Introduction

The present contribution brings border research into dialogue with critical science and technology studies (STS), and scrutinizes the interrelation between information and communication technologies and processes of bordering. In particular, it addresses the ways through which biometrics, dataveillance, predictive analytics, and robotics enlist the human body, networks, and human-machine assemblages in practices of in/exclusion at the contemporary dis-located, and ‘smart’ border. Through a description of the socio-technical apparatuses underlying biometric, algorithmic, and automated border work, the contribution develops the term iBorder, and connects its specific affordances to an emergent late-modern regime of security. In introducing the notion of cultural technique, I argue that contemporary technologically facilitated practices of bordering co-constitute contingent, rather than simply process given, subjectivities and frames for practice.

My talk addresses the role of new technologies of identification, surveillance, and automation in processes of bordering. More precisely, I will develop the term iBorder to conceptually grasp how biometrics, dataveillance, predictive analytics, and robotics impact upon and change contemporary de-territorialised regimes and practices of in/exclusion.

Borders and technologies: Theoretical frames

Current advances in network surveillance, biometric identification, robotics, and algorithmic analytics facilitate processes through which the border disperses and becomes independent of territorial confinement and topographical location. New mobile regimes of in/exclusion target individual bodies wherever they are, while algorithmically determined risks and threats increasingly inform and predispose human decision-making. I suggest here that the protocols, operations, and procedures that underlie the above-mentioned developments form the core of a fundamental cultural technique of bordering that not only processes given, but also actively co-constitutes contingent, identities and patterns of life.

Presently, borders have lost much of an earlier dependence on territoriality and physical impenetrability (Parker and Vaughan-Williams, 2009; Perkins and Rumford, 2013). Contemporary technologies afford new dynamics of transnationalization, privatization, and digitization (Bauman et.al., page 126) that rearticulate borders and blur distinctions between state and business, private and public, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion. As Côté-Boucher, Infantino and Salter (2014) express it, “while modern borders have been taken to express the power of the nation-state […], state power is nowadays exercised by delegating practices of state sovereignty to local, transnational and private actors outside the state apparatus and away from traditional state actors” (page 196).

Recently, the role of technology in processes of dis-locating and dispersing borders has attracted increasing attention. Vukov and Sheller (2013, page 225), for instance, note a transformation of borders toward “sophisticated, flexible, and mobile devices of tracking, filtration, and exclusion”. According to the authors, “new technologies of bio-informatic border security and remote surveillance” (page 226) lead to a paradigm shift that demands “sustained attention to the technocultural and communicative infrastructure of these bordering devices and technologies” (page 227). As such, a vernacularisation of border studies as the one called for by Perkins and Rumford (2013) has to include a non-human dimension that critically addresses recent technological changes and their potential impacts. The term iBorder enables such a widened perspective in that it affords a systematic description of the changing technological environments within which emergent regimes of late-modern bordering operate. The concept opens for attention to non-human, machinic forms of agency and facilitates a critical investigation of their roles in contemporary cultural techniques of sorting, profiling, categorizing, predicting, and filtering.

Main findings

In the following, I will specify the technologies behind the apparatus of iBorder along three different axis – biometrics, dataveillance, and robotics. Through a description of key technical advances and their specific affordances, two tendencies in the contemporary cultural technique of bordering will emerge: One consists of new technologies and operations that allow for an improved identification of specific individual subjects, while the other is based on the mining and subsequent analysis of data sets at population level with the aim of predicting and if necessary pre-empting abstracted patterns of life. Both tendencies are facilitated by the socio-technological apparatus of iBorder and constitute core elements of bordering as a cultural technique.

