Abstract
Australia is a country firmly part of the Global North, yet geographically located in the Global South. This North-in-South divide plays out internally within Australia given its status as a British settler-colonial society which continues to perpetrate imperial and colonial practices vis-à-vis the Indigenous peoples and vis-à-vis Australia’s neighboring countries in the Asia-Pacific region. This article draws on and discusses five seminal examples forming a case study on Australia to examine big data practices through the lens of Southern Theory from a criminological perspective. We argue that Australia’s use of big data cements its status as a North-in-South environment where colonial domination is continued via modern technologies to effect enduring informational imperialism and digital colonialism. We conclude by outlining some promising ways in which data practices can be decolonized through Indigenous Data Sovereignty but acknowledge these are not currently the norm; so Australia’s digital colonialism/coloniality endures for the time being.
Introduction
Australia, as a country firmly part of the Global North yet geographically located in the Global South, occupies an interesting position. This North-in-South divide plays out internally within Australia given its status as a (British) settler-colonial society. Imperial and colonial practices vis-à-vis Indigenous peoples are ongoing, as well as occurring externally vis-à-vis Australia’s neighboring countries in the Asia-Pacific region. As we demonstrate, these practices interact with Australia’s treatment of marginalized groups at home and overseas, including refugees, welfare recipients, and Indigenous peoples. This article draws on five seminal examples comprising a case study of Australia to examine big data practices through the lens of Southern Theory (Connell 2007) from a Southern Criminological perspective (Carrington et al. 2016). We argue that Australia’s use of big data cements its status as a North-in-South environment where colonial domination is continued via modern technologies to effect enduring informational imperialism and digital colonialism. We conclude by suggesting promising ways, such as Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS) initiatives, whereby data practices can be decolonized; however we acknowledge that such Indigenous-led initiatives are not currently the norm for data collection and use in Australia, thus Australia’s North-in-South (double) data colonialism or coloniality endures for the time being.
Southern Theory and Big Data
In the seminal work Southern Theory, Connell (2007) considers knowledge-power relations, arguing that methods and processes of knowledge production from the Global North supersede alternative possibilities. Such possibilities include local, Indigenous, and ethnically diverse perspectives (Connell 2014), underpinned by “resistance, subversion, and creativity” among the voices of those often lost within Northern/Western dialogue (Milan and Treré 2017). Attention is focused on the power relations between the Global North and Global South—that is, the systems of academic inquiry and thought, and geopolitical, economic, and legal interactions that preference, and place at the top of the hierarchy, a Northern/Western, largely Anglophone, worldview—at the expense of Southern alternatives. Despite Australia’s geographical position within the Asia-Pacific, and the enduring presence and richness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, Australia’s social and political backdrop neglects these in favor of Northern/Western influences, thereby perpetuating the marginalization of Indigenous peoples. We argue that Australia’s position as a country with a distinctively “Northern” character geographically located in the Global South adds an novel conceptual dimension to the North–South dynamic, namely what we term, the “North-in-South.” Moreover, as Southern perspectives have been neglected in criminological research (Carrington et al. 2016), it is important to highlight the potential this framework has in the Australian context, and for intellectual inquiry.
Aligned with the datafication of society and North-South information flows, there is emerging recognition that North-South dynamics play out in “cyber” and digital (i.e., neither terrestrial nor geographically bound) realms (Lee 2018; Mann and Warren 2018). A growing literature recognizes the (neo)colonial and (neo)imperial ways in which digital technologies are created and implemented (e.g., Gajjala and Birzescu 2011; Jin 2015; Thatcher et al. 2016). Traditional colonialism represents the physical presence of a colonial power in a given geographical place (Jandrić and Kuzmanić 2016). Predigital data gathering about colonized peoples and its use, including through categorization as a means of colonial control, is not new and has characterized colonial and postcolonial countries including Australia for some time (Berda 2013; see also Keenan 2017). However, technological advancements have catalyzed digital colonialism, whereby information—and in the case of the present article, highly classified surveillance—can be disseminated to and from remote destinations as a means of perpetuating traditional colonial practices via modern technologies. Specifically, within Australia, we argue that it also reproduces—and exacerbates—preexisting colonial dynamics with Australia’s smaller and poorer neighbors, Indigenous peoples, refugees, and a range of other marginalized groups. In addition, datafication and new digital technologies enable massive amounts of information—that is, big data—to be collected, shared, and analyzed. Here, we acknowledge that “data colonialism” operates through “the commodification of data and its accumulation by dispossession” (Thatcher et al. 2016).
