Author archives

Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick (PhD) is an author, educator, and speaker. He is Associate Professor of Political Sociology, University of San Diego. His work focuses on politics, culture, technology, and social change. He is the author of The Good Drone (MIT Press, 2020) and What Slaveholders Think (Columbia, 2017), shorter pieces in Slate, Al Jazeera, the Guardian, Aeon, and HuffPo, as well as commentary on BBC, NBC, and Fox News. He holds concurrent academic appointments at the University of San Diego and University of Nottingham. Find him on Twitter at @achoifitz.

How to hide from a drone – the subtle art of ‘ghosting’ in the age of surveillance

Drones of all sizes are being used by environmental advocates to monitor deforestation, by conservationists to track poachers, and by journalists and activists to document large protests. As a political sociologist who studies social movements and drones, Prof. Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick documents a wide range of nonviolent and pro-social drone uses in his new book, “The Good Drone” and shows that these efforts have the potential to democratize surveillance.

Subjects: AI, Big Data, Civil Liberties, Legal Research, Privacy