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Presenter: Susan Reynolds

Faculty Sponsor: Kathleen A. Brown-Perez

School: UMass Amherst

Research Area: Law and Legal Studies

Session: Poster Session 5, 3:15 PM - 4:00 PM, Auditorium, A67

ABSTRACT

This research compiles evidence of the capacity of surveillance capitalism and private-public data sharing partnerships in the United States to reduce the American expectation of privacy to violate due process rights with disparate impacts predicated on race and citizenship status. Using peer-reviewed journal articles and analytical research on the history of mass surveillance from America’s founding to the information age, modern surveillant private-sector and state infrastructure are contextualized and critiqued as tools of social control, racialized mass e-carceration, and profiteering from the generation of an exploitable, incarcerated workforce. This research also draws from multidisciplinary sources within the social sciences to articulate how the technological and legal advancements in risk assessment tools and predictive policing algorithms perpetuate systemic racial inequality. Finally, legal theory around the Fourth Amendment and the American expectation of privacy is analyzed to produce recommendations for federal government data privacy regulations that can keep up with rapid technological innovation. The rationale for the research was to open the eyes of everyday Americans to the broad scale of personal information collection by the private companies you interact with online and how your data is unknowingly taken by third-party data brokers and the U.S. government. Overall, the purpose of the research is to inform public opinion on violations of privacy rights and to inspire the uptake of everyday data privacy protection strategies.