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This chapter examines the ways that companies, users, and states alike navigate the overload of data in the cloud by targeting information, and argues that targeted-marketing campaigns online come out of the same ideological apparatus as military targeting. Two oppositional groups serve as case studies for this argument: first, a group of radio-frequency hackers that data mined the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, and second, the artist/geographer Trevor Paglen, who photographs U.S. reconnaissance satellites and other covert military infrastructures. As this chapter argues, these oppositional tactics may be effective, but sometimes re-animate the very structures of power that they purport to expose or overturn. The reason is due to something this chapter terms the sovereignty of data, which both co-opts user participation and also gives practices such as torture and extraordinary rendition new life within the cloud.

Chapter 6 explores how cooperation between the Central Asian security services and their United States, Russia, and China counterparts on counterterrorism has eroded human rights norms. Anti-terrorism has also generated novel forms of extralegal practices and procedures, including institutionalizing the practice of extraordinary renditions, either through tacit cooperation with the CIA, in the U.S. case, or via the SCO’s Antiterrorism Treaty, in the Russian and Chinese cases. The second half recounts how the Color Revolutions prompted the Central Asian states to effectively push back against the West’s demands for political reforms. With the backing of Moscow and Beijing, the Central Asian states branded foreign NGOs engaged in democracy promotion and human rights monitoring as security threats and accused the United States of engaging in double-standards and hypocritical behavior. A case study compares and contrasts the assessments of different external election monitoring organizations.

This chapter considers the place of espionage and its consequences in the work of Don De Lillo. The discussion opens with a consideration of naïveté and danger in CIA intervention overseas as depicted in The Names. James Axton, an American in Greece, is perhaps the last to discover that he is working at one remove for the CIA, a role that may have placed his life, and those of others, at risk. If The Names suggests that American intelligence poses substantial risks for America and Americans, Libra brings that message home to the heart of the state itself in a fictionalized account of the Kennedy assassination. Here, the President's launching of covert operations against Cuba eventually turns back against him when a coalition led by disgruntled former CIA agents mount an attempt on the President's life, co-opting the inscrutable figure of Lee Harvey Oswald as a seeming lone radical. In this chapter’s final section, the discussion returns again to the subject of extralegal action by the state in a reading of Point Omega’s meditations on extraordinary rendition and torture, in a text centred on absences and death set against the backdrop of the Iraq war.

The second part of the book turns to a discussion of extralegality and espionage, beginning with a reading of three novels by John le Carré set against the background of historical events – the construction of the Berlin Wall, the exposure of the Cambridge spy ring, and the practice of extraordinary rendition during the War on Terror. In The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Alec Leamas is disgraced, abandoned, imprisoned, exiled, and finally betrayed, an abjected figure akin to Agamben’s homo sacer, a figure as excluded as any outlaw. In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, George Smiley is a liminal figure, an unconstitutional detective investigating a case of treason within what is, in this period, an intelligence agency unrecognised by law. This chapter concludes with a discussion of extraordinary rendition as outlawry in contemporary form via a reading of le Carré’s 2008 novel A Most Wanted Man. Here we can see the state acting outside of legal constraints via its intelligence agencies, while also seeking to situate particular individuals outside the reach of the law. Together, these forms of exclusion from law constitute new and troubling forms of outlawry that are alive and well in the twenty-first century West.

This chapter focuses on offshore U.S. prisons other than that at Guantánamo Bay, including military detention centers in Afghanistan and Iraq and secret Central Intelligence Agency jails or “black sites.” It also examines the use of extraordinary rendition, in which the United States outsourced torture by sending prisoners to other countries for brutal interrogations that U.S. officials did not want to conduct themselves. It argues that Guantánamo is part of a larger network of prisons that emerged after 9/11, an interconnected global detention system used by the United States to facilitate torture and other abusive interrogation methods and to hold individuals without charge, due process, or court review. It explains how detentions beyond Guantánamo became the breeding ground for some of the worst abuses of the post-9/11 era and underscored the importance of habeas corpus.

This chapter focuses on offshore U.S. prisons other than that at Guantánamo Bay, including military detention centers in Afghanistan and Iraq and secret Central Intelligence Agency jails or “black sites.” It also examines the use of extraordinary rendition, in which the United States outsourced torture by sending prisoners to other countries for brutal interrogations that U.S. officials did not want to conduct themselves. It argues that Guantánamo is part of a larger network of prisons that emerged after 9/11, an interconnected global detention system used by the United States to facilitate torture and other abusive interrogation methods and to hold individuals without charge, due process, or court review. It explains how detentions beyond Guantánamo became the breeding ground for some of the worst abuses of the post-9/11 era and underscored the importance of habeas corpus.

