ACCEPTED OPEN PANELS–Technologies of Militarism/(In)security

1. Accommodating A Plurality Of Values When Engaging Emerging Technologies In Sustainability Transitions – On Designing For Safety And Security In A Warming World

Pim Klaassen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Megan Palmer, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University

Climate change is a wicked problem [1], which many hope technological innovation will effectively resolve. Technologists themselves frequently claim their work will help pull off sustainability transitions successfully, e.g. to keep the temperature rise within acceptable limits [2] or feed the 10 billion people projected to inhabit Earth by 2050 [3].

However, many factors complicate technologists’ hopeful stories [4]. Firstly, techno-scientific developments will interact reciprocally with perceptions of societal values and needs, whether associated with climate change or not. Insofar as these perceptions diverge, so will the acceptance of technologies, affecting their potential impacts. Secondly, technological developments’ shape and direction is contingent on market and political constraints. This can compromise future technologies’ capacity to serve public interests well, irrespective of any good intentions behind them [5]. Finally, technologies that serve one specific goal – such as mitigating climate change – risk (unwittingly) justifying all means. Solving one problem then potentially means creating others [6,7].

Contributions to this session shed light on how to resolve value conflicts that arise where emerging technologies feature in sustainability transitions, e.g. to sustainable agriculture or a circular- or bio-economy [8]. While focusing on accommodating safety and security to sustainability [9], values like democracy, equality or justice are not excluded. We welcome contributions using transdisciplinary (possibly arts-based) methods geared towards bridging gaps between science, society, policy and industry [10,11]. Since technologies cannot realize sustainability transitions by themselves, we stimulate contributions presenting novel narratives of change, while refiguring the problem space of safety, security and sustainability [12].

References

[1]          Hulme, M. (2009). Why we disagree about climate change: Understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

[2]          Keith, D. W., & Irvine, P. J. (2016). Solar geoengineering could substantially reduce climate risks—A research hypothesis for the next decade. Earth’s Future, 4(11), 549-559.

[3]          Haraway, D., & Endy, D. (2019). Tools for Multispecies Futures. Journal of Design and Science. https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/q04b4o74

[4]          Groves, C. (2019). Sustainability and the future: reflections on the ethical and political significance of sustainability. Sustainability Science, 14(4), 915-924.

[5]          Stilgoe, J. (2018). Machine learning, social learning and the governance of self-driving cars. Social Studies of Science 48(1). doi.org/10.1177/0306312717741687

[6]          Van de Poel, I. (2015). Conflicting values in design for values. Handbook of ethics, values, and technological design: Sources, theory, values and application domains, pp.89-116.

[7]          Hulme, M. (2020). Is it too late (to stop dangerous climate change)? An editorial. WIREs Clim Change, doi:10.1002/wcc.619

[8]          Lynch, D., Klaassen, P. & Broerse, J.E.W. (2016). Unraveling Dutch citizens’ perceptions on the bio-based economy: the case of bioplastics, bio-jetfuels and small-scale bio-refineries. Industrial Crops and Products. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.indcrop.2016.10.035.

[9]          Millett P., Binz T., Evans S.W., Kuiken T., Oye K., Palmer M.J., Yambao K., Yu S., van der Vlugt C. (2019). Developing a Comprehensive, Adaptive and International Biosafety and Biosecurity Program for Advanced Biotechnology: The iGEM Experience. Applied Biosafety 24(2). doi.org/10.1177/1535676019838075

[10]        Klaassen, P., Verwoerd, L., Kupper, F. & Regeer, B. (in press) Reflexive Monitoring in Action as a methodology for learning and enacting Responsible Research and Innovation. In Yaghmaei, E. & I. van de Poel (ed.), Assessment of Responsible Innovation: methods and practices. London: Routledge.

[11]        van der Meij, M.G., Heltzel, A.A.L.M., Broerse, J.E.W. et al. (2018) Frame Reflection Lab: a Playful Method for Frame Reflection on Synthetic Biology. Nanoethics (2018) 12: 155. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-018-0318-9

[12]        Loorbach, D., Avelino, F., Haxeltine, A., Wittmayer, J. M., O’Riordan, T., Weaver, P., & Kemp, R. (2016). The economic crisis as a game changer? Exploring the role of social construction in sustainability transitions. Ecology and Society, 21(4). https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-08761-210415

Contact: p.klaassen@vu.nl

Keywords: climate change, emerging technologies, sustainability, safety and security, transdisciplinarity

Categories: Environmental/Multispecies Studies

Genetics, Genomics, Biotechnology

Technologies of Militarism/(In)Security

14. Borders in the Anthropocene: Transformations of Climates, Human and Nonhuman Mobility, and the Politics of the Earth

Huub Dijstelbloem, University of Amsterdam; Polly Pallister-Wilkins, University of Amsterdam

This panel engages with the matter of the border in the Anthropocene. STS studies show that networks of humans, technologies and nature form the earth where we live, but are often left out of the political representation of this world. But how do these hybrid networks affect borders and the trinity of states, territory and sovereignty? How should borders be conceived in the Anthropocene when international mobility is increasingly concerned with nonhuman entities? 

