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In Europe today, digital platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, provide essential means for millions of people to express themselves, engage in public debate, and organise politically (Poell & van Dijck, 2018). Crucially, governments are leveraging the power of platforms to impose new forms of restrictions on free expression, and engage in surveillance of individuals and online activism. This has profound implications for the rights to freedom of expression, privacy, and data protection. Further, platforms that once refused to cooperate with governments in identifying users responsible for disseminating allegedly illegal or harmful content are now expanding cooperation with authorities, including sharing data about users flagged by law enforcement and other authorities. As civil society organisations warn, this trend is contributing to ‘invasive and unlawful digital surveillance’ (Amnesty International, 2019, p. 24). This paper examines how European governments are leveraging the power of digital platforms to engage in government surveillance online, and assesses the compatibility of these measures with European human rights law. The paper applies a unique interdisciplinary perspective, bringing together law, political communication and surveillance studies. First, the paper examines how platforms’ algorithmic systems shape (and limit) information dissemination. The paper then critically analyses government-platform initiatives that exist to surveil citizens and gather information, including new measures under the EU’s proposed Digital Services Act. Third, it assesses how these measures comply with freedom of expression and the right to privacy, and concludes with recommendations on remedying problematic elements of the role platforms play in digitisation of government surveillance.

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.

Chapter 1 introduces the approach taken by the authors in trying to understand the relationship between surveillance and democracy in contemporary society. It explains how a “participatory lens” is used to highlight how we as individuals in society participate in surveillance practices, and how these are shaped by vested interests, stakeholders and institutions. The participatory lens is used to analyse the consequences of harms and controversies caused by surveillance practices, and in particular those practices mediated by new technologies, to assess how participatory mechanisms shape surveillance and inform democratic practice. Chapter 1 sets out the structure of the book, its origins, related research and the three core surveillance-oriented case studies examined, namely: Automatic Number Plate Recognition, credit scoring and Neighbourhood Watch. The underlying question posed by this book is whether democracy, and the participatory practices it embodies, can enact the limits of surveillance.

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: the one of privacy based on the “opacity of the individual”, and the 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.

Moving away from the traditional framing of surveillance in terms of in/visibility, this article proposes a conceptual journey that investigates the potential of the notions of dis-appearance and ob-scene as alternative theoretical tools. In particular, it explores how these different perspectives can help bringing politics back into the study and the critique of surveillance.Visibility is structurally linked to invisibility, and together they configure the different modes of in/visibility allowing for the very functioning of surveillance. However, the in/visibility dyad rather than merely describe surveillance contributes to its operations and stabilisation. In order to better understand and unpack surveillance it is thus necessary to tackle its practices not only in search of who watches whom, or what, but also by studying what is concealed through in/visibility, through both hiding and exposing, and what is left out of the scene (or being pushed away) in these processes.In a dialogue with surveillance and critical security studies, this contribution examines the disappearance of bodies in the deployment of security scanners and post-Snowden developments to illustrate the productivity of dis-appearance and the emergence of surveillance’s ob-scene. Against this background, the paper argues that through the lens of the ob-scene it is possible to grasp surveillance’s ripples, and open up their political discussion.

This report presents the policy implications of introducing a decision support tool to assist security forces in countering terrorist threats in urban environments in Europe.

Mobility, risk, security, freedom and technology are prominent key words in most of the debates on the current practices of data-sharing in the European Union (EU) – United States (US) context. Even more, transatlantic data-sharing and processing is probably among the best examples to show the interconnections, and tensions, among them. No single transatlantic agreement covers all these issues, but ‘immigration management’ and ‘national security’ are the subjects of a vast array of legal and technological instruments relying on the processing of personal data. Looking at these practices permits us to understand how human mobility is conceptualized by states and states’ agencies.

