Hacking is a set of practices with code that provides the state an opportunity to defend and expa... more Hacking is a set of practices with code that provides the state an opportunity to defend and expand itself onto the internet. Bringing together science and technology studies and sociology scholarship on boundary objects and boundary work, we develop a theory of the practices of the hacker state. To do this, we investigate weaponized code, the state's boundary work at hacker conferences, and bug bounty programs. In the process, we offer a depiction of the hacker state as aggressive, networked, and adaptive. The contemporary networked state is dynamic and process-orientated. It is a logistical and informational assemblage composed of technological infrastructures like 4G networks, surveillance satellites, internet exchange points and fiber optic cables as well as official bureaus concerned with areas like law enforcement, environmental protection, national security and diplomacy. These domains of competence and action are populated by researchers and scientists, police officers and policy analysts, military contractors and covert operatives-that is, an assortment of humans with differing mandates, levels of agency, expertise and proximity to official structures and objectives. This circuitry of power is increasingly underwritten and interwoven with the nonhuman components of the networked age. Software and malware, algorithms, viruses, exploits and zero-days increasingly form a connective tissue that links these state actors. This dynamic constellation of state structures seems to be historically and empirically distinctive from the more static characterizations that have appeared and continue to appear in the sociology of the state. Indeed, besides the formal exchanges and encounters that are typically understood as the domain of the state (e.g., diplomacy, treaty negotiation, foreign policy, etc.), a set of less formal and more tenuous forms of engagement-mediated through software, conducted through cyber-proxies and governed by networks-have increasingly complemented the "work" of the state.
What is the speed of hacking? Luca Follis and Adam Fish explore the temporality of hacking and le... more What is the speed of hacking? Luca Follis and Adam Fish explore the temporality of hacking and leaking in the cases of Snowden, the DNC leaks and the Lauri Love case.
This article is an empirical engagement of Giorgio Agamben’s “spatial theory of power.” It explor... more This article is an empirical engagement of Giorgio Agamben’s “spatial theory of power.” It explores, through the case-study of civil death in New York, the continuum of exclusion that is capped on one end by homo sacer and the sovereign on the other. I argue that civil death has had a long-running history in America, intimately connected to the expression of sovereign power and its deployment in the penal sphere. I show that despite the longue durée of this disability, and its efficacy as a tool of political and social marginalization, this practice has proved highly unstable for sovereignty and has generated significant resistance in the courts, civil society and prisons themselves. The contested status of civil death, I contend, underscores the dynamic character of resistance to sovereign power and its role in framing the conditions under which state authority can be articulated and maintained.
The investigation, arrest, and conviction of a number of high-profile hacker-activists, or hackti... more The investigation, arrest, and conviction of a number of high-profile hacker-activists, or hacktivists, reveal the ways subjectivity is mobilized through processes of revelation and evasion. We use the term subjectivation to describe the performative practices engaged in by hacktivists and contrast them with governmental and disciplinary practices of subjection. We elaborate upon two categories of subjectivation (coming out and versioning) and two categories of subjection (doxing and gagging). These categories form the vectors of hacktivist and state coproduction that emerge in selfie-incrimination. We use the term selfie to describe both intentional and inadvertent practices of online self-disclosure. Selfie-incrimination that is public and voluntary we discuss in terms of coming out. Versioning describes the public voluntary manipulation of personal identity. Being doxed entails the online disclosure of a hacktivist’s identity. Gagging refers to this ultimate silencing of illicit political digital activity, wherein the state designates the parameters of speech as well as physical movement. We conclude by examining the entangled and asymmetrical relationship between hacktivist subjectivity and the cybersecurity of the state.
Hacktivists and criminal investigators meet in zones of friction mediated by technology and law. ... more Hacktivists and criminal investigators meet in zones of friction mediated by technology and law. This zone of friction is generated in a complex dialectic of “co-production” (Jasanoff 2004) and characterized by the “quintessentially local, messy, and contingent” character of the collective knowledge produced (Wolgar 2000: 168). Our short analysis illustrates the dominant position of the state: while knowledge about the other is coproduced, the state has resources with which to exploit this knowledge in ways hacktivists do not. Our goal has been to emphasize the entanglements of hacktivists and criminal investigators in acts of asymmetrical power coproduction; a dialectic that is generative of new practices, forms of knowledge, and applications of power the outcome of which remains undetermined. HHWS exhibits the mutually constitutive, antagonistic, and ultimately unequal coproduction in the field of hacktivist prosecution.
This paper tracks the impact of prison transfers (and mobility considerations more generally) on ... more This paper tracks the impact of prison transfers (and mobility considerations more generally) on the spatio-temporal regimes pursued within the British Penal Estate. I argue that what appear from outside as static spaces of detention are in fact nodes within a network deeply crisscrossed by internal patterns of mobility and the problematics of time–space coordination. I explore the power relations that shape prisoner patterns of movement and highlight the distinctive states of deprivation they generate.
