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Netherlands Yearbook of International Law 2016 pp 107–129Cite as

Data Territories: Changing Architectures of Association in International Law

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Part of the book series: Netherlands Yearbook of International Law ((NYIL,volume 47))

Abstract

Territoriality is a powerful architecture of association in international law, performing significant bounding, distributive and placement functions. Yet it has always interacted with other global legal architectures of affiliation and disaffiliation, among them informational geographies. So what becomes of territoriality amid the turn to data analytics—the automated analysis of massive, distributed data sets—as a basis for international legal and policy decision, action, thinking, and prediction? This chapter recounts processes and practices already underway on the global plane that are effecting, on one hand, the ‘datafication’ of territory (and the related rise of a logic of association) and, on the other, the ‘territorialisation’ of data (and the emergence or recurrence of ‘data territories’) in international legal order. Through these kinds of processes, and in its variable configurations, data might yet parallel physical territory (landed and maritime) as a primary medium for the conduct of juridical global life and conflict, a prospect that raises important questions for international law and lawyers.

The author is indebted to Hans Lindahl for conversation about this piece, and to two anonymous reviewers for insightful and instructive comments. Thanks are also due to Dr. Pornsakol Dao Coorey for research assistance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Fustel de Coulanges 2006, at 202–203.

  2. 2.

    See, e.g., Handl 2012, at 4: ‘[I]n a seemingly borderless world social, economic or environmental problems and their solutions tend to be transnational in nature, or “de-territorialised”, thus calling into question territorial sovereignty as a fundamental organising principle of the global legal architecture’.

  3. 3.

    Johns 2013, 2016; Frater and Ryan 2001; Yam 2008; Meier 2015.

  4. 4.

    Elden 2013, at 328.

  5. 5.

    Elden 2013, at 4; Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Online (2016), http://www.oed.com, accessed 6 June 2016.

  6. 6.

    See generally Prescott and Triggs 2008; Ryngaert 2015.

  7. 7.

    Prescott and Triggs 2008; Brunet-Jailly 2015.

  8. 8.

    Vattel 1760, at 137.

  9. 9.

    Jackson and Zacher 1997.

  10. 10.

    1933 Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States, 165 LNTS 19.

  11. 11.

    Grant 1999.

  12. 12.

    Kesby 2007.

  13. 13.

    See, e.g., Moore et al. 2009; and Gagnon et al.2009.

  14. 14.

    Wai 2002.

  15. 15.

    Noyes 2011; Pahuja 2012.

  16. 16.

    Wilde 2008.

  17. 17.

    Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Online (2016), http://www.oed.com, accessed 6 June 2016.

  18. 18.

    See generally, for example, Sugarman 1983; Zizek 1989.

  19. 19.

    Evans 1998; Samama 2008.

  20. 20.

    Perrin 1927; Higgitt and Dolan 2010.

  21. 21.

    Leszczynski 2012.

  22. 22.

    Hardy 2009; Hewlett Packard (2016), Products and solutions / Eco solutions: CeNSE, http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-information/environment/cense.html, accessed 6 June 2016.

  23. 23.

    Economist (2015) Monitoring Nuclear Weapons: The Nuke Detectives, 5 September 2015, http://www.economist.com/topics/nuclear-weapons, accessed 6 June 2016.

  24. 24.

    Oleson (2015) Beyond the Bomb: The World’s Nuclear Watchdog Expands its Science, Earth Magazine, 27 April 2015, http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/beyond-bomb-worlds-nuclear-watchdog-expands-its-science, accessed 6 June 2016.

  25. 25.

    Stanley and Liao 2011.

  26. 26.

    On “corrupt” personalization, see C Sandvig (2014), Corrupt Personalization, Social Media Collective Research Blog, 26 June 2014, https://socialmediacollective.org/2014/06/26/corrupt-personalization/, accessed 6 June 2016.

  27. 27.