The “hip, tricky little ‘i’” (Andrejevic, 2007, page 4) in iBorder points to a series of technologically afforded tendencies in contemporary bordering that interconnect subjects, operations, and machines in complex co-constitutive assemblages. Firstly, iBorder informationalizes the body and enables its virtual emergence as “data-doubles” (Muller 2008, page 128; Lyon 2014) in inter-operable databases. Secondly, iBorder individualizes the border. It attaches itself to mobile bodies by means of increasingly transparent technical interfaces and biological and behavioural markers. The body thus becomes “the carrier of the border” (Amoore, 2006, page 348) that moves along wherever subjects may go. Thirdly, iBorder implicates subjects in the bordering process in new ways. New technologies of ubiquitous surveillance and dataveillance in a “digital enclosure” (Andrejevic, 2007, page 2) record, and subsequently exploit, day-to-day practices to establish implicit norms against which potential deviations can be measured. Fourthly, iBorder is interactive in that its constitutive technologies afford constant feedback loops that afford ever more sophisticated forms of “hypercoordination and microcoordination” (Thrift 2004, page 185). Fifthly, iBorder infringes upon personal rights and constitutively undermines the private sphere of citizens, and lastly, iBorder is intimidating in that its techniques and applications are justified with reference to allegedly pervasive threats and dangers creating the discursive basis for a “neurotic citizenship” (Ajana, 2013, page 143). As a consequence of these tendencies, borders as bounded topographical locations or zones recede and re-emerge as iBorder – an ephemeral, technologically afforded aura that attaches itself to the subject and that transforms Agamben’s (1998) overflowing spaces of the exception into a pervasive relational “banopticon” in the sense of Bigo (2007).

iBorder refers to a socio-technological apparatus that employs techniques of biometric and algorithmic bordering to validate, establish, and indeed produce, identities and patterns of life. The deployed practices enlist individual subjects as both target and source in bordering processes that disperse locally as well as across transnational space. In these processes, individuals become objects of governance to be analysed and assessed, but also serve as implicit contributors to the databases enabling algorithm-driven mappings of patterns of behaviour and association.

From ontologies to ontic operations: Practices of iBordering

So far, I have conceptualized the socio-technical apparatus of iBorder to highlight the technological infrastructure implying a potential for pervasive transnational surveillance and control. However, as Walters (2011) aptly points out, researchers should avoid apocalyptic stances that take the pretensions of a global security apparatus composed of clandestinely operating state actors and private companies with vested economic interests at face value. Rather, Walters (2011) suggests, critical research should focus on “the fissure and limits” of socio-technical systems of control and show that these systems “are often not as purposeful and coherent as they might sometimes appear” (page 55).

Arguing in a similar direction, Bigo (2007, 2014) alerts to the fact that contemporary border research exhibits a “lack of attention to the dispositions of the agents and the contexts” of bordering processes (Bigo, 2014, page 211), and therefore often remains oblivious of the “microphysics” of power and of the capacities “of the weak […] to subvert the illusory dream of total control” (Bigo 2007, page 12). As Raley (2013) points out, all “constellations of control are imbricated with constellations of expressive resistance” (page 131).

As a an alternative methodological template, Walters (2011) proposes to direct empirical attention to what he terms “technological work” (page 58) – the mundane day-to-day activities and performances that “go into making technology function” (page 59) or that might compromise their outcomes (page 54). As such, articulating a similar criticism as Perkins and Rumford (2013) in their appeal for a vernacularisation of border research, also Walters (2011) asserts the significance of everyday practices for processes of bordering, but extends the scope into a highly technologized area of surveillance, management, and control.

Conclusion

The concept of iBorder developed in this contribution highlights the socio-technical apparatus that affords the co-constitutive cultural technique of bordering in emergent control societies. Juridical and disciplinary aspects produce obedient and docile individuals through such mechanisms as biometric identification, ‘trusted’ traveller programmes, ubiquitous (self) surveillance, as well as the constant threat of decelerating searches, detention, and ultimately death. On the other hand, a technologically facilitated biopolitical component draws upon algorithm-based predictive analytics and robotics to regulate flows of categories by identifying implied norms against which suspicious deviations can be measured, thus not only predicting and potentially preventing the occurrence of threatening patterns and compensating for their effects, but also framing and predisposing the very performances through which such patterns are brought forth and made relevant in the first place.