This chapter offers a detailed overview of Bivens litigation that arose from the war on terror, including the suit brought by Jose Padilla to contest his detention as an unlawful combatant in the war on terror, those brought by Khaled el-Masri and Maher Arar to recover damages for their extraordinary rendition, and those brought to challenge the government’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib. To date, not a single Bivens litigant has obtained an appellate judgment confirming an award of damages for torture in violation of the Constitution. The government’s winning streak in Bivens litigation contrasts with its more checkered record in defending Guantanamo Bay detention decisions in habeas corpus litigation. The contrast in the success of these two different forms of litigation tends to confirm the lawyer’s view that procedural form sometimes determines substance.

This chapter examines some of the potential limits of habeas corpus as well as the difficulties of challenging more covert forms of executive action, including proxy detention and extraordinary rendition. One weakness of habeas corpus has to do with the incentive it creates for the state to structure its detention operations to avoid habeas corpus altogether or to curtail the court's ability to grant an effective remedy. This paradox is evident in actions taken after 9/11, such as the Bush administration's decision to transfer prisoners to Guantánamo in early 2002 and to detain people at other, more remote and secret offshore prisons. The chapter also discusses the challenges presented by detentions in the “war on terrorism” to habeas corpus review and concludes by offering some possible solutions aimed at strengthening habeas corpus.

This chapter examines some of the potential limits of habeas corpus as well as the difficulties of challenging more covert forms of executive action, including proxy detention and extraordinary rendition. One weakness of habeas corpus has to do with the incentive it creates for the state to structure its detention operations to avoid habeas corpus altogether or to curtail the court's ability to grant an effective remedy. This paradox is evident in actions taken after 9/11, such as the Bush administration's decision to transfer prisoners to Guantánamo in early 2002 and to detain people at other, more remote and secret offshore prisons. The chapter also discusses the challenges presented by detentions in the “war on terrorism” to habeas corpus review and concludes by offering some possible solutions aimed at strengthening habeas corpus.

This chapter argues that lawfare has provided a valuable check on the some of the worse abuses of the US’s War on Terror, such as its use of torture, extraordinary rendition, and enhanced interrogation techniques. While lawfare was originally understood as akin to warfare by legal maneuvers, more recently advocates have employed it as one of the few ways available to oppose and document abuses by states such as the US. “Lawriors” have successfully sued to extend habeas corpus rights for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay military prison, as well as to suppress confessions extracted from US detainees under torture. While defenders of the Bush administration have criticized the use of lawfare, and lawriors have often failed in their legal maneuvers, this chapter argues that lawfare has improved conditions for some of those the US has tortured or otherwise detained without just cause. It also argues that, in the long run, such judicial battles are valuable for supporting constitutional norms and commitments the US has made to uphold international law, such as its prohibition on torture.

The actions of the U.S. government during the “war on terror” are examined to see whether they satisfy the definition of institutionalized state torture elaborated in the previous chapter. The conclusion reached is that, unfortunately, the United States has regularly practiced torture in the years since 9/11. Specific instances are addressed, including the following locations: Brooklyn, NY; Bagram and Kandahar in Afghanistan; Abu Ghraib and other sites in Iraq; Guantánamo; and various unidentified CIA “black sites.” The practice of “extraordinary rendition,” that is, of sending prisoners to another country for interrogation, is also explored. It is argued that in the case of the “war on terror,” U.S. citizens are not so much encouraged to believe that they themselves might be tortured but to recognize that the state’s need to torture is proof of the extraordinary danger that they face.

This chapter considers the extradition of criminal suspects to and from the United States, as well as other issues relating to international criminal law enforcement. The chapter begins by describing early U.S. practice relating to extradition, and then describes the respective roles of the courts and the executive branch in modern extradition cases. The chapter further describes some of the common limitations in U.S. extradition treaties, such as the dual criminality requirement, the political offense exception, and the specialty doctrine. In addition, the chapter considers difficulties that have arisen in some cases involving extradition to the United States where the federal government or a state government is likely to seek the death penalty. Besides extradition treaties, the chapter also discusses Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties and prisoner exchange agreements. The chapter concludes by discussing the domestic legal implications of both international abduction of criminal suspects and “extraordinary rendition” of suspects in the war on terrorism.

