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Paper short abstract:

By addressing infrastructure as a form of discourse, we analyse the ideological construction of privacy and anonymity in the interface and infrastructure of the I2P network andexplore how the technical activities of hacker communities challenge dominant narratives regarding online privacy issues.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is interested in the ideological implications of technological resistance to online surveillance. It draws on software and surveillance studies literature that puts light on the globalized and ubiquitous state of surveillance (Andrejevic, 2013) permitted by the Internet and digital technologies, and on the ways in which the development of their architecture and design played a crucial role in the normalization of surveillance practices operated by corporate and state actors (Ball & al., 2012). We understand the infrastructure of the Internet and digital technologies as a central component to a governance apparatus in which the protection of privacy is in conflict with with the idea that the transparency of individuals is a vector of better public security and increased market efficiency. In this perspective, we are interested in how recursive publics (Kelty 2005, 2009) make sense of the current politics of infrastructure and, more importantly, how they contest them through technology. More specifically, and through the case study of the I2P network, our main objective is to explore how alternative and encrypted networks provide a direct form of resistance to online surveillance, and how they potentially promote alternative narratives regarding the broader notions of privacy and anonymity. By addressing I2P's infrastructure and interface as a form of discourse (Galloway 2004), we aim to study its underlying ideological construction of privacy and anonymity in order to see how it challenges current liberal narratives where privacy and security are tethered as a binary opposition between individual liberty and public interest.