2 - Global Listing Technologies and the Politics of Expertise

Summary

Chapter 2 focuses on the assemblage work of UN1267 ISIL and Al-Qaida Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team – a small group of security experts supporting the Sanctions Committee to administer the list. It engages with the practical problem of how to target ‘global terrorism’, which has not yet been defined in international law. Drawing primarily from actor-network theory and governmentality scholarship, the chapter shows how the technology of the list itself plays a crucial role in rendering this problem governable. The practice of UN listing experts is analysed at two specific sites - in ‘consultation meetings’ with national security and intelligence officials directed at populating the list with potential targets and in collaboration with experts from other international organisations to make the list interoperable with global policing data (Interpol) and the passenger data held by the global aviation industry (ICAO and IATA). Such seemingly mundane technical practices usually escape academic attention. But this chapter shows how analysing expert knowledge practices, data infrastructures and governance devices (like the list) can reveal important insights into how global security law is being made into something powerful, durable and global.