Paper long abstract:

This contribution discusses the changing reality in security discourse in relation to technology-related surveillance practices and implications for privacy concepts. Regardless of whether recently uncovered mass surveillance programs are framed as data collection or surveillance, societal impacts particularly on privacy and autonomy remain critical. These surveillance forms are linked to significant transformations in security discourse since the 1990s towards a holistic security concept with accordingly extensive measures for its achievement, entailing deep privacy impacts. Big data surveillance fits perfectly in new modes of pre-emption aiming at eliminating potential threats before they become serious. This reinforces a "security continuum" (Buzan et al 1998) where security itself becomes a moving target with self-amplifying dynamics. The term security, generally understood as a state free from unjustifiable risks as such is always afflicted with risk - thus, security without risks is a contradiction in terms. This contraction becomes inherent part of a "securitization" (cf. Weaver 1995) where security becomes a permanent process seducing with a seemingly predicting view on threats fostering effectivity of security measures. Technology is mostly seen as perfect means to improve security with seemingly simple, automated, cost-efficient measures. Recent trends in the scope of big data to pre-emptively gather personal information drastically reinforce this fallacy further. Tightly connected to this paradigm shift is an assumed privacy-security trade-off reinforced by technology usage. This creates a reality where surveillance becomes justifiable by a "natural" privacy-security conflict which - in this logic - has to be approved to improve security at the cost of privacy.