recognition. I was completely unaware that prosecutors don’t have to share with the defence that say, a facial recognition technology identified other individuals as just as or more likely to be the perpetrator. What Ferguson makes clear is that no part of the political spectrum is immune from the reach of digital surveillance. The same ‘shopping history’ infrastructure that can expose trans youth seeking gender affirming care in states where such treatment has been criminalised can just as easily be turned against gun owners who fear gun registries. Social media posts, geolocation data, health apps, and consumer purchases all generate evidence that investigators can exploit. Surveillance is not partisan. It is a structural condition and once the machinery exists, the only variable is who becomes the target. These cases underscore the fragility of constitutional protections in the digital age, where the Fourth Amendment has yet to catch up with the realities of pervasive monitoring and massive amounts of data collection.
The final section offers remedies, insisting that judges, legislatures, and communities must adjust the balance between security and liberty. Ferguson proposes substantive checks on warrants, requiring courts to weigh the reasonableness of exposing an individual’s digital life against the gravity of the alleged crime. This here goes straight back to the founding fathers and their hatred of anyone ‘rummaging’ through papers. He presents these reforms within a broader critique of policing culture, where technological fixes are often embraced as substitutes for addressing structural inequality. He argues that “… much of the allure of smart surveillance is that it gives police chiefs a way to answer an otherwise unanswerable question: “What are you going to do about crime?” A truthful answer would require them to confront the fact that police can respond to crime but cannot fix its root causes— like structural inequality, housing and education discrimination, and a lack of economic or social opportunity— without dramatically transforming their mandate. It is much easier to tout a shiny new technological fix than fund social services programs that address poverty and inequality directly.” By tracing the role of pilot programs, federal grants and local budgets in fuelling surveillance, Ferguson warns us to wary of how these initiatives are launched. Even services made with the best intentions may cause harm, if they were not created with input from legal experts and community members. For example, I was surprised to read that technology which supposedly reports the location of gunshots could only display the nearest business addresses, not the actual point of the sound, but the police often acted as if the report was completely accurate. What does it mean to have the police expecting a gun at the wrong location?
Occasionally I wished for more examples, such as those drawn from fields like insurance or corporate training, where similar surveillance or analysis methods are being used. Too often the conclusions fizzle out slightly on mentioning possibilities (“it could be,” “one might imagine”), when stronger evidence might have shown how these potentials are not speculative but already fully in use. Ferguson’s focus remains largely within the United States, and while he mentions cases abroad, such as the dense camera networks of Chongqing, China or the surveillance of dating apps by Egyptian police, the book is not a comparative study and does not give much space to surveillance issues outside the U.S. I have mixed feelings about this choice. American readers may dismiss foreign examples as irrelevant to their own “exceptional” context. However, a broader view might have shown how surveillance technologies are profiting internationally and how these methods are completely in operation elsewhere, and are not the stuff of science fiction. That, however, might be beyond the scope of this book.
Ferguson beautifully describes the legal process for those unfamiliar with how things work. “Judges are the least obvious artists in our society. They may look like bureaucrats in robes, but underneath those robes are creative figures who paint with words. A judicial opinion begins on a blank canvas, onto which is sketched the structure of a story and an argument. The final image will be recognisable, borrowing as it does from other artists who came before, but the choices of color, depth, shading, and symbolism, even the mistakes evident in the brushwork, are the artist’s own.” It is with these types of introductions to each chapter that he eases the reader into understanding the finer points of legal opinions. Additionally, he recommends a number of other books, including Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States and Your Face Belongs to Us, so this book helpfully steers the reader towards other books covering similar issues. The final sections conclude with a basic overview of how to protect your own privacy, listings of advocacy group and a call to protect journalists. In strengthening such movements, this book is a valuable tool. Although it is written with the U.S. legal system in mind, I believe that the questions raised within are general enough to be of interest to other nationalities.
Ferguson’s book is a warning that “criminal” is not a fixed category, but a shifting concept, too often defined by political motives and public fears. Technologies designed to combat violent crime can be swiftly repurposed for repression, and American history is quite full of examples of dissenters, reformers, and marginalised communities being controlled, monitored and targeted. Today, the expansion of police surveillance powers is accelerating far more quickly than constitutional protections, leaving individuals extremely vulnerable. The tools of self surveillance are already woven through our daily lives through the conveniences we have embraced. Your Data Will Be Used Against You argues that without imaginative legal responses, the smart home panopticon we have built for ourselves will continue to erode liberty, and the next target could be you.
This book was provided by NYU Press for review.
December 22, 2025
If You See This Review, You Should Be Terrified. I'm a Xennial. I've grown up with computers. The Net first became a public thing when I was 10 yrs old, and within a decade I would complete a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. I've known all along that privacy online was more theater than fact, no matter how careful you are - that if it has a computer chip, you're safer to assume it is tracking you than not, and that someone you may not like will likely be able to access that data.