Growing research from North America also demonstrates how data practices are harmful to, and targeted at, People of Color (Browne 2015; Ferguson 2017; Noble 2017). Such scenarios may demonstrate a “double” data colonialism or “coloniality” (Maldonado-Torres 2007), whereby individuals experience the commodification and dispossession of their data, but marginalized persons and groups experience additional ways in which their data are “colonized” and used to further discriminate against them. In making these dynamics more visible in the Australian case, we hope to contribute toward a digital decolonial turn (Casilli 2017).
The “North-in-South”: The Curious Case of Australia
Global North-Global South divides play out internally within Australia given its status as a white settler–(invader)–colonial society (Johnston and Lawson 2000; Moreton-Robinson 2015; Veracini 2010) with a settler-majority population. The forced—and often fatal—displacement of the Indigenous inhabitants following European settlement/invasion is key to Australia’s colonial past (Hill 1995). Imperial and colonial practices toward the Indigenous inhabitants of the land are ongoing (Moreton-Robinson 2015), and Australia has a domineering and exploitative relationship with its smaller and poorer neighboring countries (Bramble 2015; Teaiwa 2015; J. K. Watson 2015).
We draw specifically on Australian case studies for several reasons. First, Australia is an “uncontested regional superpower, [and] one of the largest and richest nations in the world” (Coutinho and Gala 2014, 431). Australia is geographically situated in an important and strategic position for Global North/Western allies with Asia-Pacific interests. Its Western-influenced political economy combined with its location provides a unique geopolitical context for examination (Abbondanza 2013). Second, Australia has a rapidly expanding capacity and thirst for big data and big data analytics (Telsyte 2017). Australia has embraced big data practices in public administration (with mixed results, see for example, Galloway 2017) although, in comparison to other Northern/Western countries, the human rights framework governing these practices is severely lacking, and indeed as we have argued previously, in effect nonexistent (Mann et al. 2018; see also de Zwart et al. 2014; Williams and Reynolds 2017).
Against this backdrop of colonialism and the rapid uptake of big data in the absence of any real or enforceable human rights protections, the Australian context provides an opportunity to examine the intersection between technology (i.e., big data) and continuing colonial impacts. 1 We present five Australian examples where these dynamics play out both internally and externally to the Australian “sovereign state.” 2 These enable us to analyze the impact of Australia’s North-in-South big data practices and how such practices cement double digital colonialism/coloniality.
Australia’s Data Colonialism
This section overviews our case study of Australia’s internal and external data domination activities. The following examples demonstrate Australia’s external position internationally and as a key, albeit de facto, Global North power, as well as the internal influence of the Global North (particularly British colonial) on Australia’s domestic data-related activities. Moreover, these examples showcase the more generalized use of big data processes as a strategic tool for Australia both within and beyond its borders.
External Data Activities
The Five Eyes (FVEY) and joint defence facilities
The FVEY alliance—among the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—is the world’s most enduring multilateral intelligence sharing network (O’Neil 2017). Initiated in the 1940s, it exemplifies multilateral efforts to facilitate mass surveillance (Ruby et al. 2017). The FVEY network focuses on the collection and sharing of signals intelligence (SIGINT). It is formalized by the 1947 UKUSA Agreement 3 —at the time a top-secret agreement entered into following World War II. Initially an arrangement between the United Kingdom and the United States, it expanded to include other former British settler colonies. Thus, British colonial legacy has shaped the alliance. Australia’s involvement in the FVEY alliance is a result of its “close relationship with Britain,” and it maintains a junior position relative to the United States and the United Kingdom (O’Neil 2017, 536). While Australia supplies strategic intelligence and information to the FVEY alliance, particularly about the Asia-Pacific region, it is primarily a consumer of the senior partners’ data. Estimates suggest “the two-way intelligence flow between Australia and the USA is roughly 90 percent in Australia’s favour, with Canberra providing niche contributions overwhelmingly in relation to South-East Asia and the Pacific region” (O’Neil 2017, 538).
Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations cast light on Australia’s role in the shady FVEY alliance to much outrage from Australia’s neighbors. These revelations showed that most information sharing between the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) and the National Security Agency (NSA) concerned military and political issues in China and Indonesia (O’Neil 2017). Australia was engaged in extensive spying on regional neighbors via listening posts in diplomatic missions in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand. Today, the FVEY partnership is reified through bulk data collection and the existence of “joint facilities” designed specifically for SIGINT interception. The most important is the Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap (JDFPG) which was established at the height of the Cold War. 4 Publicly available material suggests the purpose of the JDFPG is to provide the ground control station for satellite communications (SATCOM) that intercept SIGINT (Joint Standing Committee on Treaties 1999, 12). Documents obtained by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and later leaked by The Intercept in 2017, reveal that the base operates as a communications monitoring control station enabling “continuous coverage of the majority of the Eurasian landmass and Africa . . . China, South Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and territories in the Atlantic Ocean” (Gallagher 2017).
Significantly, JDFPG is located on Arrernte land, 5 where protests and campaigns by the traditional Aboriginal land owners to close Pine Gap have occurred. 6 There is also a history of prosecuting peaceful protesters at JDFPG. 7 The limited research in this area tends to focus on exposing the JDFPG’s role in international surveillance and warfare (Middleton 2009) and neglects the fact that these surveillance structures have been established on traditional Aboriginal lands. The use of Aboriginal land for surveillance purposes, such as the JDFPG, highlights the ongoing perpetuation of colonialism on Australian soil, with a reach to neighboring countries, and reveals Australia’s continued colonial impact and extension both across traditional terrestrial lands and digital spaces.
Surveilling neighbors (Timor-Leste treaty negotiations, embassies, phones)
Timor-Leste (also known as East Timor in English) is a small country in Southeast Asia which occupies half of the island of Timor. Timor-Leste was first colonized by Portugal in the sixteenth century, later invaded and annexed by Indonesia in 1975, and finally gained independence in 2002. Since independence, Timor-Leste has been heavily reliant on oil for economic survival (Coutinho and Gala 2014). The maritime border between Australia and Timor-Leste that delimits jurisdiction and access to underwater oil and gas reserves has been the subject of extensive international arbitration (Coutinho and Gala 2014). 8 Another example of Australia’s digital domination can be found in the context of treaty negotiations with Timor-Leste about the maritime border between the two countries. The Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) spied on Timor-Leste during these negotiations (Anton 2014), as revealed by an Australian whistleblower known as Witness K. 9 In response, Timor-Leste attempted to have the Treaty with the Government of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS Treaty) declared invalid, arguing that the treaty is void on account of fraud, a breach of good faith by Australia engaging in espionage, and an intervention in Timor-Leste without consent (Anton 2014; Coutinho and Gala 2014). The mounting evidence suggests Australia made use of “asymmetry in political and economic power” to secure access to natural resources at the expense of impoverished and newly independent Timor-Leste (Anton 2014). On various international stages, Timor-Leste has focused attention on Australia’s “illegal use of power-espionage” to challenge and leverage a better deal (Anton 2014, 3). 10 Significantly, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Australia to cease spying on Timor-Leste and its legal representatives (Allard 2014), the only time Australia’s surveillance practices have been judicially condemned since the Snowden revelations became public (Daly 2016). 11 The previous CMATS Treaty between the countries has been superseded in 2018 by a new Treaty Between Australia and the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste Establishing Their Maritime Boundaries in the Timor Sea, establishing a “fair border” between the two countries, and considered a “victory” for Timor-Leste (Menon 2018). Nevertheless, Australia’s digital colonial power is still being asserted through its prosecution of whistleblower Witness K and his lawyer Bernard Collaery for conspiracy to breach section 39 of the Intelligence Services Act (Karp 2018), which carries a penalty of imprisonment for ten years.