Similar to the corals, pens, and fences becoming productive of species of domesticated animals referred to by Winthrop-Young (2013), I argue that contemporary technologies of identification, tracking, mapping, and mining that constitute the cultural technique of ibordering entail a biometric and algorithmic identity production that actively shapes the contingent bodies, subjectivities, data-doubles, and patterns of life it purports to merely identify and process.

References

Agamben G, 1998, Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life. (Stanford University Press, Stanford)

Ajana B, 2013 Governing Through Biometrics. The Biopolitics of Identity. (Palgrave Macmillan, London)

Amoore L, 2006, “Biometric Borders: Governing Mobilities in the War on Terror” Political Geography 25 336-351

Amoore L, de Goede M, 2005, “Governance, Risk and Dataveillance in the War on Terror” Crime, Law & Social Change 43 149-173

Amoore L, de Goede M, 2008, “Transactions After 9/11: The Banal Face of the Preemptive Strike” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 33 173-185

Andrejevic M, 2007 iSpy. Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era. (University Press of Kansas, Lawrence)Bauman Z, Bigo D, Esteves P, Jabri V, Lyon D, Walker RBJ, “After Snowden: Rethinking the Impact of Surveillance” International Political Sociology 8 121-144

Bigo D, 2007, “Detention of Foreigners, States of the Exception, and the Social Practices of Control of the Banopticon” in Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory’s Edge Eds P Rajaram, C Grundy-Warr (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis) pp 3-33

Bigo D, 2014, “The (In)Securitization Practices of the Three Universes of EU Border Control: Military/Navy – Border Guards/Police – Database Analysts” Security Dialogue 45(8) 209-225Côté-Boucher K, Infantino F, Salter MB, 2014, “Border Security as Practice: An Agenda for Research” Security Dialogue 45(3) 195-208

Lyon D, 2014, “Surveillance, Snowden, and Big Data: Capacities, Consequences, Critique” Big Data & Society 1(2) doi: 10.1177/2053951714541861

Muller BJ, 2008, “Travellers, Borders, Dangers: Locating the Political at the Biometric Border”, in Politics at the Airport Ed M B Salter (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis) pp 127-143

Parker N, Vaughan-Williams N, 2009, “Lines in the Sand? Towards an Agenda for Critical Border Studies” Geopolitics 14(3) 582-587

Perkins C, Rumford C, 2013, “The Politics of (Un)fixity and the Vernacularisation of Borders” Global Society 27(3) 267-282

Raley R, 2013, “Dataveillance and Counterveillance”, in Raw Data Is an Oxymoron Ed L Gitelman (MIT Press, Cambridge) pp 121-145

Thrift N, 2004, “Remembering the Technological Unconscious by Foregrounding Knowledges of Position” Environment & Planning D: Society & Space 22 175-190

Vukov T, Sheller M, 2013, “Borderwork: Surveillant Assemblages, Virtual Fences, and Tactical Countermedia” Social Semiotics 23(2) 225-241

Walters W, 2011, “Rezoning the Global: Technological Zones, Technological Work and the (Un-) Making of Biometric Borders”, in The Contested Politics of Mobility: Borderzones and Irregularity Ed V Squire (Routledge, London) pp 51-73

Winthrop-Young G, 2013, “Cultural Techniques: Preliminary Remarks” Theory, Culture & Society 30(6) 3-19

My goal in this talk is to further develop the informational conception of logic proposed in [1] by motivating and exploring a methodology for logical practices (using, developing and thinking about logic) that is inspired by the methodology from the philosophy of information, with particular emphasis on its constructionist metaphilosophy [2]. Against this background, I’m interested in the following phenomenon: If a formalisation-process leads to the refinement of one or more concepts we are interested in (either because we are explicitly formalising them, or because we use them to talk about the concepts we are actually formalising), this often leads to a “splitting of notions”. In that case, the uncareful use of the original notions in combination with their refinements often leads to fallacies of equivocation. As suggested in [3], the development of a design-perspective on logic is meant to show that this phenomenon is a reason to abandon the original concepts, and not a reason to cast doubt on the proposed refinement. As a corollary, constructionism is logic contributes to the motivation of a pluralist perspective on logical practices.

The proposed view has affinities with several contemporary and historical perspectives on logic.

1. The emphasis on design is akin to Carnap’s own “logic first” approach, which he contrasted with a “philosophy first” approach to logical theorising, as well as to his views about explic­ation and conceptual engineering [4].
2. The proposed view also resembles the suggestion that our logical practice of formulating a logic should be seen as an entirely standard form of theory-building about a given subject- matter (Logic), rather than as the manipulation of Logic itself [5].
3. The application of insights from the method of abstraction (the methodological recommendation and formal tool to make explicit the interface we use to access the system we study) to the use and development of logic is entirely in line with the logic-as-model view proposed by Shapiro and Cook, and especially with its emphasis on the need to negotiate tradeoffs [6].

Even though the main lines of my proposal can be described in terms of the above views, I will develop it from first principles and focus explicitly on poietic aspects of actual logical practices.

The basic tenet of constructionism as an epistemological thesis is that we can only know what we make. Our only knowledge is a maker’s knowledge; a knowledge of the artefacts we built and thus can examine from within (white box) rather than a user’s knowledge we acquire by observing what is given from without (black box). As Floridi puts it: “Knowledge is not about getting the message from the world; it is first and foremost about negotiating the right sort of communication with it. (…) [C]onstructionism is neither realism nor constructivism, because knowledge neither describes nor prescribes how the world is but inscribes it with semantic artefacts.” [2]. As a methodological recommendation, constructionism is less radical, and only calls for the complementation of conceptual analysis with conceptual engineering. This is the sense in which I’ll employ the term.

When treated as a core ingredient of the philosophy of information, constructionism works hand in hand with the method of abstraction [7]. Whereas constructionism emphasises the need to engineer our access to the world, the method of abstraction provides the concepts that allow us to think about different ways of accessing the world, but also draws attention to the fact that since we can only know our models of the world, we cannot directly compare a model with the world (our only knowledge is by proxy), but only compare different models. This does not only imply that we can only compare levels of abstraction, but also that there is no most general, maximally precise or otherwise epistemically or ontologically fundamental level of abstraction that could play the role of final arbiter (for all means and purposes a direct access).

As I shall argue, we can think about logics as semantic artefacts that allow us to access the world for descriptive as well as for deductive or inferential purposes. This is already a pluralist assumption, for if a logic acts as an interface or a communication-channel, we have no reason to assume that there is a single best all-purpose logic. Indeed, pluralism about levels of abstraction can naturally be associated with two important theoretical virtues of logical pluralism, namely:

1. The freedom to make certain distinctions and/or fudge some other distinctions, and
2. The freedom to outlaw certain expressions.

One of the most visible tasks of the development of a formal logic is the design of a formal language. Since such formal languages are almost by definition artificial languages, the description of the rules that govern that language (formation-rules, truth-conditions, formal inference-patters) is much closer to conceptual engineering than it is to conceptual analysis. Narrowly conceived, language design is an uncontroversial example of process that has to result in an artefact that has to meet certain specifications (a perspicuous notation system or well-behaved language), but what would it mean to consider logical theorising as a whole as a design task? Highly simplified, such a view on logic would mark clear departure from traditional logical analysis, for where successful logical analysis results in a formal account that agrees with the data (something that is given), successful logical construction results in a formal account that meets a set of self-imposed specifications, which includes but is not limited to agreement with the data.

An understanding of logical theorising as a whole in terms of meeting certain specifications gives a more radical pragmatic slant to the question of logic choice. It’s the pragmatics behind what Shapiro calls the negotiation of tradeoffs within his logic-as-model perspective, or what I call the balancing the logical virtues of deductive strength and discriminatory power (the ability to tell formulae apart).

Putting this on the table raises the further question of what a specification for a problem in logical theorising might look like. If we understand a specification as a criterion for correctness and malfunction relative to a given level of abstraction [8], it is clear that in such a context success does not merely depend on general theoretical virtues, but also on context and/or application specific norms. By further developing this suggestion, we should arrive at an account of “logic-specification” that guides our design decisions in the sense that it tells us how to deal with tradeoffs between different desirable formal features. As a corollary, it also further embeds a logical pluralism within the methodology of the philosophy of information, since it is consistent with the view that some logics are more general than others, but also recognises that wider applicability always comes at a cost.

References and Notes

1. Allo and E. Mares, "Informational Semantics as a Third Alternative?", Erkenntnis, 77, no. 2, p. . 167-185, 2012.
2. Floridi, "A defence of constructionism: philosophy as conceptual engineering", Metaphilosophy, 42, no. 3, p. . 282-304, 2011.
3. Allo, "Synonymy and intra-theoretical pluralism", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 93, no. 1, p. . 77-91, 2015.
4. Carus, Carnap and Twentieth-Century Thought, no. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
5. Priest, Doubt Truth to be a Liar, no. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
6. Shapiro, Varieties of logic, no. Corby: Oxford University Press, 2014.
7. Floridi, "The Method of Levels of Abstraction", Minds and Machines, 18, no. 3, p. 303-329, 2008.
8. Turner, "Specification", Minds and Machines, 21, no. 2, p. 135-152, 2011.

Introduction

This paper addresses the European ICT research regime as an integral part of security research, as it emerged at EU level and also after 9/11. It focuses thereby on the unequal influence certain stakeholders from the high-tech development industry have on the biased directions of the research agenda. The market for civil security has globally grown by a factor larger than 10 since 2001, and, despite the Snowden revelations in 2013, the demand for surveillance ICT by public authorities and private facility operators is rapidly rising. ICT research policy is a core proactive form of public security and social policy, by creating a pool of solutions and measures to be drawn upon in the middle term. In this setting, ICT research success is premised upon a high-tech solutionist, economistic mantra of innovation after which research policy results are measured along econometric indicators. In this respect, reflection upon undesirable side effects of ICT and security-relevant technologies on society is currently methodologically neglected and side-stepped. What is more, the paper questions the capacity of the developed technologies to be “fit-for-purpose”, that is, to factually deliver on the comprehensive societal tasks they have been deployed for. The analysis is directed toward ICT function creep, that is, application of the developed technologies other than the originally envisioned, to intended and unintended “dual use” of ICT, that is, the unsolicited transfer of civil technologies to military use. The lack of agreed-upon, rigorous criteria for evidence, which makes (ex-post) evaluations, but also (ex-ante) assessment an arbitrary endeavour, should give place to institutionalization of impact assessment methodologies and practices in the interest of broader segments of society.

Methods

In this paper a threefold methodological approach is pursued: First, a scoping of EU policy documents is done in order to trace legal and policy contexts for ICT (research) policy; Second, a mapping of stakeholders with their diverging agendas within the organizational regime along an influence (power/interest) matrix. The author draws, lastly, on his experience from expert agenda consultations at both German and at EU level, concerning the current and the future ICT/security research programmes.

