On the life and lives of digital data: The US – EU safe harbor framework and beyond

Abstract

Digital data is entangled in a variety of intersecting discourses and debates— from narratives about ‘big data revolutions’ and ‘open data movements’ to controversies surrounding security and surveillance practices as well as divisive questions about privacy and data protection as social and legal principles. This paper will unpack digital data from a security perspective within the context of the Safe Harbor Framework, a governance arrangement designed to facilitate digital data flows between the United States and the European Union. The driving focus of this paper is best defined through several interrelated questions, namely: What is digital data? How is it possible for digital data to be constructed in overlapping and contested ways? And what does the development and deterioration of the Safe Harbor Framework reveal about the nature of digital data in the contemporary world? This paper proposes that digital data is ‘alive’ and has many ‘lives’— simultaneously constructed as a ‘mundane’ feature of everyday life, as a component of ‘security-enhancing’ strategies, and as a ‘security threat’.