Abstract

Whereas technology promises to advance freedom through strengthening human rights protection, the policies enacted to control access to technology infrastructure claim to protect the sovereignty of states. Could these divergent claims be reconciled? In this chapter, an account of technology governance that can accommodate the claims of freedom and sovereignty is provided. The starting point of this account is a reconstruction of the central claims of the two approaches to technology governance. It is argued that the two perspectives are severely limited, hence the need for a third way. To transcend the claims of digital sovereignty and digital freedom, it is imperative to take a standpoint that is political. Adopting an approach or a mode of reading that is political requires that the theory of technology governance answers the question: what does it mean for the experience of (un)freedom to say that human rights or sovereignty requires one to act in one way or another?