The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement

This event is part of the Cyber Alliance Speaker Series. Prof. Andrew Ferguson will present on his book, "The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement." Abstract: 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 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.