MA Seminar Series: BURNING ISSUES

WEEK 5TECHNOLOGY

REIKO SHINDO

Introduction The purpose of MA Seminar Series – Introducing a range of key concepts

which help us to think about world politics critically (e.g. citizenship, community, resistance, sovereignty, language)

Last week: Resistance – different features attached to resistance practices (globalisation; the role of the state; bypassing the state; political agency; ‘everyday forms of resistance’; politics of using the term, resistance)

Next week: Sovereignty and the question of humanitarian intervention Plus a guest speaker’s talk (18:00-18:30)

Mr. Mikko Lievonen: He worked at the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) in New York. Soon after the independence of South Sudan, he moved to South Sudan to join the United Nations Mission for South Sudan (UNMISS).

Introduction This week:

How is technology shaping the contemporary world politics? Drones Biometric control of borders

What are the implications of these technologies to politics? Permanent state of exception Biopower

Combat drones Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs)

(e.g. US) Yemen (al-Qaeda; semi-failed states) / Western part of Pakistan (Al-Qaeda; competing fractions within Pakistan; no anti-drones technology) / Somalia (al-Shabab; failed states)

Classified operations; intelligence operations; no legal system to regulate drone attacks

War can be launched anytime and anywhere

Combat drones Carl Schmitt and his idea of state of exception

The law can be legally suspected for the purpose of preserving the state and its system of law from some grave internal or external danger.

“Permanent state of exception”? (Klem Ryan 2014)

Evaporation of the battlefields (David Grondin 2012)

The changing proximity between wars and civilians (e.g. Metadata+ / Drones+ ): secrecy of foreign policies are exposed to civilians through smartphones

Group discussion

What are pros and cons of combat drones?

Do you agree with the statement that we are now living in the ‘permanent state of exception’?

In your opinion, how can a new iPhone App (such as Metadata+) change people’s perceptions of wars?

Biometrics Biometrics technology collects and processes data using specific physical or biological

characteristics as a means to verify identity of an individual; it involves techniques such as fingerprinting, iris scanning, etc.

Biometric screening is designed to protect documents and to make access to particular sites easier and safer

Biometric data management has been developed alongside the integration of different databases, in order to share data and assess the riskiness of particular individuals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZTfgNIiNUA

[This slide was originally prepared for the class, BO9A2 Borders and Migration]

Biometrics Unprecedented concern with Homeland Security

Intensification of restrictive border management and immigration legislation – northern and southern border focus of efforts

Smart borders: borders as filters rather than barriers, open to the peaceful and closed to terrorists, new ports of entry, delineation of ‘low risk’ passengers, accelerated identification procedures

Production of ‘buffer zones’ through expansive policing and surveillance reaching out beyond territorial borderlines; emergence of new technologies that feature as innovative filters separating desirable/undesirable migrants

[This slide was originally prepared for the class, BO9A2 Borders and Migration]

From security to risk From a security to a risk-based analysis

Changing nature of security threats: diffuse and dispersed; operating at a global level (e.g. terrorism, disease, environmental issues)

Emergent technologies designed to manage risk rather than evade security threats

Preemptive management of risks

Uncertainty over threats/risks

Probabilistic methodology

Internal/external security threats seen as blurred/overlapping

Emphasis on demilitarised security practices

Catastrophic vision normalised

Perception of security no longer the primary framework of governing

Vision of managing risk imperfectly involves a vision of uncertain and catastrophic futures (Aradau and van Munster)

[This slide was originally prepared for the class, BO9A2 Borders and Migration]

Biometrics - case study Case study: US Visitor and Immigration Status Indicator Technology

Risk assessment a technological/managerial tool, a dimension of liberal governmentality that profiles and codes people according to levels of riskiness – combines information e.g. from databases of biometric information, entry/exit data, passenger info, student exchange data, Interpol watch list and national crime data, benefit claimants (foreign nationals), finance, banking, education and health databases; an associational logic

From geopolitics to biopolitics: the bodies of travellers as sites of multiple encoded boundaries, emergent particularly in context of Global War on Terror; the virtual border (rather than the territorial border)