Nineteenth century American prisons were paradoxical institutions. Porous and impermeable, transp... more Nineteenth century American prisons were paradoxical institutions. Porous and impermeable, transparent and opaque, open to public view and occluded from sight; prisons clearly functioned as containers for raw coercion even as they were paraded as paragons of democratic transparency. How did New York State navigate between these countervailing positions and how did officials explicate the difference between them? In this essay I focus on the representation of institutional violence as a problematic of governance, I consider its impact on the development and transformation of public authority and track the role of state actors in navigating the scandals, crises and opportunities it engendered.
This article engages Michel Foucault’s thesis that post-sovereign law would be increasingly colon... more This article engages Michel Foucault’s thesis that post-sovereign law would be increasingly colonized by the disciplinary norm. It explores, through an analysis of prisoner litigation surrounding Maryland’s Patuxent Institution and its defective delinquency statute, how disciplinary power is enabled, understood, and resisted through law. I argue that Article 31B (as the defective delinquency statute was known) set up a zone of expert prerogative and discretion actively maintained and legitimated through jurisprudence. Yet, paradoxically, law also functioned as a conduit for resistance and contestation pitting the epistemological premises of discipline against the functions of legal jurisprudence and the foundations of criminal law. I contend that this dual character of law’s engagement with discipline (i.e., at once open to expert “colonization” and site of structural incompatibility and resistance) illustrates the intractability of the relationship between the disciplinary and law. That is, law both constitutes disciplinary space (and within this normative envelope, discipline can be “unbound”) and remains in a state of tension with the forms of power that develop within it (which by their very premises seek to exceed the limits law would place upon them).
In this article, we describe the investigation, arrest, and conviction of a number of high profil... more In this article, we describe the investigation, arrest, and conviction of a number of high profile hacker-activists or hacktivists. We use the term " subjectivation " to describe the performative practices engaged in by hacktivists and contrast them with governmental and disciplinary practices of " subjection. " Mobilizing interviews with hacktivists, lawyers, and criminal investigators we elaborate upon two categories of subjectivation (" coming out " and " versioning ") and two categories of subjection (" doxing " and " gagging "). These categories form the vectors of hacktivist and state co-production that emerge under the sign of selfie incrimination. We use the term " selfie " to describe both intentional and inadvertent practices of online self disclosure. Selfie incrimination that is public and voluntary we discuss in terms of " coming out. " " Versioning " describes the public voluntary manipulation of private identity. Being " doxed " entails the online disclosure of a hacktivist's real world identity. " Gagging " refers to this ultimate silencing of illicit political digital activity, wherein the state designates the very parameters of speech as well as physical movement. We conclude by using a term from computer science, " kludge, " which describes an inelegant fix to an intransigent problem, to examine the entangled and asymmetrical relationship between hacktivists and the state.
In this book, Luca Follis and Adam Fish examine the entanglements between hackers and the state, ... more In this book, Luca Follis and Adam Fish examine the entanglements between hackers and the state, showing how hackers and hacking moved from being a target of state law enforcement to a key resource for the expression and deployment of state power. Follis and Fish trace government efforts to control the power of the internet; the prosecution of hackers and leakers (including such well-known cases as Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Anonymous); and the eventual rehabilitation of hackers who undertake “ethical hacking” for the state. Analyzing the evolution of the state's relationship to hacking, they argue that state-sponsored hacking ultimately corrodes the rule of law and offers unchecked advantage to those in power, clearing the way for more authoritarian rule.
Follis and Fish draw on a range of methodologies and disciplines, including ethnographic and digital archive methods from fields as diverse as anthropology, STS, and criminology. They propose a novel “boundary work” theoretical framework to articulate the relational approach to understanding state and hacker interactions advanced by the book. In the context of Russian bot armies, the rise of fake news, and algorithmic opacity, they describe the political impact of leaks and hacks, hacker partnerships with journalists in pursuit of transparency and accountability, the increasingly prominent use of extradition in hacking-related cases, and the privatization of hackers for hire.