This chapter describes the debate surrounding the interrogation of terrorist suspects after 9/11. President Obama rejected the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) on liberal and realist grounds. For him, the use of EITs was neither necessary nor effective. In fact they were, from his perspective, counterproductive to the extent they acted as ‘a recruitment tool’ for America’s enemies. By describing former Vice-President Dick Cheney’s immediate response to this argument the chapter illustrates how such questions continued to be debated in public discourse. Common ground existed to the extent that both sides agreed that further scrutiny of the post-9/11 interrogation programme was unnecessary, a view that disappointed human rights groups who argued for full-scale investigations.

This chapter highlights how many women historians, like the author, delve into the histories that have been marginalized by the dominant canon, finding palpable relevance to present-day social justice issues. The chapter then turns to the little-known history of the internment of Japanese Latin Americans in the United States during World War II, a case of extraordinary rendition. Focusing on the internment of the Japanese Peruvians, this chapter argues that global “yellow peril” and eugenic ideologies played an essential role in U.S. and Peruvian policies during WWII. Further, it challenges readers to consider how purported policies of national security have been motivated by thinly veiled racism.

Despite its universal and absolute prohibition in international human rights and humanitarian law, torture has persisted even in liberal democracies. This chapter traces how changing national security legal cultures have shaped justifications for torture in the United States, culminating in an extensive torture program in the global war on terror. A culture of exception helped legitimize slave torture, lynching, and colonial torture through much of the United States’ early history, while a culture of secrecy facilitated covert and proxy torture during the Cold War. After 9/11, American authorities operated in a culture of legal rationalization. Rather than suspend or ignore the torture prohibition, the Bush administration sought legal cover for torture. As evidenced by the torture memos, lawyers reframed practices such as waterboarding as lawful enhanced interrogation techniques. These attempts to construct the plausible legality of torture effectively immunized Americans from prosecution for grave human rights violations.

This chapter examines the Bush administration's use of legal detours to target individuals and groups, including protesters, lawyers in the war on terror, and ordinary Americans. It first traces the history of the government's targeting of groups through fear, malice, or overzealous enforcement and goes on to discuss the Bush administration's response to 9/11 as part of its heightened immigration enforcement. It then considers the administration's policies on asylums and refugees, along with the different means that it employed to target individuals and groups, such as coercive interrogation, extraordinary rendition, and detention without due process. It also explores the administration's use of detours within the criminal justice system, starting with the detention of material witnesses. The chapter notes the vindictive stance of the Bush administration in targeting individuals, such as immigrants and foreign nationals.

This chapter focuses on the T. Don Hutto Detention Center—an agency that detains undocumented immigrant families, including children and toddlers–to study the problem of equating citizens with political agents. Framing the agency as part of the post-9/11 state of exception that saw the creation of legal tools such as “enemy combatant” as well as “extraordinary rendition,” the detention practice can be considered an example of political capital accumulation, which assumes that all politics are the purview of the nation. It also demonstrates that political capital accumulation—when taken to the extreme—becomes a tyrannic and nefarious manifestation of citizenship excess.

This chapter examines the Bush administration's use of legal detours to target individuals and groups, including protesters, lawyers in the war on terror, and ordinary Americans. It first traces the history of the government's targeting of groups through fear, malice, or overzealous enforcement and goes on to discuss the Bush administration's response to 9/11 as part of its heightened immigration enforcement. It then considers the administration's policies on asylums and refugees, along with the different means that it employed to target individuals and groups, such as coercive interrogation, extraordinary rendition, and detention without due process. It also explores the administration's use of detours within the criminal justice system, starting with the detention of material witnesses. The chapter notes the vindictive stance of the Bush administration in targeting individuals, such as immigrants and foreign nationals.

This chapter charts the growing capacity of the European Court to protect the rights of those who are not citizens of member states of the Council of Europe. The Court’s sustained commitment to robustly enforcing the right to life, the prohibition of torture and inhuman treatment, and the right to a court and judicial remedy facilitated the development of three strains of cosmopolitan jurisprudence. The first operationalizes the Kantian principle of hospitality, covering expulsion, extradition, and the treatment of refugees. The second extends protections to persons whose rights have been violated by states who are not parties to the Convention, or by state parties exercising jurisdiction outside of Convention territory. The third instantiates dialogues with other treaty-based regimes when it comes to overlapping obligations to protect rights. These dialogues suggest that constitutional pluralism is an emergent property of the structure of international law beyond Europe.