Understanding today’s digital fortresses Call for essays on digital security infrastructures

Digitalisation has dramatically increased both the coercive scope of state security agencies as well as their potential impact. Today, repression is facilitated by a physical and mobile infrastructure of data centres, databases, cables, mobile and home devices that penetrates into every realm of our lives. We increasingly live inside digital fortresses, underpinned by an infrastructure that interconnects often-understood-to-be different areas of state power, reliant on a small coterie of private corporate actors, and embedded in physical landscapes and institutions. This digital fortress shapes all our lives, but most severely affects all those marginalised and made targets of the state, including activists, refugees, and racialised groups.

The power of this infrastructure comes from its constant drive to expansion as well as its interoperability, where datasets are shared and connected. This means that borders, prisons, military systems, and digital platforms are increasingly integrated through shared technologies, data systems, and corporate interests. They are embedded in a political economy where the computational industry – in particular the Big Tech firms – have succeeded in capturing the operations of governments and public institutions in all spheres of public life, enabling them to facilitate connections and overlap processes in different civil, military, and security contexts as well as to consistently push for further expansion of the digital fortress in terms of technology, scope, and geography.  In the mean time, activist work and campaigning have become reliant on Big Tech infrastructures itself.

This poses a major challenge to social movements, activists and communities impacted by its harm. We are not confronting stand-alone tools or actors but a powerful ecosystem, a financialised technological architecture, embedded in institutions and daily practices. We need to understand this infrastructure in order to better confront it – to identify the vulnerabilities, the weaknesses, the interdependencies, the points of pressure that can stop it working or at the very least, minimise its harm. This needs to guide our strategies of resistance as well as our attempts to build alternatives.

TNI and TITIPI are running a two-year project to examine these digital fortresses, which has included a gathering of researchers and activists working on these issues, a webinar series, an ‘operations room’ to unpack the technologies by those most impacted by it, and this component – a series of long-reads. Our goal is to bring together rich analysis, thinking, and lived experience of the digital fortresses for activists worldwide to improve our strategies of resistance and help build alternative infrastructures that do not rely on and exacerbate violence.

These are some questions – but not an exclusive list – that we are interested in exploring and understanding better:

• What are the historical causes of current systems of digital security surveillance and control? How do these historical currents play out in digital infrastructures today? What can we learn from past technological developments and resistance that can guide us today?
• What role does digital security infrastructure play in current systems of capitalism and neoliberalism, war and imperialism? How is it changing or shaping it or being shaped by changes and challenges to those systems?
• What is the nature of the technical architecture that underpins coercive state and non-state practices? What protocols, standards, regulations and policies does it depend on? What are its vulnerabilities, and what are potential points of intervention in digital coercive infrastructure?
• Who are the key corporate actors in this space? How are they connected? How are they financed? What are their business models? How do they get contracts? What supply chains do they depend on?
• What does digital coercion look like in different regions of the world? What can we learn from these experiences? 
• What can we learn from resistance to digital security infrastructure in different countries and regions of the world? 
• What strategies are needed to best confront digital security infrastructures?
• What alternative models and approaches to digital infrastructure exist that minimise or eliminate the harm of current state security models?

As well as analysis, TNI would also be interested in specific case-studies that draw out general lessons, as well as stories, artwork, films, and other creative outputs that help us understand and resist these systems in  imaginative ways.

There are stipends for contributions for those who need them of around 400-600 euros, which will be  prioritised for activists with low incomes and those based in the Global South. Please mention in your submission if you wish to be considered for such a stipend.

Eligibility

While TNI is proud of our high standard of scholarship, this call does not require any specific academic qualifications. Contributors to TNI’s books and series have included students, professors, well-known authors, journalists, activists and artists - all at different stages of their careers and lives. TNI particularly welcomes submissions from marginalised and under-represented communities, particularly in the Global South.

Process

The final publication will be made up of essays and contributions from this open call and a number of pre-commissioned pieces. These will be accompanied by original artwork commissioned for the selected essays. The decision on which essays are selected will be decided by an Editorial Panel made up of people from TNI and our partner, The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITIPI)

1. In the first stage, researchers will be asked to send an email to digitalfortresses AT tni.org with
   • 1 page pitch for your long-read essay, or creative output
   • a short bio 
   • 3-5 links to previous work. It will help your application if your previous work is not just limited to academic texts but includes some more accessible pieces.

Pitches should include:
   • the main argument you are trying to make
   • how it relates to and helps us understand digital security infrastructures
   • the key points you would include
   • stories or examples that illustrate it  

The pitch can be based on existing work or be based on a provisional idea of what you hope to  explore. If you would like to apply for the stipend please indicate at this stage.

2. Those whose pitches are chosen will be asked to submit an essay or creative work. We do not guarantee to publish it, but if it meets quality requirements will do our best to do so, at least as an accompanying piece to the main report. We will also work with every author to improve their submission for publication.

3. The selected contributions will go through a final round of revisions based on feedback by the Editorial Panel, and subject to a final copy-edit.

Submission requirements

• Pitches should be written in English although actual essays can be written in English or Spanish as they will be translated and we have enough editors who can work in different languages.
• They should be emailed to digitalfortresses AT tni.org 
• Pitches must be a maximum of 1 page or 600 words, or could include visuals or visual descriptions. They do not need to be of continuous prose but must capture the main arguments of the contribution and can be expanded outlines. Bios should be 150 words or less.
• The decision of the Editorial Panel is final. If your pitch or contribution is chosen, please be ready to respond to peer reviews and copy-editing comments based on the timeline below.
• Final Essay length: 3000-5000 words. The upper word limit is strictly applied.
• Style: TNI has five basic criteria for its research and publications that will also be used to assess the pitches and essays:
  • Credible: Well researched and evidence-based
  • Accessible: Readable by a broad non-specialist audience (in other words please avoid too much academic jargon) and try to use stories/examples
  • Additional: Adds depth, new insights, or detail to existing knowledge/research
  • Radical: Tackles the structural roots of critical issues
  • Propositional: Does not just critique, but also puts forward just alternatives where relevant
• TNI's style guide can be found here in English and here in Spanish
• Do not include references in brackets within the text e.g. (Abramson, 2011) in the academic style. As we first publish online and then as a printable PDF, please hyperlink the text pointing to the reference AND provide an endnote with the full reference in Harvard style. You may also provide a bibliography at the end of the essay instead.
• Please avoid excessive endnotes (no more than 40 for each essay) – use it mainly for referring to facts/evidence that may be surprising, questioned, or challenged.
• Please send your submissions as a .doc file or .docx file or Open/Libre Office equivalent for written texts, or a pdf for artistic submissions.
   

Timeline

11 September        Submission of pitches

20 September        Pitches approved for submission of full contribution          

20 November         Submission of full contribution

Nov/Dec                 Review, second draft, final copyedits

January                  Preparation of promotion, syndication etc

End of January      Publication of essays and creative works