Hacking is a set of practices with code that provides the state an opportunity to defend and expa... more Hacking is a set of practices with code that provides the state an opportunity to defend and expand itself onto the internet. Bringing together science and technology studies and sociology scholarship on boundary objects and boundary work, we develop a theory of the practices of the hacker state. To do this, we investigate weaponized code, the state's boundary work at hacker conferences, and bug bounty programs. In the process, we offer a depiction of the hacker state as aggressive, networked, and adaptive. The contemporary networked state is dynamic and process-orientated. It is a logistical and informational assemblage composed of technological infrastructures like 4G networks, surveillance satellites, internet exchange points and fiber optic cables as well as official bureaus concerned with areas like law enforcement, environmental protection, national security and diplomacy. These domains of competence and action are populated by researchers and scientists, police officers and policy analysts, military contractors and covert operatives-that is, an assortment of humans with differing mandates, levels of agency, expertise and proximity to official structures and objectives. This circuitry of power is increasingly underwritten and interwoven with the nonhuman components of the networked age. Software and malware, algorithms, viruses, exploits and zero-days increasingly form a connective tissue that links these state actors. This dynamic constellation of state structures seems to be historically and empirically distinctive from the more static characterizations that have appeared and continue to appear in the sociology of the state. Indeed, besides the formal exchanges and encounters that are typically understood as the domain of the state (e.g., diplomacy, treaty negotiation, foreign policy, etc.), a set of less formal and more tenuous forms of engagement-mediated through software, conducted through cyber-proxies and governed by networks-have increasingly complemented the "work" of the state.
What is the speed of hacking? Luca Follis and Adam Fish explore the temporality of hacking and le... more What is the speed of hacking? Luca Follis and Adam Fish explore the temporality of hacking and leaking in the cases of Snowden, the DNC leaks and the Lauri Love case.
This article is an empirical engagement of Giorgio Agamben’s “spatial theory of power.” It explor... more This article is an empirical engagement of Giorgio Agamben’s “spatial theory of power.” It explores, through the case-study of civil death in New York, the continuum of exclusion that is capped on one end by homo sacer and the sovereign on the other. I argue that civil death has had a long-running history in America, intimately connected to the expression of sovereign power and its deployment in the penal sphere. I show that despite the longue durée of this disability, and its efficacy as a tool of political and social marginalization, this practice has proved highly unstable for sovereignty and has generated significant resistance in the courts, civil society and prisons themselves. The contested status of civil death, I contend, underscores the dynamic character of resistance to sovereign power and its role in framing the conditions under which state authority can be articulated and maintained.
The investigation, arrest, and conviction of a number of high-profile hacker-activists, or hackti... more The investigation, arrest, and conviction of a number of high-profile hacker-activists, or hacktivists, reveal the ways subjectivity is mobilized through processes of revelation and evasion. We use the term subjectivation to describe the performative practices engaged in by hacktivists and contrast them with governmental and disciplinary practices of subjection. We elaborate upon two categories of subjectivation (coming out and versioning) and two categories of subjection (doxing and gagging). These categories form the vectors of hacktivist and state coproduction that emerge in selfie-incrimination. We use the term selfie to describe both intentional and inadvertent practices of online self-disclosure. Selfie-incrimination that is public and voluntary we discuss in terms of coming out. Versioning describes the public voluntary manipulation of personal identity. Being doxed entails the online disclosure of a hacktivist’s identity. Gagging refers to this ultimate silencing of illicit political digital activity, wherein the state designates the parameters of speech as well as physical movement. We conclude by examining the entangled and asymmetrical relationship between hacktivist subjectivity and the cybersecurity of the state.
Hacktivists and criminal investigators meet in zones of friction mediated by technology and law. ... more Hacktivists and criminal investigators meet in zones of friction mediated by technology and law. This zone of friction is generated in a complex dialectic of “co-production” (Jasanoff 2004) and characterized by the “quintessentially local, messy, and contingent” character of the collective knowledge produced (Wolgar 2000: 168). Our short analysis illustrates the dominant position of the state: while knowledge about the other is coproduced, the state has resources with which to exploit this knowledge in ways hacktivists do not. Our goal has been to emphasize the entanglements of hacktivists and criminal investigators in acts of asymmetrical power coproduction; a dialectic that is generative of new practices, forms of knowledge, and applications of power the outcome of which remains undetermined. HHWS exhibits the mutually constitutive, antagonistic, and ultimately unequal coproduction in the field of hacktivist prosecution.
This paper tracks the impact of prison transfers (and mobility considerations more generally) on ... more This paper tracks the impact of prison transfers (and mobility considerations more generally) on the spatio-temporal regimes pursued within the British Penal Estate. I argue that what appear from outside as static spaces of detention are in fact nodes within a network deeply crisscrossed by internal patterns of mobility and the problematics of time–space coordination. I explore the power relations that shape prisoner patterns of movement and highlight the distinctive states of deprivation they generate.
Nineteenth century American prisons were paradoxical institutions. Porous and impermeable, transp... more Nineteenth century American prisons were paradoxical institutions. Porous and impermeable, transparent and opaque, open to public view and occluded from sight; prisons clearly functioned as containers for raw coercion even as they were paraded as paragons of democratic transparency. How did New York State navigate between these countervailing positions and how did officials explicate the difference between them? In this essay I focus on the representation of institutional violence as a problematic of governance, I consider its impact on the development and transformation of public authority and track the role of state actors in navigating the scandals, crises and opportunities it engendered.
