Transactions after 9/11: the banal face of the preemptive strike

Abstract

Transactions after 9/11: the banal face of the preemptive strike Amoore, L.; de Goede, M. General rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. Transactions after 9/11: the banal face of the preemptive strike Louise Amoore* and Marieke de Goede** This paper argues that the deployment of transactions data of many kinds has become the banal face of the war on terror's preemptive strike. Because the failure to predict and prevent 9/11 is partly thought to be a failure to 'connect the dots' of available intelligence, post 9/11 policies seek to register, mine and connect ever more 'dots', or association rules, in the form of credit card transactions, travel data, supermarket purchases and so on. We argue that it is in these ordinary transactions that another spatiality of exception is emerging, one in which the traces of habits, behaviours and past practices become the basis of security decisions to freeze assets, to apprehend, to stop and search or to deport. As such, these developments constitute a relatively unacknowledged violence in the war on terror, which is in need of critical questioning.key words war on terror transactions surveillance pre-emption political geography privacy

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