Even knowing this almost as long as I've known anything... Ferguson makes clear just how much worse it actually is, from a legal perspective. *Even in* the United States, where we "supposedly" have 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States rights limiting government searching of our data and how it can use the results of such a search.
While Ferguson doesn't address at all how very eroded and damn near paper thin those Amendments have become over the last 250 yrs of jurisprudence, he makes it all too crystal clear that the words on the papers haven't kept up with the actual technical capabilities, and because of this, many of the things that once kept your written words on paper safe or even your words to certain people safe no longer protect you in this digital era *at all*. Indeed, quite the opposite - many of the exceptions to those earlier forms that actively limited what government was allowed to do are instead now the rules that give government nearly unlimited abilities to search your data without even having to get a "warrant" rubber stamped.
Indeed, another of Ferguson's large points throughout this text is just how little privacy you have *specifically* when a warrant is signed... and he even tosses a point or two in about the "qualifications" needed to be able to sign such a warrant. (There are basically none to be a Magistrate Judge in particular.)
While all of this is utterly terrifying - and Ferguson goes to great lengths to show that this *should* be terrifying no matter your own personal political bent -, Ferguson does actually offer paths forward at every level that could at least begin to alleviate many of the concerns he details. He even goes so far as to note which ones are likely more politically palatable within the current system and which ones would do more to actually alleviate privacy concerns... but which are also far larger hauls in the current political environment.
Overall this is absolutely a book every American should read, and indeed anyone globally who thinks of America as the "land of the free". Ferguson shows here that this "freedom" is illusory at best, particularly in the current world environment.
Very much recommended.
Even knowing this almost as long as I've known anything... Ferguson makes clear just how much worse it actually is, from a legal perspective. *Even in* the United States, where we "supposedly" have 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States rights limiting government searching of our data and how it can use the results of such a search.
While Ferguson doesn't address at all how very eroded and damn near paper thin those Amendments have become over the last 250 yrs of jurisprudence, he makes it all too crystal clear that the words on the papers haven't kept up with the actual technical capabilities, and because of this, many of the things that once kept your written words on paper safe or even your words to certain people safe no longer protect you in this digital era *at all*. Indeed, quite the opposite - many of the exceptions to those earlier forms that actively limited what government was allowed to do are instead now the rules that give government nearly unlimited abilities to search your data without even having to get a "warrant" rubber stamped.
Indeed, another of Ferguson's large points throughout this text is just how little privacy you have *specifically* when a warrant is signed... and he even tosses a point or two in about the "qualifications" needed to be able to sign such a warrant. (There are basically none to be a Magistrate Judge in particular.)
While all of this is utterly terrifying - and Ferguson goes to great lengths to show that this *should* be terrifying no matter your own personal political bent -, Ferguson does actually offer paths forward at every level that could at least begin to alleviate many of the concerns he details. He even goes so far as to note which ones are likely more politically palatable within the current system and which ones would do more to actually alleviate privacy concerns... but which are also far larger hauls in the current political environment.
Overall this is absolutely a book every American should read, and indeed anyone globally who thinks of America as the "land of the free". Ferguson shows here that this "freedom" is illusory at best, particularly in the current world environment.
Very much recommended.
November 27, 2025
90% of the data collection examples used in this book are against criminals. Therefore, it's no surprise I am against the author's views.
The author's voice sounds very sympathetic towards criminals. Like criminals need more rights?
"Judges should consider whether some data should simply be off limits to police, no matter how useful it might be to an investigation."
^ This viewpoint is quite shocking.
What I believe..
If you brutally murder someone, your Google search history SHOULD BE used against you. If you don't want that happening, perhaps the answer is; be a better human.
If you are a convicted pedophile, every device in your home SHOULD BE surveilled. If you don't want yours and your family member's devices surveilled, perhaps the answer is: be a better human.
If you hit another car and flee the scene, your car data SHOULD BE used against you. Perhaps the answer is; be a better human.
This book is well written, cited and researched. I simply oppose the author's views.
The author's voice sounds very sympathetic towards criminals. Like criminals need more rights?
"Judges should consider whether some data should simply be off limits to police, no matter how useful it might be to an investigation."
^ This viewpoint is quite shocking.
What I believe..
If you brutally murder someone, your Google search history SHOULD BE used against you. If you don't want that happening, perhaps the answer is; be a better human.
If you are a convicted pedophile, every device in your home SHOULD BE surveilled. If you don't want yours and your family member's devices surveilled, perhaps the answer is: be a better human.
If you hit another car and flee the scene, your car data SHOULD BE used against you. Perhaps the answer is; be a better human.
This book is well written, cited and researched. I simply oppose the author's views.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews