DATA POLITICS Data has become a social and political issue because of its capacity to reconfigure relationships between states, subjects, and citizens. This book explores how data has acquired such an important capacity and examines how critical interventions in its uses in both theory and practice are possible. Data and politics are now inseparable: data is not only shaping our social relations, preferences, and life chances but our very democracies. Expert inter- national contributors consider political questions about data and the ways it provokes subjects to govern themselves by making rights claims. Concerned with the things (infrastructures of servers, devices, and cables) and language (code, programming, and algorithms) that make up cyberspace, this book demonstrates that without understanding these conditions of possibility it is impossible to intervene in or to shape data politics. Aimed at academics and postgraduate students interested in political aspects of data, this volume will also be of interest to experts in the fields of internet studies, international studies, Big Data, digital social sciences, and humanities. Didier Bigo is Professor of War Studies at King’s College London and Research Professor at Sciences-Po, CERI Paris. Engin Isin is Professor in International Politics at Queen Mary University of London, UK and University of London Institute in Paris (ULIP). Evelyn Ruppert is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Routledge Studies in International Political Sociology Series Editors: Tugba Basaran, University of Kent, UK, Didier Bigo, King’s College London, UK, Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet, University of Manchester, UK, Jef Huysmans, Queen Mary, University of London, UK Routledge Studies in International Political Sociology aims to provide a forum for out- standing empirical and theoretical research engaging with the interplays between the international, the political and the social. This timely book series draws upon significant theoretical and empirical challenges within the growing critical approach of international political sociology. It seeks to address, to encourage and to conceptualise the knowledge and understanding of transversal issues at stake when exploring the different components of the heterogeneous worlds hidden behind International Relations. For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-International-Political-Sociology/book-series/IPS Perspectives From International Political Sociology Transversal Lines in International Relations Edited by Tugba Basaran, Didier Bigo, Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet & RBJ Walker Data Politics Worlds, Subjects, Rights Edited by Didier Bigo, Engin Isin and Evelyn Ruppert DATA POLITICS Worlds, Subjects, Rights Edited by Didier Bigo, Engin Isin, and Evelyn Ruppert First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 2019 selection and editorial matter, Didier Bigo, Engin Isin, and Evelyn Ruppert; individual chapters, the contributors. The right of Didier Bigo, Engin Isin, and Evelyn Ruppert to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bigo, Didier, editor. | Isin, Engin F. (Engin Fahri), 1959- editor. | Ruppert, Evelyn Sharon, 1959- editor. Title: Data politics : worlds, subjects, rights / edited by Didier Bigo, Engin Isin and Evelyn Ruppert. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Routledge studies in international political sociology | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018054225| ISBN 9781138053250 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138053267 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315167305 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Big data—Political aspects. | Big data—Social aspects. Classification: LCC QA76.9.B45 D385 2019 | DDC 005.7—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018054225 ISBN: 9781138053250 (hbk) ISBN: 9781138053267 (pbk) ISBN: 9781315167305 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK CONTENTS List of illustrations vii List of contributors viii Acknowledgements x 1 Data politics 1 Didier Bigo, Engin Isin, and Evelyn Ruppert PART I Conditions of possibility of data politics 19 2 Knowledge infrastructures under siege: climate data as memory, truce, and target 21 Paul N. Edwards 3 Against infrasomatization: towards a critical theory of algorithms 43 David M. Berry 4 Surveillance capitalism, surveillance culture and data politics 64 David Lyon PART II Worlds 79 5 Mutual entanglement and complex sovereignty in cyberspace 81 Ronald J. Deibert and Louis W. Pauly vi Contents 6 Digital data and the transnational intelligence space 100 Didier Bigo and Laurent Bonelli 7 From fake to junk news: the data politics of online virality 123 Tommaso Venturini 8 Seeing like Big Tech: security assemblages, technology, and the future of state bureaucracy 145 Félix Tréguer PART III Subjects 165 9 Towards data justice: bridging anti-surveillance and social justice activism 167 Lina Dencik, Arne Hintz and Jonathan Cable 10 Theses on automation and labour 187 Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter 11 Data’s empire: postcolonial data politics 207 Engin Isin and Evelyn Ruppert PART IV Rights 229 12 The right to data oblivion 231 Giovanni Ziccardi 13 Data citizens: how to reinvent rights 248 Jennifer Gabrys 14 Data rights: claiming privacy rights through international institutions 267 Elspeth Guild Index 285 ILLUSTRATIONS Figures 2.1 Northern Hemisphere Average Temperatures 29 2.2 BEST Annual Land-Surface Temperature Analysis 33 3.1 Soylent: a word processor with a crowd inside (Bernstein et al 2015) 53 3.2 “Find-Fix-Verify” (Bernstein et al 2010, 58) 55 3.3 Shortn algorithm: even though it claims use of a “wizard” it nonetheless informs the user of the current cost and number of workers currently working 56 6.1 Most Contributing Variables on Axes 1 and 2 of the MCA 113 6.2 The Space of Institutional Positions 114 Table 9.1 List of Interviews 174 Textbox 6.1 Methodological Details 111 CONTRIBUTORS The editors Didier Bigo is Professor of War Studies at King’s College London and Research Professor at Sciences-Po, CERI Paris. He is editor of the quarterly journal, Cultures & Conflicts, and was the founder and co-editor of the journal, International Political Sociology, published by the International Studies Association. His work concerns sociology of surveillance, policing, and borders. He co-edited Transversal Lines (with Tugba Basaran, Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet and R. B. J. Walker, 2016) as part of the Routledge Studies in International Political Sociology. Engin Isin is Professor in International Politics at Queen Mary University of London and University of London Institute in Paris (ULIP). Isin’s work concerns politics of the changing figure of the citizen as a political subject. He has authored Cities Without Citizens (1992), Citizenship and Identity (with Patricia Wood, 1999), Being Political (2002), Citizens Without Frontiers (2012), and Being Digital Citizens (with Evelyn Ruppert, 2015). He has edited Acts of Citizenship (2008) with Greg Nielsen, Enacting European Citizenship (2013) with Michael Saward and Routledge Handbook of Global Citizenship Studies (2014) with Peter Nyers. His latest book is Citizenship after Orientalism: Transforming Political Theory (2015). Evelyn Ruppert is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She studies how digital technologies and the data they generate can powerfully shape and have consequences for how people are known and governed and how they understand themselves as political subjects, that is, citizens with rights to data. Evelyn is PI of an ERC funded project, Peopling Europe: How data make a people (ARITHMUS; 2014–19). She is Founding and Editor-in-Chief of the SAGE open access journal, Big Data & Society. Recent books are Being Digital Citizens (with Engin Isin, 2015) and Modes of Knowing (with John Law, 2016). Contributors ix The contributors David M. Berry, Professor of Digital Humanities, University of Sussex; Visiting Fellow, School of Advanced Studies, University of London; and Associate Member, Faculty of History, University of Oxford. Laurent Bonelli, Associate Professor, Political Science, University of Paris- Nanterre. Jonathan Cable, Lecturer, School of Media, University of Gloucestershire. Ronald J. Deibert, Professor, Political Science and Director, Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto. Lina Dencik, Reader, School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff University. Paul N. Edwards, William J. Perry Fellow in International Security, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, and Professor of Information and History (Emeritus), University of Michigan. Jennifer Gabrys, Professor,