The Timor-Leste example demonstrates the abuse by Australia of its global position and alliance with Global North superpowers to exploit Timor-Leste as a newly independent and vulnerable postcolonial nation-state through data domination. Yet, these are not limited to Timor-Leste. For example, despite successive cover up attempts (including suppression orders and Federal Court injunctions), in 1995, it was revealed that Australian intelligence agents installed listening devices in the Chinese Embassy in Canberra at the behest of the United States (Corcoran 2013). 12 Furthermore, the Snowden disclosures exposed Australia’s surveillance of the mobile telephone communications of then-Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (Leslie and Corcoran 2013). These evidence the key geographic role of Australia in effecting North-in-South data colonial practices against its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region.
Internal Data Activities
Surveillance of Indigenous peoples
In 2007, the Australian Government implemented the Northern Territory Emergency Response, known as “The Intervention,” which introduced a range of measures supposedly to curtail child abuse and other forms of violence in remote Indigenous communities, which were legally designated as “prescribed areas” under The Intervention. The Intervention has been widely criticized as a violation of international human rights standards (see, for example, Cowan 2013; Gruenstein 2008), and compounded over 200 years of colonial treatment of Indigenous peoples that has also included forced displacement from ancestral lands and the removal of children as part of an official policy of genocide (I. Watson 2018). Since 2007, “successive federal governments re-designed and re-framed the Intervention” with the current legislative package due to expire in 2022 (Castan Centre, n.d.).
One aspect of the initial measures consisted of the surveillance of internet use on publicly funded computers in over seventy remote Indigenous communities to prevent women and children being shown “prohibited material” (i.e., adult pornography, which was otherwise legal in Australia outside of the “prescribed areas”). This measure only operated in these “prescribed areas” and was not applied to internet use elsewhere in Australia. Providers of public internet and computer access facilities in prescribed areas were required to audit computer use, maintain records of computer users, and install internet filters (see Rennie et al. 2017). This has been described as “a remarkable case of institutional surveillance of a marginalized and vulnerable group” (Rennie et al. 2017, 4). Furthermore, as part of the Intervention, a National Indigenous Intelligence Taskforce (NIITF) was also created within the Australian Crime Commission (ACC, now known as the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, ACIC). 13 Intelligence was provided directly to the NIITF, with this intelligence gathering a significant motivation for the computer surveillance program (Calma 2009; Rennie et al. 2017). However, the ACC published a report on the NIITF, with no mention of public computer surveillance (ACC 2014).
Another example of big data surveillance that disproportionately targets Indigenous populations is the Suspect Targeting Management Plan (STMP) program in New South Wales (NSW). This program aims to identify individuals “at-risk” of recidivism (Sentas and Pandolfini 2017). However, a recent evaluation of this program by the Youth Justice Coalition revealed how the program facilitates surveillance of Indigenous young people (Sentas and Pandolfini 2017). More problematically, individuals who were “blacklisted” as “at-risk” included Indigenous children as young as nine, which is younger than the minimum age of criminal responsibility in NSW. Given this already disproportionate over-representation of Indigenous youth, which is also the case in the criminal justice system at large (White 2015), the STMP serves as another example of state-inflicted data injustice toward Indigenous peoples.
In addition, the Australian government has implemented the “BasicsCard” (and other variations of cashless welfare cards) to monitor and regulate welfare spending in Aboriginal communities as a form of welfare surveillance (Dee 2013). This welfare managerialism prohibits cardholders from purchasing prohibited items such as alcohol and cigarettes, and also from withdrawing cash. In practice, it operates as a technique for the state to monitor Indigenous people receiving welfare payments.
