A Systemic Approach to Security: Beyond the Tradeoff between Security and Liberty

ABSTRACT

The concept of security has shifted from territorial integrity to human security and, after 9/11, to pre-emptive security. Based on the massive implementation of surveillance-oriented security technologies (SOSTs), pre-emptive security emphasizes anticipation of threats and risk management. While liberty and security get framed as standing in a trade-off, SOSTs are massively deployed to increase security. Due to the mutually constitutive relationship between SOSTs and pre-emptive security, security gets framed as a function of surveillance, forcing increasingly monitored citizens to exchange liberty for security. In contrast, a systemic approach to security may enable security policies pursuing liberty and security.

Keywords:

• EU security
• democracy
• liberty
• surveillance-oriented security technologies (SOSTs)
• systemic approach

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Corrigendum

Notes

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^22. Christopher Coker, “NATO’s Unbearable Lightness of Being,” RUSI Journal 149, no. 3 (2004): 18–23.

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^25. European Commission, A Secure Europe for a Better World, (Brussels: EU Institute for security studies, 2003a).

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^33. Kevin D. Haggerty, Minas Samatas (ed.), Surveillance and Democracy (New York, Routledge: 2010).

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^35. Pavone and Degli Esposti, “Public Assessment of New Surveillance-oriented Security Technologies.”

^36. In this article we focus mainly on security policies operated and implemented by public security agencies. However, surveillance practices are also being implemented by private commercial actors, often for the purpose of security and in cooperation with public actors. See, for instance: Sarah Percy, Regulating the Private Security Industry (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013), as well as Adam White, “The New Political Economy of Private Security,” Theoretical Criminology 16 (2012): 85–101.

^37. See, for instance, Peter Adey and Ben Anderson, “Anticipating Emergencies: Technologies of Preparedness and the Matter of Security,” Security Dialogue 43, no. 2 (2012): 99–117, but also Charles Weiss, “Science, Technology and International Relations,” Technology in Society 27, no. 3 (2005): 295–313 and Trine Villumsen Berling, “Science and Securitization: Objectivation, the Authority of the Speaker and Mobilization of Scientific Facts,” Security Dialogue 42, nos. 4–5 (2011): 385–397.

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^40. Sheila Jasanoff, Designs on Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).

^41. Ibid., 17.

^42. Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hiun Kim, “Containing the Atom: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Nuclear Power in the United States and South Korea,” Minerva 47, no. 2 (2009): 119–146.

^43. European Commission, A Secure Europe for a Better World, (Brussels: EU Institute for security studies 2003a), 4–5.

^44. Dereck Lutterbeck, “Blurring the Dividing Line: The Convergence of Internal and External Security in Western Europe,” European Security 14, no. 2 (2005): 231–253.

^45. Kelstrup, Morten, and Michael Williams (eds.), When two become one - internal and external securitisations in Europe, International relations theory and the politics of European integration: power, security and community. (New York: Routledge, 2006), 171–204.

^46. Sven Biscop, The European Security Strategy: A Global Agenda for Positive Power (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005).

^47. European Commission, A Secure Europe for a Better World, (Brussels: EU Institute for security studies, 2003a), 7.

^48. European Commission, The Challenges Facing the European Defense-Industry, a Contribution for Action at European Level (Brussels: EU Press, 1996).

^49. Burkard Schmitt, Research for a Secure Europe (Brussles: Luxembourg Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2004), 7.

^50. European Commission, Implementing a European Union Strategy on Defence-related Industry (Brussels: EU Press, 1997).

^51. European Commission, Toward an EU Defense Equipment Policy (Brussels: EU Press, 2003), 7.

^52. Lisa Rosner, The Technological Fix: How People use Technology to Create and Solve Problems (Routledge, 2013).

^53. European Commission, Toward an EU Defense Equipment Policy, (Brussels: European Commission, 2003b), 17.

^54. David Wright and Reinhard Kreissl, Surveillance in Europe (New York: Routledge, 2014).

^55. Gary T. Marx, “A Tack in the Shoe: Neutralizing and Resisting the New Surveillance,” Journal of Social Issues 59, no. 2 (2003): 369–390.

^56. Decision of the German Federal Administrative Court of January 25, 2012 (Az.BVerwG 6C 9.11).

^57. Michael McCahill, “Surveillance, Crime and the Media,” in Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies, edited by Kevin Haggerty Kirstie Ball and David Lyon (London: Routledge, 2012), 244–251.

