Book excerpt: The notion of surveillance has become increasingly more crucial in public conversation as new tools of observation are obtained by many different players. The traditional notion of “overseeing” is being increasingly replaced by multi-level surveillance where many different actors, at different levels of hierarchy, from the child surveilling the parent to the state surveilling its citizens, are entering the surveillance theater. This creates a unique surveillance ecosystem where the individual is observed not only as an analog flesh-and-blood body moving through real spaces such as a shopping mall, but also tracked as a data point where the volume of data is perpetually and permanently expanding as the digital life story is inscribed in the digital spaces. The combined narrative of the individual is now under surveillance. Modern Day Surveillance Ecosystem and Impacts on Privacy navigates the reader through an understanding of the self as a narrative element that is open for observation and analysis. This book provides a broad-based and theoretically grounded look at the overall processes of surveillance in a global system. Covering topics including commodity, loss of privacy, and big data, this text is essential for researchers, government officials, policymakers, security analysts, lawmakers, teachers, professors, graduate and undergraduate students, practitioners, and academicians interested in communication, technology, surveillance, privacy, and more.