It’s a common assumption that being online means you’ll have to part ways with your personal data and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Society seems set on a course to a point where our lives are subject to the scrutiny of computer algorithms. The data we generate is pored over and analysed, whether by governments for national security or companies for profit, and this is unlikely to change – the power and appeal of data analysis, once found, will not be given up easily.

At the top of some children’s Christmas present wish list this year will be the new Hello Barbie doll. Mattel’s latest doll connects to the internet via Wi-Fi and uses interactive voice response (IVR) to effectively converse with children. When the doll’s belt button is pushed, conversations are recorded and uploaded to servers operated by Mattel’s partner, ToyTalk.

It's no secret that the United States prison system is a failure. Dismal statistics abound about the growing prison population. Despite having only 5 percent of the world's population, the United States incarcerates a quarter of the world's prisoners, according to the Economist.

America has experienced yet another mass shooting. As a criminologist, I have reviewed recent research in hopes of debunking some of the common misconceptions I hear creeping into discussions that spring up whenever a mass shooting occurs.

Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with first degree murder November 24 in the death of Laquan McDonald. A video released by police shows Van Dyke shooting the teenager 16 times.

China has a problem. Social trust is at miserable levels, leading to a shaky business environment in which half of all written contracts are blatantly breached.

Before the dust has even settled from the attacks on Paris, familiar calls for greater surveillance powers are surfacing. The desire for greater security is understandable, but that doesn’t mean we should suspend our judgement on the measures proposed to bring it about.

Low-wage workers nationwide have been campaigning for a $15 hourly "living wage" and the right to organize without employer labor law-breaking. But a new think tank report says that in most states, $15 is not enough - even for one person.

How much does your smart home know about you? That was the question that Charles Givre, a data scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton, set out to answer in a recent experiment. Givre has an account on Wink, a platform designed to control, from a single screen, his Internet-connected home devices, such as door locks, window shades and LED lights.

When you type up a racy email to a loved one, do you consider the details private? Most of us would probably say yes, even though such messages often end up filtered through intelligence agencies and service providers.

Verizon is giving a new mission to its controversial hidden identifier that tracks users of mobile devices. Verizon said in a little-noticed announcement that it will soon begin sharing the profiles with AOL's ad network, which in turn monitors users across a large swath of the Internet.

When people say “privacy is dead”, it’s usually for one of two reasons. Either they truly believe that privacy is irrelevant or unachievable in today’s hyper-connected world or, more often, that not enough is being done to protect privacy when huge amounts of personal information are being posted online

I’ve had so many calls about an article appearing earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal – charging that Bernie Sanders’s proposals would carry a “price tag” of $18 trillion over a 10-year period – that it’s necessary to respond.

Income inequality in America has been growing rapidly, and is expected to increase. While the widening wealth gap is a hot topic in the media and on the campaign trail, there’s quite a disconnect between the perceptions of economists and those of the general public.

For most Alaskans, there’s only one name for the mountain known as Denali. Reestablishing this original place name, as President Obama did this week by executive order, honors the first peoples of the region, who have been connected to this land for thousands of years.

The ongoing protests in Ferguson one year after the shooting of Michael Brown highlight the elevated risks that African Americans face when interacting with police in the US.