I have a new peer-reviewed article out. It’s the first of 5 peer-reviewed articles I’ve worked on towards completion of my PhD thesis, and it germinated from my years working as a digital security trainer and practitioner-researcher, during which time the subject of how to talk about, think about, and respond to ‘digital threats’ was a subject of continued controversy. Sitting at the cross-section of science and technology studies, surveillance studies, and critical data studies, the article draws on 50 interviews and 4 years of field work to look at how threat modelling and risk assessment have emerged amongst digital security practitioners in civil society to become essential practices for grappling with surveillance uncertainties. In addition to highlighting the experiences and practices of a diverse group of practitioners, it also offers a critical take on the future-focused, anticipatory nature of threat modelling and risk assessment. For example, I show that while threat modelling has helped groups understand how to prioritise surveillance, data, and security related concerns, the ‘anticipatory modes’ of doing and being inherent to these practices can also lock people into hyper-vigilant cycles of threat response and can narrow our vision of possibilities for emancipatory collective change. The interviews in the article also highlight how ‘civil society’, as such, has shifted its attention towards understanding how to grapple with the pervasive threats of corporate data exploitation, while also contending with issues around diversity, equity, and social justice within transnational digital rights and internet freedom communities themselves, particularly in the years of 2016-2019, during which the field work took place. . Read it here!