^58. See http://info.nodo50.org/Nos-espian-48-camaras-de.html.

^59. Council of the European Union, Draft Internal Security Strategy for the European Union: Towards a European Security Model (Brussels: EU Press, 2011).

^60. Ibid., 11.

^61. Ulrich Beck, “The Terrorist Threat World Risk Society Revisited,” Theory, Culture & Society 19, no. 4 (2002): 39–55. Also, more recently, Marieke de Goede, Stephanie Simon, and Marijn Hoijtink, “Performing Preemption,” Security Dialogue 45, no. 5 (2014): 411–422.

^62. http://www.bka.gv.at/site/3503/default.aspx.

^63. The UK’s approach to national security is overseen by the National Security Council and detailed in the National Security Strategy; available at http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_diitalassets/@dg/@en/documents/digitalasset/dg_191639.pdf?CID=PDF&PLA=furl&CRE=nationalsecuritystrategy.

^64. Council of the European Union, Draft Internal Security Strategy for the European Union: Towards a European Security Model, (Brussels: Council of the European Union, 2011), 3.

^65. Kevin D. Haggerty and Richard V. Ericson, “The Militarization of Policing in the Information Age,” 1999 and Kevin D. Haggerty and Richard V. Ericson, “The Surveillant Assemblage,” 2000.

^66. Council of the European Union, Draft Internal Security Strategy for the European Union: Towards a European Security Model, (Brussels: Council of the European Union, 2011), 17.

^67. See, for instance, Ayse Ceyhan and Anastassia Tsoukala, “The Securitization of Migration in Western Societies: Ambivalent Discourses and Policies,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 27, no. 1 (2002): S21. See also Ryszard Cholewinski, in Baldaccini, Anneliese, Elspeth Guild, and Helen Toner, The Criminalisation of Migration in EU Law and Policy, “Whose freedom, security and justice?: EU immigration and asylum law and policy”. (Oxford, UK: Hart Publishing, 2007), 301–336 as well as Valsamis Mitsilegas, The Criminalisation of Migration in Europe: Challenges for Human Rights and the Rule of Law (New York: Springer, 2014).

^68. See http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/03/18-eu-turkey-statement/.

^69. Council of the European Union, Draft Internal Security Strategy for the European Union: Towards a European Security Model, (Brussels: Council of the European Union, 2011), 13.

^70. Ibid.

^71. European Commission, The European Agenda on Security (Brussels: EU Press, 2015), 3.

^72. See http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35951454.

^73. Timothy Mitchener-Nissen, “Failure to Collectively Assess Security Surveillance Technologies Will Inevitably Lead to an Absolute Surveillance Society,” Surveillance & Society 12, no. 1 (2013): 73–88.

^74. Didier Bigo, “Security, Surveillance and Democracy,” 2012.

^75. See http://www.cirasproject.eu/content/project-objectives.

^76. See http://www.valuesec.eu/content/valuesec-project.

^77. William Young and Nancy G. Leveson, “An Integrated Approach to Safety and Security Based on Systems Theory,” Communications of the ACM 57, no. 2 (2014): 31–35.

^78. Peter H. Liotta, “Boomerang Effect: The Convergence of National and Human Security,” Security Dialogue 33, no. 4 (2002): 473–488.

^79. Francesco Vitali, “Comunicazione e controllo ai tempi del terrore,” LIMES, no. 11 (2015): 141–146.

^80. Francesco Gracceva and Peter Zeniewski, “A Systemic Approach to Assessing Energy Security in a Low-carbon EU Energy System,” Applied Energy 123 (2014): 335–348.

^81. Arbia Riahi, Yacine Challal, Enrico Natalizio, Zied Chtourou, and Abdelmadjid Bouabdallah, “A Systemic Approach for IoT Security” (2013 IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems (DCOSS), 2013).

^82. Francesco Vitali, “Comunicazione e controllo ai tempi del terrore,” 2015.

^83. Michael Reiterer, “The EU’s Comprehensive Approach to Security in Asia,” European Foreign Affairs Review 19, no. 1 (2014): 1–21.

^84. While a thorough critique of this phenomenon would go beyond the scope of this article, critical social epistemology approaches would be better endowed to address this issue and cast light on the epistemic consequences of adopting certain institutional arrangements or systemic relations as opposed to alternatives.