Intelligence gathering is in a state of flux. Enabled by massive computing power, new modes of communications analysis now touch the lives of citizens around the globe – not just those considered suspicious or threatening.

Big Data Surveillance and Security Intelligence reveals the profound shift to “big data” practices that security agencies have made in recent years, as the increasing volume of information from social media and other open sources challenges traditional intelligence gathering. Working together, the Five Eyes intelligence partners – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States – are using new methods of data analysis to identify and pre-empt risks to national security. But at what cost to civil liberties, human rights, and privacy protection?

In this astute collection, leading academics, civil society experts, and regulators debate the pressing questions raised by security intelligence and surveillance in Canada in the age of big data.

David Lyon is director of the Surveillance Studies Centre, Queen’s Research Chair in Surveillance Studies, and professor in the Department of Sociology and the Faculty of Law at Queen’s University. Since 2008, he has led The New Transparency: Surveillance and Social Sorting research team that produced the present volume. Some of his recent books are Liquid Surveillance (cowritten with Zygmunt Bauman; Polity Press, 2013), The Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies (coedited with Kirstie Ball and Kevin Haggerty; Routledge, 2012), Identifying Citizens: ID Cards as Surveillance (Polity Press, 2009), and Surveillance Studies: An Overview (Polity Press, 2007). He is a cofounder of the journal Surveillance and Society and the Surveillance Studies Network.

David Lyon's profile page

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Big Data Surveillance and Security Intelligence: The Canadian Case tackles some of the most pressing issues of our time — issues that can only be expected to grow in size and complexity…[it] is an essential and revealing examination of the tug-of-war between civil liberties and national security in our fast-moving digital age.

The Sidebar

This is a dark book, but one which should be read.

FORUM

This wide-ranging collection interrogates the intelligence-gathering practices of Canadian security agencies in the shift to "big data" surveillance methods. [This book] fills a need for literature on a topic where information about the Canadian context is relatively scarce.

Canadian Law Library Review