Navigating the Dataverse: Privacy, Technology ... - The ICHRP

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A recurrent threat of resistance (including armed resistance) to the global and
national successors of colonial powers;
Highly efficient mechanisms for exerting the influence of the “international community”
on postcolonial governments (mechanisms that are in turn increasingly centred on
data-collection and analysis).
Technology
For better or worse, the world’s great technological centres continue to lie mainly in the
North, though this is changing. Technological production is increasingly centred in India and
China, and much first hand technological innovation is occurring there and elsewhere in what
is sometimes called the global South. But very much of the rest of the world are consumers
rather than producers of technology, and limited, even then, by resource constraints.
In particular, the technology of security remains a Northern domain. This includes
military hardware and the surveillance networks of satellites that largely cover the world’s
landmasses. Most of the capacity to eavesdrop efficiently on the world’s internet traffic is
also housed in the West, though this too will presumably change (albeit not dramatically).
In short, individuals in much of the world may be spied upon by very distant others. The US
drone campaigns currently underway in some 12 countries symbolise this contemporary
surveillance asymmetry very well, as well as the potency of evolving technology. 118
The technology of security remains a Northern domain. This includes military
hardware and the surveillance networks of satellites that largely cover the
world’s landmasses.
Ownership and control of data-gathering technologies are only two of many asymmetries.
Access to information technologies and to the knowledge and know-how that goes with
them is equally uneven. To pick a schematic hypothetical, a farmer in Mali may be identified
via a satellite that can compile data on the size of his herds and the state of his crops. Such
data may be strategically useful to commercial and public actors. But it is a rare Malian
farmer who can access information about those who are monitoring him, or who possesses
the networks, knowledge, and resources to take advantage of such knowledge.
The point here is not the familiar claim that the internet is empowering, but that technological
asymmetry structures relationships (in this case one between a Malian farmer and a Northern
data harvester), and has real-world effects. The very imbalance of the relationship, however,
can make such a relationship appear unreal and remote when, in fact, it is immediate and
consequential. Again, this immediacy and consequence is well illustrated in the case of
drone strikes, where decisions are made on the basis of information about activities on the
ground, harvested from multiple sources, including particularly satellite imagery.
Personal data held in private hands also exhibits similar informational asymmetries. The
giant servers carrying the world’s email and social networking information are located in
a handful of countries and are generally subject to those countries’ laws and accessible
to those countries’ governments (should the need arise). 119 This means that, for the
118 See Scott Shane, Mark Mazzetti and Robert F. Worth, “Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two
Continents”, The New York Times August 14, 2010.
119 Saudi Arabia and some other countries moved to ban Blackberries in mid-2010, because all information
is routed through servers based in North America. For the same reason, the French government decided
40 Navigating the Dataverse: Privacy, Technology, Human Rights