FCJ-196 Let’s First Get Things Done! On Division of Labour and Techno-political Practices of Delegation in Times of Crisis

Aouragh, Miriyam; Gürses, Seda; Rocha, Jara; Snelting, Femke

doi:10.15307/fcj.26.196.2015

Cited by 13 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Much resistance to surveillance following the Snowden leaks has centred on these latter strategies – particularly on developing and ‘mainstreaming’ alternative technologies alongside campaigns for tighter policies on the protection of personal data. To start with, forums to provide secure digital infrastructures to activists have proliferated, with ‘numerous digital rights and internet freedom initiatives seizing the moment to propose new communication methods for activists (and everyday citizens) that are strengthened through encryption.’ (Aouragh et al., 2015: 213). These have included renewed focus on privacy-enhancing tools such as the TOR browser, the GPG email encryption system and the encrypted phone and text messaging software Signal.…”

Section: Anti-surveillance and Techno-legal Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…How, then, might we address this disconnect? Aouragh et al (2015) argue that the 'division of labour' between what they label 'tech justice' and 'social justice' activists emerges partly from the socio-technical practices that have been advanced in secure communication campaigns in which there is a distinct user-developer dichotomy that places the onus on the (individual) 'user' to protect themselves (identifying risks using 'threat modelling') with tools provided by the 'developer'. Similarly, Kazansky (2016) found, based on her experience with providing information security training for human rights activists, that training is often designed towards the individual user rather than as a collective project that considers the enabling social structures needed for secure communication to become an integrated activist practice.…”

Section: 'Data Justice' and The Bridging Of Activism(s)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards data justice? The ambiguity of anti-surveillance resistance in political activism

2016

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The Snowden leaks, first published in June 2013, provided unprecedented insights into the operations of state-corporate surveillance, highlighting the extent to which everyday communication is integrated into an extensive regime of control that relies on the 'datafication' of social life. Whilst such data-driven forms of governance have significant implications for citizenship and society, resistance to surveillance in the wake of the Snowden leaks has predominantly centred on techno-legal responses relating to the development and use of encryption and policy advocacy around privacy and data protection. Based on in-depth interviews with a range of social justice activists, we argue that there is a significant level of ambiguity around this kind of anti-surveillance resistance in relation to broader activist practices, and critical responses to the Snowden leaks have been confined within particular expert communities. Introducing the notion of 'data justice', we therefore go on to make the case that resistance to surveillance needs to be (re)conceptualized on terms that can address the implications of this data-driven form of governance in relation to broader social justice agendas. Such an approach is needed, we suggest, in light of a shift to surveillance capitalism in which the collection, use and analysis of our data increasingly comes to shape the opportunities and possibilities available to us and the kind of society we live in.

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Section: Anti-surveillance and Techno-legal Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: 'Data Justice' and The Bridging Of Activism(s)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards data justice? The ambiguity of anti-surveillance resistance in political activism

2016

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“…Amid these developments, affected communities have tried to make sense of risk in their daily practices, continuously assessing their environment, engaging in “threat modeling,” and adapting practices accordingly (Myers West, 2017). “Tech activists” (Aouragh et al, 2015; Milan, 2013) and civil society organizations have sought to raise awareness of emerging issues of concern and have developed technological interventions in response (Daskal, 2018; Dencik et al, 2016). These activities have resulted in a plethora of software projects which undergo a continued iteration in response to shifting concerns and priorities.…”

Section: Capturing Shifting Counter-imaginaries: a Heuristicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Civil society actors have sought to “pour as much sand into this machine of suspicion as we possibly can” (Milan, 2013: 156), engaging in subversive or defensive individual practices, civil disobedience against unfair laws, policy advocacy and the creation of resistant infrastructure (cf. Aouragh et al, 2015). The ubiquity and extraordinary pervasiveness of datafication, however, presents today’s activists with ever-newer challenges.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Bodies not templates”: Contesting dominant algorithmic imaginaries

Kazansky¹,

Milan

2021

New Media & Society

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Through an array of technological solutions and awareness-raising initiatives, civil society mobilizes against an onslaught of surveillance threats. What alternative values, practices, and tactics emerge from the grassroots which point toward other ways of being in the datafied society? Conversing with critical data studies, science and technology studies, and surveillance studies, this article looks at how dominant imaginaries of datafication are reconfigured and responded to by groups of people dealing directly with their harms and risks. Building on practitioner interviews and participant observation in digital rights events and surveying projects intervening in three critical technological issues of our time—the challenges of digitally secure computing, the Internet of Things, and the threat of widespread facial recognition—this article investigates social justice activists, human rights defenders, and progressive technologists as they try to flip dominant algorithmic imaginaries. In so doing, the article contributes to our understanding of how individuals and social groups make sense of the challenges of datafication from the bottom-up.

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“…The target audience of the applications, especially those born post-Snowden, is far from being limited to tech-savvy and activist groups; several projects are aimed at widespread use. A majority of members of the technical crypto community consider user-friendliness and usability as the main issue that stands between the wish for large-scale adoption and its realization in practice, although this take has been challenged by scholars as a 'forced responsabilisation' of users to the detriment of the development of resilient collective digital security strategies (Kazansky, 2015) and as a ' delegation' of technical matters 4 Borrowing from the conclusions of a survey conducted within the first year of the NEXTLEAP project, partly summarized in (Ermoshina et al, 2016) to 'progressive techies' despite a widespread societal desire to develop technologies for social justice (Aouragh et al, 2015). End-to-end encrypted messaging tools are currently at the centre of a powerful ' double' narrative.…”

Section: Secure Messaging Tools: a Field In The Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is a Good Secure Messaging Tool? The EFF Secure Messaging Scorecard and the Shaping of Digital (Usable) Security

Musiani

Ermoshina

2017

Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture

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In today's diverse and crowded landscape of messaging systems, what are the most secure and usable tools? The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights group based in San Francisco, CA, has been considering this question for a long time. Their most prominent initiative in this regard has been the 2014 release of the Secure Messaging Scorecard (SMS), a 7-criteria evaluation of 'usable security' in messaging systems. While the 2014 version of the SMS (now 1.0) displays a number of apparently straightforward criteria, a first look into the backstage shows that the selection and formulation of these criteria has been anything but linear, something that has been made particularly evident by the EFF's recent move to renew and update the SMS. Indeed, in a digital world where the words security and privacy are constantly mobilized with several different meanings, it seems relevant to analyse the SMS's first release, and the subsequent discussions and renegotiations of it, as processes that co-produce particular definitions of security, of defence against surveillance, and of privacy protection. This article argues that, by means of the SMS negotiations around the categories that are meaningful to qualify and define encryption, the EFF is in fact contributing to the shaping of what makes a 'good' secure messaging application, and what constitutes a 'good' categorization system to assess (usable) security, able to take into account all the 'relevant' aspects -not only technical but social and economic.

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FCJ-196 Let’s First Get Things Done! On Division of Labour and Techno-political Practices of Delegation in Times of Crisis

Cited by 13 publications

References 7 publications

Towards data justice? The ambiguity of anti-surveillance resistance in political activism

Towards data justice? The ambiguity of anti-surveillance resistance in political activism

“Bodies not templates”: Contesting dominant algorithmic imaginaries

What is a Good Secure Messaging Tool? The EFF Secure Messaging Scorecard and the Shaping of Digital (Usable) Security

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