State of urgency: Surveillance, power, and algorithms in France’s state of emergency

Abstract

The recent terrorist attacks and ongoing state of emergency in France have brought questions of police surveillance into the public spotlight, making it increasingly important to understand how police attain data from citizens. Since 2005, the French police have been using IBM’s computer program, i2 Analyst’s Notebook, to aggregate information and craft criminal narratives. This technology serves to quickly connect suspects with crimes, looking for as many associations as possible, ranking and visualizing them based on level of importance. Recently, surveillance and state power have been theorized as having shifted to a posthegemonic, order. Drawing from literature on power, surveillance, and identity, this paper considers the various ways that algorithms can impact policing under a state of emergency by comparing the technical protocol of i2 Analyst’s Notebook with the administrative protocol of the French state. Using i2 Analyst’s Notebook as an example, this paper argues that posthegemonic theories of power have their place in determining how algorithms can be used for surveillance, but that they cannot completely explain their use under the state of emergency.