Studying global security infrastructures in action - Gavin Sullivan (Edinburgh Law School)

 

Recent shifts in global security governance and developments in AI and machine learning are fostering the emergence of what I call ‘global security infrastructures’. These are powerful sociotechnical data assemblages for collecting, sharing and processing data traces and making them actionable or ‘algorithm ready’ for security and border governance purposes. This talk explores some of the key conceptual and methodological challenges of doing empirical research on these data-driven security infrastructures, foregrounding problems of agency, opacity and secrecy. I argue that this research requires approaches that decentre law, foreground sociotechnical processes and that follow how data-driven security infrastructures and regulatory practices are co-productive. Various empirical examples from my current infra-legalities research  will be used to develop this claim - including  machine learning infrastructures being developed as part of the UK Border Strategy 2025 and the use of algorithmic content moderation techniques by the GIFCT and social media platforms to governing ‘terrorist’ and ‘violent extremist’ content on the Internet.

Bio: Dr. Gavin Sullivan is a Reader in International Human Rights Law at Edinburgh Law School whose research focuses on the politics of global security law algorithmic regulation using socio-legal and STS methods. He is the Principal Investigator of the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship project, Infra-Legalities: Global Security Infrastructures, Artificial Intelligence and International Law which examines how AI-security and automated decision-making is reshaping global security law and governance.

Website: https://www.law.ed.ac.uk/people/dr-gavin-sullivan

https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/CIDS/Week+7+Governance+for+a+secure+digital+world%3A+Algorithmic+s...