Abstract: The development of the Web 2.0 and cloud computing has fostered a new era of openness and transparency in universities and colleges across the world: one that enables researchers, students, professors and professionals to work more efficiently, create new models, invent new products, and establish mutually beneficial international partnerships. Serious academic research is now increasingly dependent on ever more complex technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data (BD). But these new information and communication technologies (ICTs) are threatening centralised state controls at various levels, be it privacy, copyright, community management or law enforcement. This paper considers how some Western governments are trying to put an end to this new era of relative openness and global information exchange with extrajudicial measures, programmes of mass-surveillance and investigatory-powers legislation. In the end, I argue that a rational comprehension of these reactionary measures depends upon first situating them within the fear-orienting background framework of the bogeyman.
Keywords: Binary oppositions, binarisation, dualism, human rights, equality of arms, surveillance, snooping, desnooping, Bletchley Park, NSA, GCHQ, Prism, Tempora, Edward Snowden, Draft Communications Data Bill 2012, Snoopers’ Charter, Investigatory Powers Bill 2015, Investigatory Powers Act 2016, Intelligence Service Commission, UK intelligence chiefs, spy bosses, spy science, proxy, proxies, secrecy, privacy, delusions, psychosis, bogeyman, Hitler, Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, bin Laden, al-Bagdadi, Mubarak, Kim Jong-un, James Bond, 007, Spectre, Lord Bingham, Lord Hoffmann, Belmarsh decision, Stuxnet, GoldenEye, David Davis, Adebolajo, WhatsApp, Facebook, Lee Rigby, Khalid Masood, Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad, police, anti-terrorism, crime, security, hacking, inside hack, man-in-the-middle hack, digital slavery, Web 2.0, data equality, transparency.
Title: Here Comes the Bogeyman
Author: Fred Perez
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research
ISSN 2348-3156 (Print), ISSN 2348-3164 (online)
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