Beyond control? The political economy of private interception, intrusion, and surveillance markets

Lars Gjesvik and Johann Ole Willers

Review of International Political Economy, 2024, vol. 31, issue 6, 1840-1864

Abstract: Private intrusion, interception, and surveillance (PIIS) markets represent a key vehicle for the global expansion of digital surveillance regimes. Yet, due to their opacity and notorious secrecy, these markets have received relatively little scholarly attention. Triangulating between a unique dataset comprising 5973 industry presentations, interviews, and industry reports, this article provides novel insights into the evolution of market structures and public control efforts. Conceptualizing the PIIS-market as a dynamic and fluid assemblage, we highlight how the enmeshment of social, political, and technological dimensions shaped hierarchies and agencies of control. Our findings point towards the existence of three intersecting dynamics of territorialization, changing technological affordances, and ordering that persistently undermined attempts to limit market operations. In reflecting on these past failures, the presented approach points towards the importance of timing and highlights a need to re-conceptualize control in state-market relations from an assemblage perspective, pragmatically working across bureaucratic boundaries and leveraging disparate power centers across the public and private divide. Considering the growing interest in economic dependencies and the strategic dimension of high-tech markets, these findings have a wider relevance to current debates about the rise of economic security states.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2024.2375499

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