    Hardy 2009 (on a self-aware globe); Johns 2013, at 12-14 and 34 (on legal interoperability).

  28. 28.

    European Commission (2016), EU Commission and United States agree on new framework for transatlantic data flows: EU-US Privacy Shield, Press Release, 2 February 2016, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-216_en.htm, accessed 6 June 2016; Boyd and Crawford 2012.

  29. 29.

    Benkler 2003, 2006.

  30. 30.

    Rauch 2005.

  31. 31.

    Hand et al. 2001, at 158.

  32. 32.

    Lee and Lee 2011, at 483 and 488. See generally Agrawal et al. 1993.

  33. 33.

    Aragones et al. 2005.

  34. 34.

    Hastie et al. 2009.

  35. 35.

    Hand et al. 2001, at 163 and 235.

  36. 36.

    Loh et al. 2003, at 358.

  37. 37.

    Azzalini and Scarpa 2012, at 5.

  38. 38.

    Hand et al. 2001, at 295 and 440–441.

  39. 39.

    Wang et al. 2005; Hand et al. 2001, at 295.

  40. 40.

    Wang et al. 2005.

  41. 41.

    Li 2005.

  42. 42.

    Hand et al. 2001, at 431.

  43. 43.

    Ciborra 2002.

  44. 44.

    Amoore 2009.

  45. 45.

    Vaitla 2014.

  46. 46.

    World Bank 2014, at 23.

  47. 47.

    Quinn et al. 2010.

  48. 48.

    Eagle et al. 2010.

  49. 49.

    1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 999 UNTS 171, Article 9(2).

  50. 50.

    Amoore 2009.

  51. 51.

    Anghie 2007.

  52. 52.

    Taylor and Broeders 2015, at 230–235.

  53. 53.

    Reveron 2006, at 460; United States National Security Agency (NSA) (2010), Declassified UKUSA Signals Intelligence Agreement Documents Available, Press Release, 24 June 2015, https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/press-room/press-releases/2010/ukusa.shtml, accessed 6 June 2016.

  54. 54.

    Rudner 2004, at 209–210; Lefebvre 2003, at 531–532.

  55. 55.

    Reveron 2006, at 460; BBC (2010), Siprnet: Where the Leaked Cables Came From, 29 November 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11863618, accessed 6 June 2016.

  56. 56.

    Svendsen 2008; Sepper 2010, at 154–159; Svendsen 2012.

  57. 57.

    Church 2011–2012: Reveron 2006, at 457; Fenster 2011–2012, at 492, note 189; Department of Defense (DOD) 2012.

  58. 58.

    Department of Defense (DOD) 2012, at 63.

  59. 59.

    FBI website, https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/legat, accessed 6 June 2016. See also Sepper 2010, at 159–166 (emphasizing the importance of professional community, professional reputation, professional ‘ethos’ and peer relationships in intelligence networks).

  60. 60.

    Rudner 2004, at 200.

  61. 61.

    Rohn and Erez 2013.

  62. 62.

    Rudner 2004, at 222; Sepper 2010, at 156–157.

  63. 63.

    Steele 2007.

  64. 64.

    See, e.g., Bach 2011.

  65. 65.

    Fustel de Coulanges 2006, at 202–203.

  66. 66.

    Case Concerning the Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Republic of Mali), ICJ, Judgment, 22 December 1986, para 20.

  67. 67.

    E.g., Paasi 1998.

  68. 68.

    Johns 2013; Johns and Joyce 2014.

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  1. University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

    Fleur Johns

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  1. Ministry of Security and Justice of the Netherlands, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Martin Kuijer

  2. Faculty of Law, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Wouter Werner

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Johns, F. (2017). Data Territories: Changing Architectures of Association in International Law. In: Kuijer, M., Werner, W. (eds) Netherlands Yearbook of International Law 2016. Netherlands Yearbook of International Law, vol 47. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-207-1_5

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