Risk profiling: separation of il/legitimate travellers; identity used as a source of prediction and prevention; private companies and Homeland Security citizens as sources of authority (petty sovereigns)

Law/expertise and the normalising society – particular forms of conduct become assumed as the norm; petty sovereigns ‘police’ these norms – the ‘Homeland Security citizen’

[This slide was originally prepared for the class, BO9A2 Borders and Migration]

Biopower? Biopolitics/biopower (HoS I; Society Must Be Defended; The Birth of

Biopower) Involves a generalised form of regulation linked directly to human

biology/physical health and the body Regulation and fostering of the life of the population (species) e.g. to

foster a healthy workforce biopolitical apparatuses of security promote the circulation of species-

life (people and things) Biopolitics occurs at threshold of modernity (Foucault); or from Medieval

times (Agamben)

[This slide was originally prepared for the class, BO9A2 Borders and Migration]

Group discussion"Where are you from?”

"Somalia," I reply. "How did you obtain the British passport?”

"Because I came here as an asylum seeker and applied for citizenship after five years.”"Okay. Interesting. When did you came here first?”

"In May 1999.”"Alright. So what happened when you sought asylum?”"I had to wait a decision for a year and then I was given an indefinite leave to remain.”

"Have you ever being in trouble with the immigration?”"No, except you guys bothering me all the time and you never explain to me why.”

"Take a seat, I will be back.“The officer then goes into an office to "verify some details" and, of course, it is a good excuse to have an unofficial coffee break. While I wait at the "humiliation chair", other officers behind the desk keep on eye on me, just in case I attempt to run away. It is unpleasant to watch other passengers passing through with no trouble and looking at you, probably thinking: "Here is a new immigrant.”

(http://www.channel4.com/news/mo-farah-stopped-at-customs-hes-not-alone)

[This slide was originally prepared for the class, BO9A2 Borders and Migration]

Is biometric profiling a necessary and/or problematic development? Why?

Criticism of biometrics Criticisms are often made about the privacy and civil liberty implications of

biometrics

Those who are critical of biometrics point to the way in which technical risk-assessments can fail (e.g. providing false positives), despite presumed certainty of identification processes

Some point out the danger of fixing identities and assuming the body as anchor without error; they argue for need to emphasis the inherent incompleteness of identity and the uncertainty of border management

Critical commentators also point to the divisive nature of biometrics and surveillance (e.g. different channels of migration, inside and outside the airport), and for the suspicious/fearful subjects that these techniques produce

[This slide was originally prepared for the class, BO9A2 Borders and Migration]

Summary Technology as a means of what?

Zero casualty warfare?

Familiarising warfare?

Social sorting?

Quick and ‘smart’ border crossing?

The week after next (19 November): sovereignty

Guest speaker’s talk (18:00-18:30)

18:30-20:00 Lecture

Recommended readings Aradau, C., Lobo-Guerrero, L., Van Munster, R. (Eds) (2008) ‘Security, Technologies of

Risk, and the Political’, Special Issue Security Dialogue, 39(2-3).

Der Derian, J. (2009) Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network, New York: Routledge.

Gregory, D. (2014) ‘Drone Geographies’, Radical Philosophy, 183 (Jan/Feb): 7-19.

Kroker, A., and Kroker, M. (2014) ‘Night Sky Drones’, Theory Beyond the Codes. www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=732 (accessed 8 June 2015)

Andreas, P. (2003) “Redrawing the line: Borders and security in the twenty-first century”, International Security 28(2): 78-111

Amoore, L. (2006) “Biometric borders: Governing mobilities in the war on terror”, Political Geography 25(3): 336-351

Huysmans, J. and Squire, V. (2009) “Migration and security” in M. Dunn Cavelty and V. Mauer The Routledge Handbook of Security Studies (Abingdon: Routledge) [available online]

Pugliese, J. (2010) Biometrics: Bodies, Technologies, Biopolitics (New York: Routledge), pp. 25-79.