TY - JOUR

T1 - Data retention in the European Union

T2 - When a call returns

AU - Leistert, Oliver

PY - 2008

Y1 - 2008

N2 - Retained (via digital storage) metadata of telecommunications acts change and transform into the content of something else: a surveillance program. Originating from telecommunications as a protocol necessity, the metadata is fed into a data space that freezes and manipulates the time axis. This measurement of post-9/11 governing is only one item in an assemblage of surveillance technologies that are not watching, in the manner of traditional CCTV, but processing the population under observation. Since data processing is a more recent, counterintuitive, and still relatively opaque principle, its capacities are not adequately understood, nor are they established in the general understanding. The concept of a data space that provides movement within and between data described here illustrates the powers of data retention in an imaginable way.

AB - Retained (via digital storage) metadata of telecommunications acts change and transform into the content of something else: a surveillance program. Originating from telecommunications as a protocol necessity, the metadata is fed into a data space that freezes and manipulates the time axis. This measurement of post-9/11 governing is only one item in an assemblage of surveillance technologies that are not watching, in the manner of traditional CCTV, but processing the population under observation. Since data processing is a more recent, counterintuitive, and still relatively opaque principle, its capacities are not adequately understood, nor are they established in the general understanding. The concept of a data space that provides movement within and between data described here illustrates the powers of data retention in an imaginable way.

KW - Digital media

M3 - Journal articles

SP - 925

EP - 935

JO - International Journal of Communication

JF - International Journal of Communication

SN - 1932-8036

IS - 2/2008

ER -