These official and state-sanctioned government programs (i.e., The Intervention, STMPs, BasicsCard) exemplify but a subset of continued efforts by the Australian Government to regulate the behaviors and actions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and in doing so impinge on their autonomy, sovereignty and self-determination. Welfare surveillance by the Australian government has gained traction in recent years, and measures such as the trial implementation of the BasicsCard in Indigenous communities serve as a colonial wedge cemented between Indigenous peoples and the Australian settler population. Such initiatives follow a harmful trajectory since the colonization of Australia and perpetuate asymmetry in (perceived) value between Indigenous knowledge and practices, and those of settler Australia (Connell 2014). Other welfare surveillance practices are examined further in the following section.
Surveilling the margins: Welfare and automated data matching
Welfare surveillance practices involve monitoring low-socioeconomic status individuals in receipt of social security benefits. While as seen above, welfare surveillance has been specifically used against Indigenous peoples, and it has also extended to the settler population in a number of ways (Henman and Marston 2008). The Australian government welfare agency Centrelink’s “RoboDebt” saga is a recent and controversial example of this, which highlights some of the adverse effects of big data surveillance and data-matching techniques. The RoboDebt debt raising and recovery program involved automated data-matching between Centrelink and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to detect discrepancies in income reporting between agencies to recover suspected over-payments of welfare benefits (Galloway 2017). Over 200,000 people were affected when Centrelink automatically sent out approximately 20,000 debt notices per week without human intervention. Many were inaccurate, with investigations finding error attributable to data mismatching and data inaccuracies (Galloway 2017). The use of mismatched and inaccurate data to target thousands of welfare recipients, combined with the lack of fair processes enabling clients to have their debt notice reviewed is nothing short of an infringement of natural justice (Galloway 2017). A subsequent parliamentary inquiry recommended suspending the system until issues of procedural justice (i.e., errors in matching, data inaccuracies and avenues for review of automated decisions) were addressed (Community Affairs References Committee 2017). However, at the time of writing, it seems RoboDebt notices continue to be issued.
Welfare surveillance and data is thus used by Australia to further marginalize people receiving, or who have received, welfare benefits. In doing so, a “Southern” class is delineated internally by the “Northern” Australian state, which effects punitive measures on this class; the specific use of even more invasive welfare surveillance measures against Indigenous peoples further evidences the double digital coloniality perpetrated by the Australian nation-state.
Surveillance in the borderlands—Manus and Nauru
Our final data domination example is Australian surveillance and data gathering from individuals at the borderzones, particularly refugees in the offshore detention camps on the Pacific islands of Manus (part of Papua New Guinea) and nation-state Nauru. Refugees who attempt to arrive in Australia by boat are transported to these detention camps, rather than being allowed to land in Australia, in Australian Government policies which have been termed the “Pacific Solution.” The Pacific Solution has been strongly criticized, including for infringing international human rights standards (Henderson 2014; Saul 2012).
Since 9/11, the Australian border has been a prominent site of biometric data collection about those that (attempt to) pass through it (Mann and Smith 2017; Wilson 2007), informed by historical and racialized colonial narratives of securitization (Mbembe 2003; Wilson 2007). There have also been specific surveillance practices perpetrated in the detention camps (Briskman 2013), at the same time as the Australian Government has attempted to restrict information from getting out of the camps to the public (Brevini 2017; Briskman 2013). These practices have spilled over into the domestic politics of Nauru, including a block of “abusive” internet content on Facebook, to restrict the flow of information coming out from the detention camp (Heemsbergen and Daly 2017). Furthermore, the NGO Save the Children had its premises raided in Nauru by the domestic police, on the pretext of identifying the source of a leak about conditions in the detention camps (Hasham 2015).
The surveillance of refugees in these borderzones and corresponding Australian government secrecy are “authoritarian” (Heemsbergen and Daly 2017), but they also reflect and reinforce Australia’s “colonial present” toward refugees (Dickson 2015), and the broader enduring colonial dynamics with Australia’s Pacific poorer neighbors reliant on Australian foreign aid (Rajaram 2003).
