Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas 347 | Andrew Guthrie Ferguson on How Your Data Will Be Used Against You
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Mar 16, 2026 Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor and author who studies privacy and policing in the digital age, joins to unpack how everyday tech creates constant self-surveillance. He discusses why law lags behind fast-changing data collection, how devices and data brokers feed policing, the rise of AI-powered real-time monitoring, and proposed legal reforms and corporate design choices to limit abuse.
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Map Data Classroom Demo
- Andrew Guthrie Ferguson opens his law seminar by asking students if they used GPS to travel and then reveals that map data is accessible to police and prosecutors.
- Almost everyone says they won't stop using GPS despite learning their location data can be used in court, illustrating the self-surveillance trap.
Law Frozen While Tech Races Ahead
- Ferguson emphasizes law lags technology: many Fourth Amendment cases still rely on payphone and microfiche-era precedents.
- Courts interpret modern privacy via doctrines like "reasonable expectation of privacy," which weren't designed for smartphones and cloud data.
Who Owns Privacy In The Cloud
- The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches, assessed by a court-created "reasonable expectation of privacy" test.
- Key question: do you have an expectation of privacy in data held by third-party cloud providers like Amazon or Google?