WE SEE IT ALL

An investigation into the legal, political, and moral issues surrounding how the police and justice system use surveillance technology, asking the question: what are citizens of a free country willing to tolerate in the name of public safety?

Police now have unparalleled power at their fingertips, in the form of surveillance technology. Seamless, persistent, even permanent surveillance is not right around the corner; it's already here - sometimes already deployed, sometimes just waiting for the right excuse. Automatic license-plate readers allow police to amass a granular record of where people go, when, and for how long. Drones give police eyes--and possibly weapons--in the skies. Facial recognition poses perhaps the most dire and lasting technological threat. Algorithms purport to predict where and when crime will occur, and how big a risk a suspect has of re-offending. And there are tools that can crack a device's encryption keys, rendering all privacy protections useless. What does this mean for civil liberties, for police and how they operate and for our society, and for our definition of justice? Most importantly, what can we do about it?

We See It All answers these questions through on-the-ground reporting about the specific ways the police and law enforcement now use surveillance technology - and how they are thinking about extending its use. Embedding himself with both police and community activists, Jon Fasman looks at how these technologies help police do their jobs, and examines the delicate balance between wanting safe streets and less crime, while also protecting our privacy and civil liberties. Fasman provides a framework for thinking through these issues, exploring questions like: should we expect to be tracked and filmed whenever we leave our homes? Should the state have access to all of the data we generate? Should private companies? What might happen if all of these technologies are combined and put in the hands of a government with scant regard for its citizens' civil liberties?

Substantive and eminently readable, Fasman combines a vivid storytelling with a reporter's eye, and We See It All a takes us on deep dive into the moral, legal, and political issues at stake in the state of surveillance today, what's to come, and what we can do.

Jon Fasman is the Washington correspondent of The Economist, having previously been South-East Asia bureau chief and Atlanta correspondent. In addition to his work for The Economist, he is also the author of two novels, both published by The Penguin Press: The Geographer's Library, was a New York Times bestseller in 2005 and has been translated into more than a dozen languages; and The Unpossessed City, which was published in autumn of 2018, was a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. Fasman resides in Westchester County, N.Y.