Your Data Will Be Used Against You, a McKenzie Salon Series Presentation

Event Image
Black background with and orange rectangle coming from the left with The McKenzie on top of that and Salon Series in white inside the rectangle, College of Liberal Arts in orange under the rectangle.

Your data will be used against you. It is a warning and the title of Andrew Guthrie Ferguson’s new book. In this McKenzie Salon Series talk, George Washington University Law Professor 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 will explore 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 will propose legal interventions that address the threat of digital self-surveillance and provide concrete suggestions about how legislators, judges, and communities should respond.

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson is a Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School. He is a national expert on predictive policing, facial recognition, video analytics, big data surveillance, the Internet of Things, and the Fourth Amendment. Ferguson’s latest book, Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance (2026), reveals how smart devices and digital surveillance alter criminal
prosecution. His 2017 book The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement won the Association of American Publishers 2018 PROSE AWARD for Law and Legal Studies.

Please submit interpreting requests to myAccess.rit.edu.


Contact
Sarah Contant
Event Snapshot
When and Where
March 20, 2026
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Room/Location: McKenzie Commons (LBR-1251)
Who

Open to the Public

Interpreter Requested?

No

Topics
interdisciplinary studies
research