Collect it all: national security, Big Data and governance

Abstract

This paper is a case study of complications of Big Data. The case study draws from the US intelligence community (IC), but the issues are applicable on a wide scale to Big Data. There are two ways Big Data are making a big impact: a reconceptualization of (geo)privacy, and "algorithmic security." Geoprivacy is revealed as a geopolitical assemblage rather than something possessed and is part of emerging political economy of technology and neoliberal markets. Security has become increasingly algorithmic and biometric, enrolling Big Data to disambiguate the biopolitical subject. Geoweb and remote sensing technologies, companies, and knowledges are imbricated in this assemblage of algorithmic security. I conclude with three spaces of intervention; new critical histories of the geoweb that trace the relationship of geography and the state; a fuller political economy of the geoweb and its circulations of geographical knowledge; and legislative and encryption efforts that enable the geographic community to participate in public debate.