Digital Surveillance, State Weakness, and Autocratic Politics in Venezuela

• In Event: Censorship

Abstract

The advance and proliferation of digital surveillance technology has greatly increased the potential capacity of states to gather, store, and analyze information about the individuals living within their borders. A burgeoning line of research on “digital authoritarianism” focuses attention on the development and use of such technologies in autocratic regimes such as China and Russia, also highlighting the transmission of these technologies to clients and allies. We know far less, however, about how digital surveillance technology is actually being adopted in autocracies around the world and with what implications for autocratic politics. Given that most autocratic states are far weaker and less resourced than China or Russia, a particularly vital question regards how such local institutional conditions mediate the adoption and use of such technology.

This paper develops a theory regarding the adoption of digital surveillance technology in weak states and its impact on autocratic politics, using contemporary Venezuela as a theory-generating case study. I start from two more general premises. First, digital surveillance technology enhances the ability of certain state actors to observe and analyze the behavior of others. Given the informational paucities and asymmetries inherent to autocratic politics, digital surveillance can be a powerful resource for autocratic regimes and, more specifically, for dictators and autocratic elites looking to advance their own agendas. Second, state weakness both constrains and frees those actors who control and wield digital surveillance technology. State weakness limits the ability to use digital surveillance technology to its fullest and most fearsome capacity – to create the Orwellian security state of nightmares. But institutional dysfunction and fragmentation also means that dictators have greater difficulty monitoring and constraining security agencies in their use of digital surveillance, opening up more possibilities for elites with influence over these agencies to utilize the technologies for independent action.

From these theoretical foundations, and in dialogue with the Venezuelan case, I generate three more concrete propositions that are illustrated with a variety of evidence and information. First, state weakness conditions and limits the adoption of digital surveillance technology, such that creating the Big Brother state of nightmares is not a realistic possibility. In the Venezuelan case, I show how financial and human resource constraints led security services to adopt a variety of less desirable and less powerful technological solutions, and how bureaucratic inefficiency has made even powerful surveillance tools less effective than they might otherwise have been. Second, digital surveillance in weak states is still a potent tool for monitoring elite defections and coup plotting. In the case of Venezuela, I show that digital surveillance technology has been critical to the Maduro regime’s ability to neutralize several significant coup plots, likely deterring others as well. Finally, state weakness and dysfunction increases the tendency for autocratic elites to compete to gain influence over digital surveillance resources and to use those resources in struggles against each other. I show that autocratic elites in Venezuela have taken great measures to gain access to digital surveillance resources, including creating de facto intelligence agencies within ministries they control, and have used these technologies against each other in a high tech game of spy versus spy.

Materials drawn upon in the case study of Venezuela include an original data set of thousands of documents from the intelligence agency SEBIN, other government documents and news stories, insights from a proprietary political intelligence newsletter, and interviews.

Author

• Samuel Handlin, Swarthmore College