How not to be algorithmically governed like that? Digital, politics and data protection (by design)
(2016) Sixth Biennial Conference, ECPR Standing Group on Regulatory Governance — Location: Tilburg University, the Netherlands (6.July.2016)
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- Authors
Bellanova, Rocco 
- Abstract
- The most compelling contemporary feature of what can be called the ‘digital’ is the continuous fabrication of data. Data are generally understood as the translation of people, behaviour, things and events into information on which knowledge can be established and action taken. As such, data have become not only a remarkable force in the production and control of societies, but also a force that has to be governed. In the European Union, ‘data protection’ is framed as the productive response to the potential tensions triggered by the digital in its fabrication of data. Born as a legal construct different from the notion of privacy, data protection is now presented as a way to reckon with the powers of data – governing them somewhat bio-politically: channelling their potential rather than preventing their fabrication. 2 Critical studies have hitherto rarely engaged with data protection, and when they do so, they either consider it as a mere lure or as a passive object, continuously overwhelmed by security and surveillance practices. Hence, there is a lack of critical analysis of data protection as a proper form of digital governmentality: both government – a continuous effort of dis/ordering – and mentality – the reflexive effort to make sense of the different forms of dis/ordering. The goal of this paper is to delve into the politics of data protection by focusing on the emergence of the so-called Data Protection by Design. Data protection by design can be tentatively defined as the project to enforce the respect of legislation and the protection of data subjects through the adoption of tailored technological and organizational tools. Given that this new tenet of data protection is still in the midst of political decision making, a critical inquiry of data protection by design allows us to analyse how some of the constitutive tensions of the digital are conceptualized, and tentatively solved. Moreover, the analysis of the emerging rationale of this new principle hints at the perverse political implications of the dream of ‘executable’ regulation, a particularly promising insight given the European and international drive towards a will to govern through (big) data.
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Citations
Bellanova, R. (2016). How not to be algorithmically governed like that? Digital, politics and data protection (by design). Sixth Biennial Conference, ECPR Standing Group on Regulatory Governance, Tilburg University, the Netherlands. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/181104