Michael Wilson

This thesis examines the politics of privacy protection, focusing on how privacy advocates contest a moral equivalence at the core of the 'problem of going dark' – a claim that privacy-enhancing technologies enable the evasion of criminal investigations. Using the analytical constructs of signification, subjectivation, and identification, the thesis argues that Australian privacy advocates contest this claim via the articulation of a civic duty to disrupt the relations of domination that enable 'morally arbitrary' surveillance powers. Overall, the thesis argues this property of 'moral arbitrariness' is important for clarifying the distinction between advocating privacy protection and enabling methods of criminal evasion.