In Chilling Effects, Jonathon W. Penney explores the increasing weaponization of surveillance, censorship, and new technology to repress and control us. With corporations, governments, and extremist actors using big data, cyber-mobs, AI, and other threats to limit our rights and freedoms, concerns about chilling effects – or how these activities deter us from exercising our rights – have become urgent. Penney draws on law, privacy, and social science to present a new conformity theory that highlights the dangers of chilling effects and their potential to erode democracy and enable a more illiberal future. He critiques conventional theories and provides a framework for predicting, explaining, and evaluating chilling effects in a range of contexts. Urgent and timely, Chilling Effects sheds light on the repressive and conforming effects of technology, state, and corporate power, and offers a roadmap of how to respond to their weaponization today and in the future.

‘Chilling Effects couldn’t be more vital and timely. The government is orchestrating a massive wave of chilling effects to promote authoritarian aims, and the law is ill-prepared to address the harm. Penney demonstrates why chilling effects are one of the most pernicious threats to free speech and democracy. This book is the definitive account of chilling effects – the most comprehensive and incisive analysis to date. In addition to providing a clear and deep understanding of chilling effects, Penney develops compelling legal reforms to prevent chilling effects from subverting our freedom.’

Daniel J. Solove - author of On Privacy and Technology and the Bernard Professor of IP and Technology Law at George Washington University Law School

‘With the voice of a storyteller and the persuasive power of a sociologist and legal theorist, Jonathon Penney helps us understand why and how the powerful can chill our behavior, morphing, manipulating, and changing what we say and do and who we aspire to be as individuals, groups, and society. This book is a masterclass on the social force and meaning of chilling effects at the behest of governments, companies, and cyber mobs. We must pay attention to Penney’s lessons, lest we become less free and our democracies wither.’

Danielle Keats Citron - Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor in Law, University of Virginia School of Law, Vice President, Cyber Civil Rights Initiative

‘Jonathon Penney’s Chilling Effects is one of the most important books on privacy and civil liberties written this decade. Penney advances the our understanding of how threats to our rights affect our behavior and thinking, by offering a nuanced theory of chilling effects as conformity, by rooting that theory in solid empirical social science, and by offering comprehensive solutions to limit chilling effects and protect our fragile democratic freedoms. An instant classic, Chilling Effects belongs on the bookcase or nightstand of every scholar of civil liberties – and of every citizen who cares about democracy.’

Neil Richards - Koch Distinguished Professor in Law, Washington University

‘Amidst profound ongoing concerns around online censorship, threats to privacy, and harassment, Jonathon Penney offers an imaginative and elegant framework to understand how we might mitigate their proliferation. This book lights a path from today’s narrow legal doctrines towards more comprehensive protection for our hard-won personal freedoms.’

Jonathan Zittrain - Professor of Law, Computer Science, and Public Policy, Harvard University

‘Jonathon Penney has written an enormously thought-provoking book of urgent relevance to our contemporary political condition. Courts declining to hear claims about privacy and surveillance harms owe us all a much better explanation of what they are doing.’

Julie E. Cohen - Mark Claster Mamolen Professor of Law and Technology, Georgetown Law

‘AI-enhanced censorship is being deployed by both governments and big tech, and it can control and silence us in new and unprecedented ways. Jonathon Penney writes an authoritative account of this dangerous moment, blending legal expertise, social science acumen, and tech savvy. Beautifully written, erudite, and comprehensive, Chilling Effects is essential reading for anyone wishing to endure this era with our fundamental freedoms and democracies intact.’

Bruce Schneier - renowned security technologist and author of Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship

‘It is now widely understood that we live in a matrix of real-time digital surveillance in which every aspect of our lives is subject to algorithmic analysis on behalf of big tech platforms and government security agencies. But what does this new ecosystem portend for the future of rights, democracy, and the social bonds that tie us together in mutually supportive communities? In this masterpiece of interdisciplinary research, the world’s leading authority on ‘chilling effects,’ Jonathon Penney elaborates on the ways in which digital surveillance are casting a shadow over our lives in ways that are corrosive to civic deliberation, inducing conforming and compliant behavior on a mass scale. This thoughtful, extremely informative book is a must read for anyone interested in the insidious ways in which the proliferating means of digital surveillance systems are undermining rights, freedoms, and democracy and – more importantly – how to resist them.’

Ron Deibert - Professor of Political Science and Director of the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab

‘Jonathon Penney has an unparalleled talent to describe the nature, manifestation, and consequences of surveillance and their chilling effects. With ease the book paints a clear picture of how chilling effects intersect with power, suppression, and control. We all need – now more than ever – this insightful guide on how to protect privacy, freedom, equality, and democracy in the digital age.’

Sandra Wachter - Professor of Technology and Regulation, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

‘The concept of chilling effects is surprisingly underdeveloped and misunderstood. In Chilling Effects, Jonathon Penney has given us the definitive work on the concept with a bold new vision of how to understand them as pressure to conform and comply. This book is a vital contribution to our understanding of free expression and surveillance and a must read for a better democracy.’

Woodrow Hartzog - Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law

‘Jonathon Penney’s writing is theoretically rich and normatively compelling. At a moment where state and corporate power are increasingly aligned, this book provides an intellectual toolset for resistance, unpicking all the ways in which laws and digital surveillance combine to compel and encourage compliance and conformity. In short, a book for this age.’

Vicki Nash - Professor, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

‘As we usher in a world of AI-powered surveillance, Chilling Effects offers an important analysis of the ways in which such surveillance can shape our behavior. Its message that this is not just about privacy harms, but the health of democracy and civil society more broadly, could not be timelier.’

Lisa Austin - Professor, University of Toronto Faculty of Law

‘Jonathon Penney powerfully reframes ‘chilling effects’ for the digital age, revealing how surveillance and social pressure push people to conform and self-censor. With compelling examples and a bold new theory, this book is essential reading for anyone concerned about the future of democracy and the battles over freedom of expression that will shape it.’

Urs Gasser - Dean, School of Social Science and Technology, Technical University of Munich

‘I don’t know anyone who has thought harder and deeper about chilling effects than Jonathon Penney. An important book for anybody interested in privacy, surveillance, data protection, or freedom of expression. I highly recommend it.’

Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius - Professor of ICT and Law, iHub, Radboud University

‘Chilling effects have never been more urgent or relevant, given the current political and media climate, and this book arrives at precisely the right time. With remarkable theoretical clarity, and building on his earlier influential work, Jonathon Penney expands the chilling effects framework into a powerful model of social compliance and behavioral control. He offers a rigorous and comprehensive foundation for an emerging field that scholars, practitioners, and advocates alike cannot afford to ignore.’

Michael Latzer - Professor and Chair, Media Change & Innovation Division, IKMZ – University of Zurich