Reterritorialising Transnational Policing and Due Process
Tomorrow Deakin Criminologists Dr Ian Warren and Associate Professor Darren Palmer will present at the Annual Australian and New Zealand Critical Criminology Conference in Melbourne. Their paper ‘Reterritorialising Transnational Policing and Due Process‘ uses two case studies to illustrate how a self-legitimizing ‘reterritorialisation’ of transnational governance through crime is reinforced by legal decisions that justify enhanced extraterritorial surveillance by US enforcement authorities with questionable due process implications.
Conference paper abstract:
As transnational crime subverts territorial sovereignty, so too do an increasing array of policing, securitization, criminal detection and surveillance processes. The risk, and fear, of these crime control measures is the subversion, or defiance, of established due process legal controls that commonly attach to criminal investigations within sovereign jurisdictions. This paper uses two examples to illustrate how a self-legitimizing ‘reterritorialisation’ of transnational governance through crime is reinforced by legal decisions that justify enhanced extraterritorial surveillance by US enforcement authorities with questionable due process implications. The first involves a legal ruling for a warrant to obtain data about a US citizen from a Microsoft server located in Ireland. The second involves the US Drug Trafficking Vessel Interdiction Act to locate courier boats off the coast of Ecuador and Columbia explicitly designed to avoid US aerial and maritime surveillance. Both cases are indicative of a pattern where enforcement practice is gradually subverting territorial constraints, yet largely supported by judicial reasoning. The implications of these rulings on transnational surveillance, justice and Packer’s crime control and due process models are discussed in light of the relative ease and lack of critical public scrutiny associated with these developments.