Description
This paper seeks to advance the conceptual framework of ‘transversal alliances’ as a blueprint through which to hold states accountable for crime carried out in conjunction with big-tech. The past two decades have seen the practice of multinational technology companies sharing users’ data across borders for ‘security’ purposes , as well as the routine export of surveillance and spyware technology to states where enforced disappearances and murder are endemic. This sharing of technology and metadata have enabled the identification, tracking and targeting of protesters and political opponents, as well as insurgents. To date, however, the transnational, clandestine, covert and opaque nature of these operations has rendered accountability difficult. National oversight structures have often served to act in symbiosis with secret state violence, enacting impunity and obfuscation (Bigo, McCluskey, Treguer 2024, Kniep et al 2022). The occasions in which victims have received justice has been confined to the juridical realm, relying heavily on the work of investigative journalists and researchers (Shabibi 2024, Blakeley and Raphael 2020). In bringing together the work of investigative journalists and transdisciplinary social scientists, this paper seeks to rethink accountability in novel and creative ways. Instead of fashioning investigative techniques narrowly as ‘method’, it develops the idea of ‘transversality’ and building of collective voices, who may have diverse positions and trajectories but share in the common project of fighting impunity.