Results and Discussion

The European Security Research Programme:

Responding to the European Security Strategy (2003) the European Commission launched the mission-oriented research Programme to advance European security through Research and Technology (2004). Budgeted with € 1.4 B under FP7, and with € 1.7 B under Horizon 2020, it is tailored to address four key areas: Fostering Resilience against Disasters and Crises, Fighting against Crime and Terrorism, Border and External Security, and Digital Security. The programme focus is on CBRNE detection, telecommunication data mining technologies, such as DPI, profiling and predictive analytics, biometric identification and pattern recognition, location tracking technologies, as well as surveillance in the form of drones and CCTV. Security research should be mission-driven and serving the five priority areas of the European Union’s Internal Security Strategy (ISS): Disrupt international Crime Networks; Prevent terrorism and address radicalisation and recruitment; Raise levels of security for citizens/businesses in cyberspace; Strengthen security through border management; Increase Europe’s resilience to crises and disasters. Two major issues have already raised criticism, e.g. by Statewatch, and the European Parliament:

1) The programme is supply-led, promoting industrial interests and not serving the needs of end-users or of the citizens at large.

2) The funded technological research raises serious ethics and fundamental rights questions and is fostering societal insecurity instead of security.

The Challenge:

Security policy and, by default, security research are value-laden, contentious public policy fields. They ought to be informed both by expert evidence and by citizens’ values throughout the R&D&I process. Yet, problem definitions, goals, and innovation paths for security research are predominantly shaped by interest groups from the industry. This imbalance in stakeholder participation has, in turn led to a biased “high-tech” understanding of security.

Public concern is growing about how emerging as well as readily available ICT and security technologies, such as biometrics, pattern recognition and detection, risk profiling, and the use of remote sensing and surveillance ‘drones’, impact on society. What is at stake with such technologies goes beyond issues of data protection and privacy, and poses fundamental questions about the blurring military and civil applications (“Dual Use”), non-intended and non-anticipated consequences of their marketization, such as discrimination of minority social groups, and feasibility and desirability of maximum-security societies. If ethics and societal impacts are to be properly addressed in current and future EU ICT/security research programmes then comprehensive appraisal by experts and citizens themselves is required.

Power asymmetries in the leverage certain actors, such as high-tech Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs), or lobbyists from industry associations have, help them exercise disproportional influence upon the formulation of objectives and the programme of the EU ICT/security policy. c the issue of increasing and streamlining the engagement of civil society actors, being the ultimate beneficiaries of research on security technologies, during the policy cycle of security research in order to enhance both its legitimacy and its effectiveness. The three governance mechanisms recommended below contribute at different stages of the security research policy cycle to make both the process more accountable and responsive to the citizens’ needs, and the results more socially and ethically acceptable.  

Conclusions

In conclusion, three recommendations of institutional/organizational nature are at hand:     These are meant to make the ICT/security research governance regime more transparent and legitimate, but also more accountable and responsive to the needs and concerns of society, and not merely serve particularistic economic interests. Moreoever, strengthening checks and broadening participation would decisively contribute to minimizing negative non-intended effects of those technologies once applied.

1) Upstream & Streamline CSO Participation

There is a documented need to integrate civil society and its diverse organisations (CSOs) in the early stages of public policy decision making, particularly when the stakes are as high as in the civil security realm. The requirement to engage relevant societal stakeholders beyond organised interests is inscribed both in European Commission’s “White Paper on Good Governance” (2002), but also in the “Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing Horizon 2020” (2012). The implication for security research is that CSOs should not be any longer a “fig-leaf” add-on, promoting “acceptance” for new security technologies, but instead co-define the agenda of security research and make sure that 1) it meets the needs of society, 2) it benefits society, and 3) does not have negative impacts on society.

2) Conduct impact assessments and evaluations

Initiated after 2005 and under update pending for 2014, the European Commission’s “Guidelines for Regulatory Impact Assessment” prescribe continuous legitimacy/effectiveness crash tests for policies, such as security research, in order to guarantee that they are 1) fit for purpose (effective), 2) proportional (positive cost-benefit trade-off), 3) informed by scientific evidence, and 4) serving overarching EU values and principles. Specifically, this entails that security research delivers on its primary task, that is, it enhances European citizens’ security without infringing civil liberties along the “The Stockholm Programme - An open and secure Europe serving and protecting citizens” (2010), and complies with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (2010).

