The rise of digital surveillance strains the relationship between the rights, freedoms, and autonomy guaranteed under liberal democracies and the state's demands for order, security, and control. Recent advances in the field of technology have provided states with the ability to monitor, manage, and control their citizens using rapid advances in digital technology, such as algorithmic governance, artificial intelligence, and data aggregation (big data). These tools have the potential to create a new level of control, thereby violating the core principles of individual privacy, dissent, and political autonomy on which our liberal democratic governments are founded.

Because of a lack of transparency into how surveillance technology operates and a lack of institutional oversight of this technology, the environment created allows executive overreach to be commonplace. For example, the most vulnerable members of our society often bear the brunt of such overreach.

The shift from citizens to data subjects fundamentally changes the social contract between individuals and the state, with governance moving from consent-based legitimacy to predictive control.