Chicago-Kent College of Law Professor Richard Warner recently commented on the growing impact of surveillance in everyday life, following a public incident involving executives at the tech company Astronomer. On July 16, 2025, the CEO and another senior leader from Astronomer were filmed by a “kiss cam” at a Coldplay concert. The video went viral online, leading to both executives resigning.
Warner pointed out that modern surveillance makes it hard for individuals to remain anonymous in public settings. “Contemporary surveillance practices make it difficult to get lost in the crowd, as the Coldplay incident illustrates,” he said.
Despite this environment, Warner believes that maintaining privacy is still possible under certain circumstances. He shared a personal anecdote: “My wife and I dined at Le Grand Colbert in Paris this spring, but, even though I mention it here, it is highly likely that our dining there will remain obscure and attract no one’s notice,” he explained. “That could have easily been the case for the Coldplay couple if they had not had the bad luck of being caught on camera.”
Warner also emphasized that even seemingly private actions can leave digital records. He has explored these issues in his book with Robert H. Sloan, *The Privacy Fix: How To Preserve Privacy in the Onslaught of Surveillance* (Cambridge University Press 2021). In their work, they reference John Gilliom and Torin Monohan’s observation from *SuperVision: An Introduction to the Surveillance Society* (2012): “If you figure that your life is so disorganized, private, and fragmented that no biographer would or could keep track of it, think again—your biography is being written as you read these pages.”
Returning to his own example about dining out in Paris, Warner noted that digital transactions create permanent traces. “If someone wanted to take the time and trouble to investigate, they could discover that we dined at Le Grand Colbert since I paid with a credit card,” he said. “Pervasive data collection and analysis writes our biographies, and—if someone is interested—it is there to read.”