3) Rethink the meaning of Innovation

The current master narrative for innovation in the EU is preoccupied with market-driven, growth-oriented R&D. Yet, civil security is a public good and not merely a field of industrial competitiveness. Moreover, the dominant high-tech “solutionism” is ill-designed to address comprehensive societal security challenges, such as economic disparities, inequality, and discrimination, and it may even backfire, in terms of generating new problems. Already in 2010 the European Commission report “Empowering people, driving change; Social Innovation in the European Union” pointed towards the huge untapped potential of organisational and institutional innovation for making societies more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient in the spirit of the Lisbon Treaty, by funding non-technological research initiatives.

Acknowledgments

Part of this research has been enabled by the EU FP7 security research project SecurePART (2014-2016), Grant Agreement No. 608039.

Introduction

Based on Marx’s pyramid of capitalist system, this article outlines some of the contemporary approaches of the digital activism and elaborates a critique of these approaches. Marx and Engels (1970) state that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas” (1970: 58). If we apply this to the ongoing debates about the development of the internet and internet use, we are facing the situation of the ruling classes (those who have access to the Internet) that decide over the working classes (those many who do not have access to the Internet and therefore do not have the means to impose their ideas/ willing). According to the statistics (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm, 2014) right now the people from richer countries are the ones that are able to participate in digital activism, as Mary Joyce also states: ”people in richer countries are usually more able to participate in digital activism because of the cost and quality of Internet connections available to them” (2010: 3). The present research aims to answer to the following questions: Can we talk about online social classes today? What social classes engage in the online protests? The study provides a critique analysis of the digital activism and, starting from Marx’s theory of social class, introduces the idea of online social class and analyses the characteristics of each online social class on the basis of their participation to online protests. According to Denning (2001: 241), activism is “the use of the Internet in support of an agenda or cause”. This includes online actions like setting up websites, surfing the web for information, posting materials on a website, transmitting electronic publications and letters through email, and using the Internet to discuss issues, form coalitions, and coordinate activities. This research considers digital activism as the use of the Internet or any other Internet- based application in supporting of a political or social cause. Thereby, the activism through Internet include the searching for information, expressing of own opinions on certain social problems, and the use of applications based on Internet to mobilize people to participate in a “real”, physical manifestation. The success an online protest is based on five modes of Internet use: a) collection; b) publication; c) dialogue; d) coordination of action, and e) direct lobbying of decision makers (Denning, 2001: 243). The online social classes are analyzed according to people’s use of specific websites and to their engagement in online protests. For this purpose we analysed people’s online engagement on Facebook on four different protest occasions: the Egyptian protests that took place in Tahrir square in Cairo, the protests that took place in Taksim square in Istanbul, the Indignants movement that took place in different countries, and the Indignants movement that led to Occupy Wall Street movement.

Methods

Employing a large survey and a qualitative study of a purposively sampled community of citizens and internet users, this project wishes to explore how do social classes’ characteristics translate into specific uses of the web and of engaging with online protests. Furthermore, I aim to provide a comprehensive content analysis of people’s engagement in 4 protests on Facebook juxtaposed with a user experience study.

Acknowledgments

This paper is supported by the Sectorial Operational Programme Human Resources Development (SOP HRD), financed from the European Social Fund and by the Romanian Government under the contract number SOPHRD/159/1.5/S/136077.

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Introduction

The first remote sensing satellites were launched in the 1960s by the U.S. and Soviet militaries as one central element of their space race during the cold war. The space-based surveillance systems helped to reduce the ‘fog of war’ and mitigate the risk of being surprised by the enemy’s military capacity or an actual attack [1]. While geospatial intelligence still is a very important element of governmental security policy, the user group as well as the scope of application have extended well beyond the circles of intelligence and government agencies over the last decade. The privatization and advancement of satellite technology have led to novel implications for international politics. In the aftermath of 9/11, many states have further restricted information in the public domain and expanded their use of surveillance technology to control their citizens. At the same time, applications like Google Earth and commercial satellite technology also allow spaces to be seen that governments wanted to keep secret from civil society [2]. The increasing availability of commercial and open source satellite imagery has begun to challenge governments’ interpretational sovereignty by opening up spaces for new expert groups to play an influential role in security discourses that is based on their “authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge” [3-5]. Indicative for this is the growing amount of international organizations, freelance experts and non-governmental organizations (NGO) that use commercial satellite imagery to augment assessments of global security and human rights issues.