This article engages Michel Foucault’s thesis that post-sovereign law would be increasingly colon... more This article engages Michel Foucault’s thesis that post-sovereign law would be increasingly colonized by the disciplinary norm. It explores, through an analysis of prisoner litigation surrounding Maryland’s Patuxent Institution and its defective delinquency statute, how disciplinary power is enabled, understood, and resisted through law. I argue that Article 31B (as the defective delinquency statute was known) set up a zone of expert prerogative and discretion actively maintained and legitimated through jurisprudence. Yet, paradoxically, law also functioned as a conduit for resistance and contestation pitting the epistemological premises of discipline against the functions of legal jurisprudence and the foundations of criminal law. I contend that this dual character of law’s engagement with discipline (i.e., at once open to expert “colonization” and site of structural incompatibility and resistance) illustrates the intractability of the relationship between the disciplinary and law. That is, law both constitutes disciplinary space (and within this normative envelope, discipline can be “unbound”) and remains in a state of tension with the forms of power that develop within it (which by their very premises seek to exceed the limits law would place upon them).
In this article, we describe the investigation, arrest, and conviction of a number of high profil... more In this article, we describe the investigation, arrest, and conviction of a number of high profile hacker-activists or hacktivists. We use the term " subjectivation " to describe the performative practices engaged in by hacktivists and contrast them with governmental and disciplinary practices of " subjection. " Mobilizing interviews with hacktivists, lawyers, and criminal investigators we elaborate upon two categories of subjectivation (" coming out " and " versioning ") and two categories of subjection (" doxing " and " gagging "). These categories form the vectors of hacktivist and state co-production that emerge under the sign of selfie incrimination. We use the term " selfie " to describe both intentional and inadvertent practices of online self disclosure. Selfie incrimination that is public and voluntary we discuss in terms of " coming out. " " Versioning " describes the public voluntary manipulation of private identity. Being " doxed " entails the online disclosure of a hacktivist's real world identity. " Gagging " refers to this ultimate silencing of illicit political digital activity, wherein the state designates the very parameters of speech as well as physical movement. We conclude by using a term from computer science, " kludge, " which describes an inelegant fix to an intransigent problem, to examine the entangled and asymmetrical relationship between hacktivists and the state.
In this book, Luca Follis and Adam Fish examine the entanglements between hackers and the state, ... more In this book, Luca Follis and Adam Fish examine the entanglements between hackers and the state, showing how hackers and hacking moved from being a target of state law enforcement to a key resource for the expression and deployment of state power. Follis and Fish trace government efforts to control the power of the internet; the prosecution of hackers and leakers (including such well-known cases as Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Anonymous); and the eventual rehabilitation of hackers who undertake “ethical hacking” for the state. Analyzing the evolution of the state's relationship to hacking, they argue that state-sponsored hacking ultimately corrodes the rule of law and offers unchecked advantage to those in power, clearing the way for more authoritarian rule.
Follis and Fish draw on a range of methodologies and disciplines, including ethnographic and digital archive methods from fields as diverse as anthropology, STS, and criminology. They propose a novel “boundary work” theoretical framework to articulate the relational approach to understanding state and hacker interactions advanced by the book. In the context of Russian bot armies, the rise of fake news, and algorithmic opacity, they describe the political impact of leaks and hacks, hacker partnerships with journalists in pursuit of transparency and accountability, the increasingly prominent use of extradition in hacking-related cases, and the privatization of hackers for hire.
Uploads
Papers by Luca Follis
Drafts by Luca Follis
Books by Luca Follis
Follis and Fish draw on a range of methodologies and disciplines, including ethnographic and digital archive methods from fields as diverse as anthropology, STS, and criminology. They propose a novel “boundary work” theoretical framework to articulate the relational approach to understanding state and hacker interactions advanced by the book. In the context of Russian bot armies, the rise of fake news, and algorithmic opacity, they describe the political impact of leaks and hacks, hacker partnerships with journalists in pursuit of transparency and accountability, the increasingly prominent use of extradition in hacking-related cases, and the privatization of hackers for hire.
Follis and Fish draw on a range of methodologies and disciplines, including ethnographic and digital archive methods from fields as diverse as anthropology, STS, and criminology. They propose a novel “boundary work” theoretical framework to articulate the relational approach to understanding state and hacker interactions advanced by the book. In the context of Russian bot armies, the rise of fake news, and algorithmic opacity, they describe the political impact of leaks and hacks, hacker partnerships with journalists in pursuit of transparency and accountability, the increasingly prominent use of extradition in hacking-related cases, and the privatization of hackers for hire.