Isadora Borges Monroy

Dr Isadora Borges Monroy is a Political Scientist (McGill University ), independent researcher and consultant. Former Berkman Klein Center for the Study of Internet and Society affiliate at Harvard University.

She studies US and European deputized mass online surveillance, focusing on the institutional effects of information about it, and public opinion under increasingly divergent regulatory and informational ecosystems. Her latest works in this field are The Surveillance Complex: deputized law and order in advanced democracies (Information, Communication & Society, May 2025), “Chapter 16 The Surveillance Complex: A Political Economy of Digital Mass Surveillance in Democracies” in De Gruyter’s Handbook of Critical Data Studies and the forthcoming chapter “Institutional support for GDPR and its effect on European demand for privacy” in IEEE/Wiley’s Sustainability of Cybersecurity: From Technology and Practices to Regulations and Politics.

She is an enthusiastic supporter of public biking infrastructure and shared public transit infrastructure.

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

Previous work

Isadora studied the role of TorrentFreak in standardizing the VPN market and influencing consumer expectations and Canadian attitudes toward mass online surveillance in before and during the pandemic.

She has previously analyzed the legislative/lobbying process leading up to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the role of Google in interpreting its safe harbor provisions and enforcing it. She argues that Google’s decisions paved the way for “deputized mass surveillance” practices and technologies, the effective globalization of American copyright/end of fair use outside WIPO. Isadora empirically analyzed its enforcement using Google transparency reports, and its effect on the academic publishing. Before that she researched the role of the “web 2.0 paradigm” on international political economy and its effects on the concept of citizenship.