This book review engages with Benjamin J. Muller's 'Security, risk and the biometric state: governing borders and bodies' (London/New York: Routledge, 2010). In this work, Muller focuses on biometrics and their application in a risk management perspective. This provides an occasion to study some of the most interesting developments in the modes of government of individuals, societies and mobilities. In particular, the choice of focusing on these technologies offers important insights into the ongoing digitalisation of borders and bodies, and their management in terms of risk. Muller’s publication is part of a growing number of studies that highlight how important it is for IR to take a more acute interest in technologies. It is also a valuable contribution to the work being done, from different perspectives, on the theory of the state and the protection of fundamental rights.

This paper invites us to rescue the debates over the use of border check technologies from the twin paradoxes of "excessive visibility" and "low visibility". With this aim, it stresses the importance of considering border check technologies from a consumer perspective. From this point of view, it questions the modes of implementation of some of the most relevant technologies already operating at the borders: body scanners, biometrics, registered travellers' programs, and passenger name records. Finally, the authors propose to combine insights and solutions of both consumer and data protection law, to offer travellers a more "consumer friendly" approach to border check technologies. Such a move would probably pave the way to citizens' debates freed from the "visibility" paradoxes of technology.

A growing number of security policies are based on access to, processing and exchange of personal data. Given their nature, most of these measures have an international scope, and they are rooted in international agreements. These agreements usually seek to extend abroad a range of specific, internal security measures. This chapter aims at studying the position of relevant actors and their capacity to increase their power or to quell resistance during the process of extra-territorialisation. The chapter assumes as a hypothesis that the set-up of security policies is readable as a ‘plateau’, a transversal field in which actors’ ability to shape new configurations of actors and fields is a key asset for enhancing their relevance. The research investigates this hypothesis further by taking as a case study the conclusion, in March 2008, of a transatlantic agreement on DNA, fingerprints and personal data exchange between Germany and the US.

A multitude of new research themes and objects, especially technological innovations and knowledge practices, have come to populate international relations and security politics. Many critical security scholars are engaging theoretical resources from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to make sense of things as diverse as fake news, climate change, financial surveillance, digital images and autonomous targeting systems. This Special Issue unpacks the core challenges and benefits we see when engaging with STS to approach the entanglements of science, technology and (in)security. Embracing the notion of trouble, this introduction draws upon Haraway and Butler, arguing for the need to stay close to the troubles that new research objects pose to the study of security. Taking the trouble can thus be understood as an ethos that makes us open to new research avenues and to the importance of being attentive to how relations of power and emancipation can be established in our research processes. The focus of both the introduction and the Special Issue is on how STS resources might be mobilised. Overall, this Special Issue offers further conceptual, empirical and methodological inputs to the ongoing discussion about the value of STS for the study of security politics.

Surveillance is becoming ubiquitous in our society. We can also see the emergence of "smart" surveillance technologies and the assemblages (or combinations) of such technologies, supposedly to combat crime and terrorism, but in fact used for a variety of purposes, many of which are intrusive upon the privacy of law-abiding citizens. Following the dark days of 9/11, security and surveillance became paramount. More recently, in Europe, there has been a policy commitment to restore privacy to centre stage. This paper examines the legal tools available to ensure that privacy and personal data protection are respected in attempts to ensure the security of our society, and finds that improvements are needed in our legal and regulatory framework if privacy is indeed to be respected by law enforcement authorities and intelligence agencies. It then goes on to argue that privacy impact assessments should be used to sort out the necessity and proportionality of security and surveillance programmes and policies vis - vis privacy. © 2010 Hogan Lovells. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This article finds that while smart surveillance can be ‘smart’ from a privacy and data protection perspective, this does not mean that no discrimination concerns arise anymore. Abstract This article tackles the rise of smart surveillance in the European Union (EU). It introduces some of the main characteristic of smart surveillance systems, and it analyses two sets of projects: a series of eu-funded research projects on smart CCTV systems, and a legislative proposal to set up a eu-wide security measure relying on passenger information. The article identifies the most important features of these projects, and assesses their potential impact in terms of privacy, data protection and non-discrimination. Finally, in the conclusion we advance some observations regarding the peculiarity of smart surveillance when compared to mass or targeted surveillance. We acknowledge that while smart surveillance can be ‘smart’ from a privacy and data protection perspective, this does not mean that no discrimination concerns arise anymore.