Creating the information architecture of state surveillance: Comparative perspectives from Brazil and Japan

In an age in which the digital relationships between states and citizens are of increasingly vital importance, the informational architectures which facilitate such relationships become correspondingly critical. Such informational architectures and the related reorganization of state institutions are key to the nature of such relationships. As surveillance becomes one of the major modes of ordering in societies north and south, the differences in the ways in which states develop such architectures need greater attention. This paper considers the ways in which two very different states, Japan and Brazil, are developing their state digital surveillance capacities. It examines the kinds of informational architectures that are being created at the national level in each state, and whether and how this is transforming the organization of state bodies more widely. In each case, it is argued, particular organizations have pushed forward contested visions of new informational architecture that differ in the ways in which they are able to enrol other state bodies and interact with globalizing surveillance trajectories. Some of these visions fail or produce far more limited results that had been intended, but this is rarely to do with formal processes of democratic accountability, instead particular cultural contexts provide a better explanatory framework to the extent and effectiveness of receptivity, reaction and resistance.