Current concern with the federal surveillance of social protests on social media, particularly that of Twitter’s #blacklivesmatter (Joseph, 2015), has coalesced the topics of the Fourth Amendment, civil liberties in a broad sense, and technology into conversation around the scale, scope, and cost of civilian surveillance.
From the historical surveillance of civil rights leaders by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to the current misuse of facial recognition technologies, surveillance patterns often reflect existing societal biases and build upon harmful and virtuous cycles. Facial recognition and other surveillance technologies also enable more precise discrimination, especially as law enforcement agencies continue to make misinformed, predictive decisions around arrest and detainment that disproportionately impact marginalized populations.