Book on mass surveillance wins Balsillie Prize for Public Policy [Video]

Toronto –

Wendy H. Wong has won the Balsillie Prize for Public Policy for her book on how mass data collection affects democratic freedom.

The Writers’ Trust of Canada presented Wong with the $60,000 award for “We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age” at a private dinner in Toronto on Tuesday evening.

Wong is a professor of political science at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus in Kelowna.

Jurors praised her book as an “eye-opening, gripping look at the ways in which humanity is being codified, monitored, and tracked at alarming speed and intensity — in largely unaccountable ways.”

The Balsillie Prize, administered by the Writers’ Trust and sponsored by the Balsillie Family Foundation, goes to a book of non-fiction that advances and influences public policy debates.

This year’s shortlisted authors, who each receive $5,000, were Gregor Craigie for “Our Crumbling Foundation: How We Solve Canada’s Housing Crisis”; Christopher …