Volume 3 • Issue 1 • 1000145 J Pol Sci Pub Aff ISSN: 2332-0761 JPSPA, an open access journal Research Article Open Access Political Sciences & Public Affairs ISSN: 2332-0761 J o u r n a l o f P o litic a l S c i e n c e & P u b l i c A f f a i r s Haker, J Pol Sci Pub Aff 2015, 3:1 http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/2332-0761.1000145 The New Culture of Security and Surveillance Hille Haker* Department of Theology, Loyola University Chicago, USA Keywords: Surveillance; Deliberative democracy; Human security; Ethics of security; Social freedom Introduction In this paper, I will analyze the recent shit or rather, re-turn in the conceptualization of security, namely from human security as a means to the end of human lourishing, to the new notion of Homeland security under the new conditions of a post 9/11 era. I will limit my investigation to the connection of security and surveillance technologies, the intersection of the political and social applications of these technologies, and the efect of this connection of security and surveillance technologies on the social texture of Northern American and European societies. My relections stem in part from my work in the ethics committee of the European Commission on ethics in science and new technologies, which, ater a year of consultations, hearings and discussions, issued a report on ‘he Ethics of Security and Surveillance Technologies’ in May 2014 [1] My lecture, however, takes a step back from this report in order to relect on the speciic ethical questions we need to ask from the perspective of a moral philosophy that is rooted in the Christian theological and ethical tradition. Human Security versus “Homeland” Security Human security At the end of the 20 th century, the Human Security paradigm was developed as a response to the dissatisfaction with a perspective of ‘security’ addressing mainly the State whose security should be protected, with the means of military organizations. he 1994 Human Development Report articulated a basic understanding of the function of society, namely to provide basic security for everybody. Deeply related to human development thinking, the new security conception was set from the start to include a fuller picture of human beings than from the limited perspective of violence alone, as present in the traditional security perspective [2]. he report deliberately chose seven areas to broaden the understanding of security: economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, political security and community security. hese were to be conceptualized together, with the individual person being the main addressee. Vulnerabilities and insecurities identify the counter-terms of security, while human lourishing and capabilities serve as the anthropo-ethical telos of development. I would follow Martin, Owen in his proposal to use a threshold approach to human security, building upon the Human Security Commission of 2003: Human security is the protection of the vital core of all human lives from critical and pervasive environmental, Abstract While the UN introduced the paradigm of ‘human security’ in the 1990s, the post 9/11-legislation has returned to the paradigm of national security, in the name of ‘homeland’ security. The paper explores the ramiications of this reorientation in view of new and emerging security and surveillance technologies. It argues that a culture of surveillance has emerged that contradicts the vision and values of the human security concept. Regarding the intersection of political and private security and surveillance technologies, the ubiquity and entanglement of surveillance technologies with everyday life goes far beyond the purpose of security. Therefore, the paper argues for a reorientation that is backed by moral and political theory, and a (new) social contract that is based on the concept of social freedom, deliberative democracy, and a human rights-oriented concept of justice. *Corresponding author: Hille Haker, College of Arts and Sciences, Loyola University Chicago, 60660, Chicago, USA, Tel: ++1 773 508 2368; E-mail: hhaker@luc.edu Received March 11, 2015; Accepted March 27, 2015; Published April 05, 2015 Citation: Haker H (2015) The New Culture of Security and Surveillance. J Pol Sci Pub Aff 3: 145. doi:10.4172/2332-0761.1000145 Copyright: © 2015 Haker H. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. economic, food, health, personal and political threats [3] and their report on the human security paradigm from 1994 to 2013, Gasper and Gómez state that organized crime and gang criminality, and not armed conlicts or terrorism, are the major sources of the overall global violent deaths, and hence threats to personal security [4]. Acknowledging the plurality and variety of sources of insecurity in diferent regions and countries, the human security paradigm aims at contextualizing the sources of insecurity and developing diferentiated and new models of interventions. Human security thinking in general, and work on ‘personal security’ in particular, can be turned into either just a slightly modiied continuation of established security thinking related to conlict and crime, or instead be the way through which a fuller picture of humans is introduced and maintained in security-related policies and practices, rendering them more equitable, more relevant and more efective [5]. At the time when the Human Security Paradigm was developed in the 1990s, several armed conlicts occurred that called for a revision of the role of the United Nations. Without a doubt, the wars in Ruanda, in former Yugoslavia, and the Kosovo intervention sparked debates regarding how the role of the international community was to be deined. he so-called Responsibility to Protect Doctrine of 2001 [6] is perhaps the last attempt to establish an international framework connecting and combining the human security paradigm and the national sovereignty and national security paradigm. On this level of international discourse, the human security paradigm is acknowledged as the context of the international community’s objectives, when states fail to protect their citizens: 1.28 he concept of human security including concern for human rights, but broader than that in its scope has also become an increasingly important element in international law and international relations, increasingly providing a conceptual framework for international relations. he Responsibility to Protect Doctrine aims at setting up