“Borders in the Anthropocene” asks attention for the emergence of new kinds of migrants and new categories of migration such as climate migration and environmental refugees as well as new categories of disasters and humanitarian and security issues related to the Anthropocene. The panel investigates the transformation of borders in landscapes and seascapes, such as the role of borders in the Arctic, border surveillance in the Sahara or the emergence of new migration routes in mountain regions. “Borders in the Anthropocene” analyzes the hybrid nature of these transformations, the way these transformations are monitored and how information systems are set up to register mobility in the Anthropocene, varying from human migration to health surveillance, travelling pathogens and the circulation of species.  

The panel aims to bring scholars together who study the transformation of borders in the Anthropocene and engage with climate change, environmental disasters, epidemics, the geopolitics of the earth and the circulation of people and all kinds of nonhuman entities. “Borders in the Anthropocene” welcomes empirical, conceptual and normative contributions as well as visual presentations, artistic work and political interventions.

Contact: dijstelbloem@gmail.com

Keywords: Borders, Anthropocene, Migration, Politics, Nonhumans

Categories: Technologies of Militarism/(In)Security

STS and Social Justice/Social Movement

Environmental/Multispecies Studies

21. Challenges of surveillance technologies in police and criminal justice systems

Sara Matos, University of Minho; Filipa Queirós, University of Minho; Aaron Amankwaa, Science & Justice RIG, Northumbria University; Ryanne Bleumink, Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam

Over the past decades, threats of terrorism and organized crime, changes in crime pattern and the nature of legal issues, as well as irregular migration, have been used to legitimize major investments in technological surveillance mechanisms. These mechanisms create regimes of state regulation, surveillance and social control while simultaneously stimulating a culture of data collection and the construction of large information systems. This expansion of surveillance technologies raises major questions about their implications in both police practices and criminal justice systems. So far, the academic debate has been addressing how the use of these surveillance mechanisms may, on the one hand, enhance public security objectives, such as the resolution of crime, and on the other hand pose threats to citizenship and human rights, such as privacy, data protection, and presumption of innocence. The latter scholarship addresses how these technologies contribute to injustice, increased suspicion, and the criminalization of minority populations. Aiming to address democracy, citizenship, transparency, effectiveness/efficiency and accountability issues in the operation of surveillance technologies, this panel welcomes contributions that critically engage with governance patterns for surveillance mechanisms such as, but not exclusively, forensic DNA databases, phenotyping technologies, familial searching, big data, facial recognition systems and predictive policing within different national civic epistemologies. Particularly, how these surveillance mechanisms contribute to policing and criminal justice outcomes and reshape our lives and notions of democracy and citizenship. The original contribution of this panel is the generation of a balanced and research-informed framework to help address the challenges of surveillance technologies.

Contact: filipaqueiros@ics.uminho.pt

Keywords: surveillance technologies; civic epistemologies; policing; democracy; citizenship;

Categories: Genetics, Genomics, Biotechnology

Governance and Public Policy

Technologies of Militarism/(In)Security

30. Contesting the ‘migration/border control machine’: entanglements of information and surveillance infrastructures with the making of publics/’non-publics’

Nina Amelung, University of Minho; Silvan Pollozek, MCTS, Technical University of Munich

In recent years information and surveillance infrastructures of migration and border control have gained more attention of civic actors, activists and researchers. Work at the intersection of STS, critical migration and border studies scrutinizes the hidden processes of data and information processing and their consequences on citizens and migrants, the seemingly neutrality of technologies or the role of technocratic experts.

But what could or should enable ‘non-publics’, those affected by the infrastructure’s consequences of social sorting, to transform into visible collectives and publics? How are other critical voices part of larger publics and controversies? How do publics emerge, and which issues and concerns gain authority and affect the design and working of surveillance and information infrastructures?

The panel engages with the making of ‘non-publics’, publics and controversies around information and surveillance infrastructures of migration and border control and addresses multiple forms of critique and contestation. It explores the arenas in which controversies unfold, the actors involved and the issues and concerns being articulated. It critically examines which actors’ voices are in- and excluded, amplified or silenced, as well as the processes and dynamics which enable or restrict public contestation. Furthermore, it reflects upon the ontological politics of research and researchers themselves. How is epistemic authority constructed within publics and beyond when engaging as experts, opinion makers and (expert) activists?

We invite contributions that study emergent publics and their arenas, actors, issues and contestations unfolding around the regulation, implementation and use of surveillance and information infrastructures of migration and border control.

Huub Dijstelbloem, University of Amsterdam, will act as discussant of this session.

