The internet is a forum for geopolitical struggle as states wield power beyond their terrestrial territorial borders through the extraterritorial geographies of data flows. This exertion of power across multiple jurisdictions, and via the infrastructure of transnational technology companies, creates new challenges for traditional forms of regulatory governance and the protection of human rights.
This paper is part of Geopolitics, jurisdiction and surveillance, a special issue of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by Monique Mann and Angela Daly. Introduction Since the Snowden revelations in 2013 (see e.g., Lyon, 2014; Lyon, 2015) an ongoing policy issue has been the legitimate scope of surveillance, and the extent to which individuals and groups can assert their fundamental rights, including privacy. There has been a renewed focus on policies regarding access to encrypted communications, which are part of a longer history of the ‘cryptowars’ of the 1990s (see e.g., Koops, 1999). We examine these provisions in the Anglophone ‘Five Eyes’ (FVEY) The FVEY partnership is a comprehensive …