Many actors mobilize the cognitive, legal and technical tool-box of data protection when they discuss and address controversial issues such as digital mass surveillance. Yet, critical approaches to the digital only barely explore the politics of data protection in relation to data-driven governance. Building on governmentality studies and Actor- Network-Theory, this article analyses the potential and limits of using data protection to critique the 'digital age'. Using the conceptual tool of dispositifs, it sketches an analytics of data protection and the emergence of its configuration as 'data protection by design and by default'. This exploration reminds us that governing through data implies, first and foremost, governing digital data.
Many actors mobilize the cognitive, legal and technical tool-box of data protection when they discuss and address controversial issues such as digital mass surveillance. Yet, critical approaches to the digital only barely explore the politics of data protection in relation to data-driven governance. Building on governmentality studies and Actor- Network-Theory, this article analyses the potential and limits of using data protection to critique the 'digital age'. Using the conceptual tool of dispositifs, it sketches an analytics of data protection and the emergence of its configuration as 'data protection by design and by default'. This exploration reminds us that governing through data implies, first and foremost, governing digital data.
Many actors mobilize the cognitive, legal and technical tool-box of data protection when they discuss and address controversial issues such as digital mass surveillance. Yet, critical approaches to the digital only barely explore the politics of data protection in relation to data-driven governance. Building on governmentality studies and Actor-Network-Theory, this article analyses the potential and limits of using data protection to critique the 'digital age'. Using the conceptual tool of dispositifs, it sketches an analytics of data protection and the emergence of its configuration as 'data protection by design and by default'. This exploration reminds us that governing through data implies, first and foremost, governing digital data.
How to Engage with the Politics of Privacy in the Age of Preemptive Security? My suggestion is to start with data protection, which, following De Hert and Gutwirth (2006), is not exactly the same of privacy. Extrapolating from their analysis of the two as different "legal tools," I would say that privacy and data protection are two slightly different rationales of power relations: one of privacy based on the "opacity of the individual" and one of data protection on the "transparency and accountability of the powerful" (Gutwirth and De Hert 2008:275; emphasis in original). These rationales (attempt to) orientate two different loose dispositifs, each formed by a composite ensemble of elements. Some of these elements are peculiar to each dispositif, while others are shared or encompassed by both. I use the term dispositif as a methodological trick, building on a reading of Foucault's dispositifs as both (and often at the same time) objects and methods of analysis. A dispositif is loose, not per se, but because of the type of description I can provide without engaging in the details of its operations. Based on my research experience in the field of the European Union Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (EU AFSJ), I can describe data protection as a legal jigsaw, enacted in different forms: as a fundamental right (since 2000); in several legislations and regulations; as a series of fair information principles; in European case law, etc. But the dispositif also comprises many other things: institutions, organizational and technical architectures, experts, databases, processing software, controversies, claims, policies, etc. My main research interest is to better understand how this loose dispositif encounters other dispositifs, in particular high-tech security practices or programs. How do they get enmeshed and with what consequences and reconfigurations? How are rationales modified or deviated? Adapted from the source document.
The EUROSUR system is supposed to further the surveillance of external borders of European Union Member States. From this point of view, it can be considered an important step in the construction of a controlled space. Drawing inspiration from the Foucauldian attention to programs and technologies, and mobilizing the Actor- Network-Theory concepts of setting and actant, the paper investigates EUROSUR main methodological operations. It highlights how the making of a controlled space is, first and foremost, a mise-en-discours going well beyond surveillance and pro- hibition: a continuous effort to make sense of a disparate multiplicity, encompassing both human and nonhuman elements, both controlled and controlling ones. From a theoretical perspective, the chapter contributes to on-going endeavors to reinvigor- ate the post-structuralist studies of International Relations with approaches inspired by Actor-Network-Theory.
The EUROSUR system is supposed to further the surveillance of external borders of European Union Member States. From this point of view, it can be considered an important step in the construction of a controlled space. Drawing inspiration from the Foucauldian attention to programs and technologies, and mobilizing the Actor- Network-Theory concepts of setting and actant, the paper investigates EUROSUR main methodological operations. It highlights how the making of a controlled space is, first and foremost, a mise-en-discours going well beyond surveillance and pro- hibition: a continuous effort to make sense of a disparate multiplicity, encompassing both human and nonhuman elements, both controlled and controlling ones. From a theoretical perspective, the chapter contributes to on-going endeavors to reinvigor- ate the post-structuralist studies of International Relations with approaches inspired by Actor-Network-Theory.
The EUROSUR system is supposed to further the surveillance of external borders of European Union Member States. From this point of view, it can be considered an important step in the construction of a controlled space. Drawing inspiration from the Foucauldian attention to programs and technologies, and mobilizing the Actor- Network-Theory concepts of setting and actant, the paper investigates EUROSUR main methodological operations. It highlights how the making of a controlled space is, first and foremost, a mise-en-discours going well beyond surveillance and pro- hibition: a continuous effort to make sense of a disparate multiplicity, encompassing both human and nonhuman elements, both controlled and controlling ones. From a theoretical perspective, the chapter contributes to on-going endeavors to reinvigor- ate the post-structuralist studies of International Relations with approaches inspired by Actor-Network-Theory.
