Dr Ben Collier presents ‘Never mind the bollards: Exploring the role of GCHQ and MI5 in strategically shaping security markets in the UK’ as part of the Controversies in the Data Society Seminar Series 2018-2025.

“This seminar explores the role played by the security services – namely, GCHQ and MI5 – in securing public life in the UK. It focuses in particular on two of the three National Technical Authorities set up to allow spy agencies to shape security markets in the United Kingdom: the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) run by GCHQ and the National Protective Security Authority (NPSA) run by MI5. Interventions by these agencies take the form of radical attempts to secure the physical and digital built environment of the UK, from the bollards on the street to the passwords on your phone – not directly, but through strategically shaping markets and co-ordinating the information order which underpins them. Much of the UK’s critical national infrastructure and public services is now run by major private sector providers. These providers are generally not incentivised to spend resources in securing and maintaining this infrastructure to a high standard; the state has little power, authority, or political will to compel them to do so, or to step in and secure it themselves. With the rise of unignorable risks that the state clearly has a symbolic duty to prevent – namely, spectacular mass casualty terror attacks on public spaces, sabotage attacks, and nation state hacking, ransomware, and wider cybercrime threats – the UK has responded to these problems of the neoliberal order with post-neoliberal solutions.

Through the NTAs, the UK is mobilising the security services to shape the market and correct the areas in which it is perceived to be failing. It is doing this through mobilising information, through researching and setting material standards, through shaping the education, public research, and skills environment, and finally through deploying the symbolic power and authority of the spy agencies.”

Bio: Ben’s research sits at the intersection of Criminology and Science and Technology Studies, drawing theory and methods from both. He studies how digital infrastructures become sites where power of different kinds is exerted. Using qualitative, computational, and statistical approaches, his research falls into three strands.

The first involves large-scale ethnographic studies of digital infrastructure, such as my research on the Tor network (the subject of a book with MIT Press: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262548182/tor/).

The second focuses on how digital technologies and infrastructures become used for crime and resistance, drawing on a mix of ethnographic and AI/’data science’ approaches.

The third looks at digital infrastructure and state power, including in-depth studies and evaluations of law enforcement interventions (such as FBI takedowns) and a recent project looking at the use of digital influence campaigns by law enforcement and government to shape the behaviour and culture of the public and achieve preventative policy goals.

He draws on a range of theoretical perspectives in his work, most prominently Stuart Hall’s cultural studies scholarship and Susan Leigh Star’s approach to studying the social worlds of digital infrastructure.

 
This video of a seminar at the University of Edinburgh is available under a Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives 4.0 licence.