Ian Hosein

The Sources of Laws: Policy Dynamics in a Digital and Terrorized World

We often assume that policy and laws are the outcome of national deliberative discourse. As we have seen with other domains such as intellectual property and trade, policies that influence privacy and civil liberties are increasingly resulting from international policy dynamics. This article presents a number of these policy mechanisms used to take advantage of international dimensions of our current environment. These mechanisms include policy laundering, modeling, and forum shifting. Using these mechanisms, policies are being developed outside of national deliberative forums and then adopted locally in the interests of national governments. A number of policy instances are presented, tracing the influence of national and international actors, and the implications for national discourse. The article concludes with discussion of some implications for an open society.

Reflections on the Academic Policy Analysis Process and the UK Identity Cards Scheme

There is an increasing rhetoric from politicians for universities to become more involved in policy analysis and policy research. In this article, we reflect on our experiences of the analysis we conducted into the legislation to introduce biometric identity cards in the United Kingdom. We highlight how our work had direct consequences for the ongoing policy deliberation around this controversial piece of legislation. In particular, we highlight our role in the debate surrounding the governments figures for identity fraud and the concerns about the likely cost of the scheme to the government and taxpayer. We end the article by discussing some of the practical realities of such a foray into real politik.

Doing the politics of technological decision making: due process and the debate about identity cards in the U.K.

The U.K. Government, in presenting its proposals for biometric identity cards, made strong claims about the technology and science underlying the proposed National Identity Scheme. In this paper, we use insights from science and technology studies (STS), particularly Latours ‘Politics of Nature’ argument, to analyse the parliamentary debates about the technological and scientific aspects of the proposals. The authors were part of a team that produced a report that raised a series of perplexities about the Scheme in an attempt to counter the short-circuiting of discussion of these perplexities in the parliamentary debate. The paper analyses the governments attempts at short-circuiting in light of Latours argument and the introduction of perplexities by our report. It demonstrates the extent to which this form of STS can enhance political debate about technological decisions.

Questioning lawful access to traffic data

The path to technology-neutral policy is fraught with danger as more legislation is updated to deal with new communications infrastructures.

Cultivating Recalcitrance in Information Systems Research

There is an ongoing debate about how to improve the quality of empirical research efforts in information systems. One of the persistent issues within the debate concerns the relative importance of social and technical aspects of an information system and how to study these different elements. Contemporary research within science and technology studies suggests that social science inquiries can learn from empirical enquiries within the natural sciences through the notion of recalcitrance in experimental subjects. The aim of this article is to conduct an initial exploration of the usefulness of these ideas in the context of empirical information systems research. The following three research methods are subjected to a first theoretical analysis: (I) longitudinal, interpretive case study; (2) quantitative case study; and (3) laboratory experiments. For each of the three methods, an example is studied together with reflections from the researchers conducting the particular study. It is concluded that although this does not represent a solution to all methodological problems, adopting the perspective of cultivating recalcitrance and designing research methods to include objectors provides an additional perspective, which can enrich and deepen the empirical work as well as further qualify the methodology discourse between researchers.

Transforming travel and border controls : checkpoints in the Open Society

Abstract Prior concerns regarding terrorism resulted in a rush to legislate. Now terrorism is not the only issue in the new security agenda, and we appear to have stopped rushing our legislative processes. Yet, policies are still emerging with a lack of public discourse and legislative deliberation. This article reviews two such policies: access to personal information held by airlines and new border practices that include the collection and processing of biometrics. By looking at the negotiations between the U.S. and the European Commission on passenger name records (PNR), the debates in Canada regarding the collection of passenger information, and the deployment of the US-VISIT system, we identify a number of policy dynamics. We can see within these dynamics of policy formation some essential ingredients for discourse and deliberation, which may inform future debates. In particular, this article argues that we may inform policy by looking at the international, regulatory, legal, and technological dynamics of policy.

The regulation of electronic commerce: learning from the UK's RIP act

National governments have a legitimate role to play in the development of national strategies to support electronic commerce. It is not always clear, however, what any electronic commerce legislation should incorporate or how regulation of electronic commerce should be implemented. This paper explores the strategic issues that underlie national electronic commerce strategies by following the passage of a particular piece of legislation (the UKs Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000) through Parliament. In identifying some of the arising strains with the interests of industry and civil society, this paper will discuss some of the legal, technological, economic, and political issues that may arise in other countries as they consider the policy habitat of electronic commerce.

A Research Note on Capturing Technology: Toward Moments of Interest

The technological is often in the background of our research, despite claims of being socio-technical. Following from Orlikowski and Iacono’s call for research on the ability to theorize the technological within IS research, this research note reviews the literature on society and technology to understand how we may interrogate the technological within a discourse. This article then proposes that within a discourse there are moments of interest where we can observe, interrogate, and develop an understanding regarding the form of the technological. In turn, this may complement our understanding of the social, and allow for further research on how the socio-technological world takes form.

Doing Politics Around Electronic Commerce: Opposing the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill

Providing an environment for electronic commerce involves complex, technical questions that need to be addressed and understood by decision making bodies. This paper studies one attempt to support electronic commerce at the national level. It looks at the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill in the UK and focuses on the political actions of those seeking to amend the Bill in Parliament. After presenting the situation, the paper analyzes the actions in terms of a due process model of political action. The paper presents the results of this analysis and reflects on the implications for theory and practice.

Departmental influences on policy design

How the U.K. is confusing identity fraud with other policy agendas.