Conclusion: Australia’s Informational Imperialism and Digital Colonialism
These examples forming our case study of Australia demonstrate that Australia’s “external” and “internal” big data practices are a continuation and expansion of “traditional” colonial practices. These data practices can be understood through the lens of Southern Theory. Australia has a “Northern” character but it is geographically located in the Global South, and Northern or Western perspectives and contributions are preferred over Southern alternatives. Australia’s interactions externally with neighbors in the Global South, internally, in particular with Indigenous peoples, and at the border with refugees, equate to a “North-in-South” dynamic.
In general, there is widespread surveillance of the whole population in Australia, through the country’s participation in the FVEY alliance, and through domestic laws and policies such as mandatory data retention (Suzor et al. 2017). The lack of comprehensive human rights protections facilitates data collection that would be illegal in “similar” Global North jurisdictions (Daly 2017; Mann et al. 2018). However, as we have shown, some of Australia’s data practices assume a specific colonial character, targeting marginalized and minority groups internally and at the border, and poorer neighbors in the region. This is perhaps unsurprising given the potential for big data to be used as a tool to perpetuate biases and prejudice certain individuals and groups, especially People of Color and those on a low income (Lum and Isaac 2016).
Australia’s Global North-in-South data practices exhibit a double data colonialism/coloniality—individuals in general experience the dispossession of their data, but marginalized persons and groups experience additional ways in which their data is “colonized” and used to further discriminate against them. Australia is unique among the Anglosphere settler-colonial societies in never having negotiated treaties with the Indigenous nations, presenting barriers for Indigenous peoples in having their sovereignty, digital or otherwise, recognized by the Australian settler law.
There are Indigenous-initiated and -led attempts to decolonialize data practices in both Australia and other Anglosphere colonial settler states, including through Indigenous Data Sovereignty initiatives and the recognition and promotion of Indigenous peoples’ “inherent and inalienable rights and interests . . . relating to the collection, ownership and application of data about their people, lifeways and territories” (Kukutai and Taylor 2016, 2). In practice, IDS initiatives involve the right of Indigenous nations and peoples to govern the collection, ownership, and use of data, in contrast to the dominant settler-colonialist approaches which have often forcibly collected data about Indigenous peoples in culturally inappropriate ways, data which has then been used against them (Pool 2016). IDS initiatives, such as the Yawuru Knowing Our Community from the Yawuru people of North Western Australia (Yap and Yu 2016) and the development of Mayi Kuwayu, the first national longitudinal study of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander well-being (Lovett 2016), represent a counterhegemonic current to the Australian colonial settler-state’s North-in-South data collection and surveillance practices. By ensuring these initiatives are driven and informed by Indigenous experiences and perspectives, they offer the possibility for those subjected to double data colonialism/coloniality to initiate culturally appropriate data practices for and by their own people.
Nevertheless at present, the dominant forms of surveillance, data collection and use in Australia remain colonial/of a Northern character. The privacy (and other human rights) of everyone within Australia (and also people outside of Australia’s geographical borders) are routinely violated by Australian mass surveillance, data collection, and use. However our case study of Australia demonstrates the double digital colonialism/coloniality that Australia’s surveillance, data collection, and gathering practices encompass given their particular targeting of, and impact on, marginalized populations, including Indigenous peoples, refugees, welfare recipients, and smaller and poorer neighboring countries in the Asia-Pacific region. This cements Australia’s position as a “Global-North-in-South” big data actor. In exposing this double data colonialism/coloniality, we aim to contribute to the body of knowledge on Southern Criminology on surveillance and data practices. We also aim to contribute to a more accurate characterization of Australia, by terming it a North-in-South actor because of its colonial settler configuration and the ongoing practices of colonialism toward Indigenous peoples, which are now perpetrated via digital and other technological means.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Harley Williamson for her research assistance on this article. We would also like to thank Peter Kalule and Sarah Keenan for their comments on an earlier version of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research has been funded by the QUT Faculty of Law Intellectual Property and Innovation Law program.