Contact: nina.amelung@gmail.com

Keywords: infrastructures, migration and border control, contestation and (non)publics, ontological politics, epistemic authority

Categories: STS and Social Justice/Social Movement

Technologies of Militarism/(In)Security

Science Communication/Public Engagement

42. Digital Technologies in Policing and Security

Simon Egbert, Technische Universität Berlin; Nikolaus Pöchhacker, MCTS, Technical University of Munich

Recent and globally disseminated technologies and processes of data analysis and computational science – mainly in reference to terms (and myths) like big data, algorithmic decision making and artificial intelligence – have transformed many processes of knowledge production in the field of domestic security practices. With predictive policing as one of its currently most prominent representatives, the data-driven production of (prospective) knowledge has now also affected the security systems at every level – from policing to criminal justice, from border control to counterterrorism policies. Different predictive models include generating risky spaces – like PredPol; risky individuals – like Chicago’s ‘strategic subject list’, EU-border risk assessment system EUROSUR and US’ Computer-Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System; or calculating the recidivism risk of convicted offenders in order to inform the sentence decision – like COMPAS. Thus, regardless of whether suspects or spaces are objects of (predictive) knowledge production, or if recidivism risk scores for convicted offenders are generated, in the end, these practices are increasingly characterized by a socio-technical interwovenness with digital data production and algorithmic technologies. This calls for an exploration of the sociotechnical dynamics involved in the co-construction of risks, (in)justice, (in)security and technological development. Correspondingly, this panel seeks to ask how STS can provide analytical tools for grasping the entanglement of technology and society involved in the development and implementation of digitally mediated knowledge production in policing, criminal justice, border control and other fields of security by presenting globally disseminated case examples as well as theoretical approaches on the digitalization and datafication of policing and security practices.

Contact: simon.egbert@tu-berlin.de

Keywords: policing, criminal justice, security, legal technologies, digitalization

Categories: Information, Computing and Media Technology

Technologies of Militarism/(In)Security

Governance and Public Policy

137. Proliferation, dispersal and (in)security: towards new vocabularies for the debate between STS and critical security studies

Annalisa Pelizza, University of Bologna and University of Twente; Claudia Aradau, King’s College London

In recent years, an emerging debate between the social studies of technology and critical security studies has interrogated the materiality of security artefacts, questioned identification techniques for (in)security production, investigated how data systems shape legal expertise and regulatory dynamics. This debate has focused attention on the entanglements between the performativity of infrastructures – especially infrastructures for data production and body tracking – and the alleged obduracy of institutionalized agency.

Yet the debate seems to have reached a halt in questioning the material and institutional legacies of modernity. We suggest that such halt is due to the need to revisit our analytical vocabularies. On the one hand, the interplay between data infrastructures and institutionalized actors has received ambivalent consideration in STS. However, the current crisis of socio-technical infrastructures for population management, alterity processing and border controlling highlight the need to engage with long-term continuities and discontinuities. On the other hand, critical security studies have limited their conceptualization to security devices and paid less attention to infrastructural entanglements and the ontological boundaries of security actors.

In order to overcome these limits, we propose to introduce two terms in the debate: proliferation and dispersal. “Proliferation” is here conceived specifically in relation to the chains of action and mediators that intervene in the security relationship. “Dispersal” captures the spatio-temporal distribution of things and people and the partial connections and dis-connections that reproduce (in)security. These two terms prompt us to re-engage questions of multiplicity, heterogeneity and performativity at the intersection of STS and critical security studies.

Contact: annalisa.pelizza2@unibo.it

Keywords: security studies, population management, alterity processing, proliferation, dispersal

Categories: Information, Computing and Media Technology

Technologies of Militarism/(In)Security

Governance and Public Policy

205. Unpacking the Foundations of the Current Biometric Moment

Michelle Spektor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ranjit Pal Singh, Cornell University

From unlocking smartphones to verifying financial transactions, from boarding airplanes to clocking in at work, and from issuing national IDs and passports as tools of data-driven governance, the use of digital biometric technologies that rely on fingerprints, facial recognition, iris scans, and other metrics have increasingly become part of everyday life in the 21st century. While the proliferation of biometrics-based digital identities might be new, the use of biometrics – techniques of measuring the human body – to identify and/or classify individuals and groups has a much longer history.

This open track panel explores how individuals, states, and institutions have used biometrics to define individual and collective identities transnationally, and how those subjected to biometric identification experience it, accept it, or resist it. By bringing together papers that address how biometric identification encapsulates politics of identity in both the past and present, the panel aims to illuminate how past biometric systems inform the technological and socio-cultural features of the current biometric moment. Broadly, it inquires into how biometric identification (re)configures relationships among and across citizenship, migration, borders, and national belonging; race, gender, class, and disability; policing, surveillance, and criminality; labor, bureaucracy, and imaginaries of technological progress; power, subjectivity, and the body; social security, national security, and global development. It welcomes papers that address how STS tools and concepts can be leveraged to unpack the ways conceptions of identity shape and are shaped by biometric identification infrastructures in the past, present, and future.

Contact: spektor@mit.edu

Keywords: biometrics, identity/identification, governance, citizenship, surveillance

Categories: Governance and Public Policy

Big Data

Technologies of Militarism/(In)Security