Research Puzzle

Remote sensing is particularly valuable in situations of incertitude and when sites are inaccessible. Similarly, non-governmental expert networks’ leverage to affect the definition of security problems, interests or policy responses is greatest when issues are characterized by political complexity and factual uncertainty [3, 6]. The case of North Korea possesses these characteristics as the development of its nuclear program as well as its human rights situation are heavily contested and the country is difficult to access due to government restrictions. Working around these difficulties, satellite imagery analysts closely observe North Korea’s nuclear facilities, human rights situation and nuclear test sites and publicly report any development on the ground. By combining satellite imagery analysis with various communication channels, this expert network cannot only produce policy-relevant knowledge but also directly disseminate it globally. Against this background, the paper aims at assessing non-governmental satellite imagery analysis’ potential and constraints to provide additional and alternative viewpoints and how it punctures state propaganda and affects public opinion on security and human rights issues in North Korea.

The paper understands knowledge and its context of origin to “play a crucial and complex role in the configuration of societal security” [7]. Therefore, it will focus on practices of security knowledge production and dissemination based on commercial satellite imagery. More precisely, we will ask: (1) How has the commercialization of remote sensing influenced the emergence of non-governmental satellite imagery analysts as an epistemic community? (2) How do non-state experts produce security knowledge about North Korea based on satellite imagery and what is the role of uncertainties in that process?

Theoretical Considerations

The paper is located at the intersection between International Relations (IR) and Science and Technology Studies (STS). Only recently research has started to bring together both disciplines on a theoretical and empirical level to investigate the interrelation of technology, power and security [8-13]. Moreover, only few studies have concentrated how non-state satellite imagery analysis is conducted [14] and how it affects discourses of international politics [15, 16]. Research on remote sensing in international politics can be grouped in two different realms, i.e. governmental and non-governmental. While the former focuses on the capabilities and application in a state security or intelligence context [17, 18], the latter mostly analyzes non-governmental usage and work in areas of human security and environmental issues [14-16, 19, 20]. Early on, scholars pointed to the difficulties of satellite imagery analysis and the potentially severe consequences of incorrect conclusions that are difficult to challenge by non-experts [1, 21]. Despite these early warnings, the knowledge practices of non-governmental satellite imagery analysts are still insufficiently understood and only very limited research has been done on the ways that non-governmental analysts deal with the challenges of analyzing and interpreting satellite imagery in a politically highly sensitive context and how they cope with uncertainties.

Main Arguments and Discussion

We outline different techno-political and epistemic conditions non-state actors face by taking into account not only their technical capabilities but also the political and historical context of remote sensing. This is necessary to build the underlying parameters to frame the modes of knowledge production and subsequent dissemination. We will make two major arguments: (1) The commercialization of space-based remote sensing has laid the foundation for the emergence of an expert group of analysts by increasing their epistemic capacity. (2) This network of non-governmental satellite imagery analysts shares particular norms and epistemic practices and experiences significant uncertainties when producing knowledge about North Korea.

The paper takes political decisions as rarely based on firm knowledge [22] and will contribute to a better understanding and assessment of expert groups’ inherent uncertainties in the process of security knowledge production. In doing so, it attempts to foster a constructive and necessary debate on the legitimacy of knowledge claims in international security. Furthermore, it will offer theoretical considerations on the interrelation of technology, knowledge production and security discourses in IR and STS. Results will also be of interest to practitioners and researchers of development assistance, security policy and humanitarian aid.

References and Notes

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