Search

Data have become a vital device of border governance and security. Recent scholarship on the datafication of borders and migration at the intersection of science and technology studies and critical security studies has privileged concepts attuned to messiness, contingency, and friction such as data assemblages and infrastructures. This paper proposes to revisit and expand the analytical vocabulary of script analysis to understand what comes to count as data, what forms of data come to matter and how "drawing data together" reconfigures power and agency at Europe's borders. Empirically, we analyze controversies about the practices of asylum decision-making and age assessment in Greece. We show that agency of "users" is unequally distributed through anticipations of subscription and dis-inscription, while asylum seekers are conscripted within security scripts that restrict their agency. Moreover, as a multiplicity of inscriptions are produced, migrants' claims can be disqualified through circumscriptions of data and ascriptions of expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its common usage, the meaning of 'democratic' in democratic intelligence oversight has rarely been spelled out. In this article, we situate questions regarding intelligence oversight within broader debates about the meanings and practices of democracy. We argue that the literature on intelligence oversight has tended to implicitly or explicitly follow liberal and technocratic ideas of democracy, which have limited the understanding of oversight both in academia and in practice. Thus, oversight is mostly understood as an expert, institutional and partially exclusive arrangement that is supposed to strike a balance between individual freedom and collective security, with the goal of establishing the legitimacy of and trust in intelligence work in a national setting. 'Healthy' or 'efficient' democratic oversight then becomes a matter of technical expertise, non-partisanship, and the ability to guard secrets. By analysing three moments of struggle around what counts as intelligence oversight across Germany, the UK, and the US, this article elucidates their democratic stakes. Through a practice-based approach, we argue that oversight takes much more agonistic, contentious, transnational, and public forms. However, these democratic practices reconfiguring oversight remain contested or contained by dominant views on what constitutes legitimate and effective intelligence oversight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the concept of digital humanitarianism, which involves the use of data by humanitarian actors. It explores the various ways in which digital technology, such as digital maps and drones, has transformed humanitarian efforts. The article also examines the complexities and tensions that arise in digital humanitarianism, including the combination of care and control and the involvement of amateur humanitarians. The author analyzes the epistemological, political, and legal aspects of digital humanitarianism, using the concepts of the "mangle" and the "tangle" to understand its effects. The article emphasizes the role of interfaces in connecting humanitarian actors and displaced populations, as well as the entanglement between digital and analog in digital humanitarianism. Additionally, the text discusses algorithmic reason and its emergence as a response to the limitations of statistical reason in governing populations. It explores the role of anomalies in anomaly detection, particularly in visual surveillance systems. The text also examines the subjects of digital humanitarianism and the shift from biopolitics to senso-politics. It highlights the need for a reconfigured critique that focuses on instabilities, glitches, and inconsistencies in digital technologies. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of keeping questions about the future of digital humanitarianism open. [Extracted from the article]