Deakin Criminologist’s Dr Ian Warren and Dr Adam Molnar speaking at QUT: Policing the Digital Age
Dr Ian Warren
Dr Adam Molnar
Deakin Criminologist’s Dr Ian Warren and Dr Adam Molnar will be speaking on Monday 7th November at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. The seminar is entitled “Policing the Digital Age: Surveillance, Government Hacking and Rule-Of-Law Online”. For details of time, location and how to register, see here.
Abstracts
“‘Police’, Order and Critical Criminology in the Digital Age”
by Dr Ian Warren
This presentation explores the Foucauldian notion of ‘police’ and its relationship to Nadelmann’s (1993) idea of the Americanisation of global policing, by examining the intersections between technology, surveillance, borders and the role of the criminal law in a digital age. This will be done exploring constructions of ‘order’ in a series of historical and contemporary cases where electronic analogue and digital technologies enable communications to transcend geographic space, and produce very peculiar applications of law. These developments hint at several police (as opposed to policing) functions that display analogies with contemporary forms of ubiquitous physical surveillance that transcend public and private legal and jurisdictional divides. They also reveal many underlying complexities with how ideals of order are produced, or magnified, by the processes of criminalisation, particularly in the field of intellectual property law, and through the laws of conspiracy. The conclusion examines how real world conceptions of ‘police’ can help demystify the complexities and pluralities of law in an increasingly borderless digital age, and the broader role of critical criminology in an era of ubiquitous surveillance.
“Government Hacking and Rule-with-Law in Australia and Canada”
by Dr Adam Molnar
Computer Network Operations (CNOs), sometimes called ‘government hacking’, refers to government intrusion and/or interference with information communication infrastructures for the purposes of law enforcement and security intelligence. This presentation argues that while the domestic application of CNOs may be ‘lawful’ in Australia and Canada, their use is subject to a range of ‘counter-law’ developments that undermine rule-of-law and poses risks to the administration of criminal justice, privacy, and other democratic freedoms.