NCJ Number
220663
Journal
International Criminal Justice Review Volume: 17 Issue: 3 Dated: September 2007 Pages: 161-170
Date Published
September 2007
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This article focuses on investigating the surveillance practices and processes that are involved in national security initiatives while describing them in a broader context of human security in which liberty and privacy are significant.
Abstract
The problems surrounding the desire to control immigration, to eliminate terrorism, and to combat international organized crime have consequences that appear to cross-cut older social and regional divisions and raise questions about citizenship, human rights, and civil liberties. This article addresses two aspects of post-9/11 security and surveillance: proliferation of new airport security measures and the emergence of the globalized identification (ID). Analysis of biometric passports, national ID systems, airport screening, border checkpoints, and international policing protocols revealed certain social practices that occurred beyond as well as within nation-states, and prompted questions about social movements and citizenship that transcend conventional administrative and academic boundaries. The focus of the article investigates the surveillance practices and processes that are involved in national security initiatives, and places them in a broader context of human security in which freedom of movement and responsible uses of personal data are particularly significant. New remote networking for police cooperation across national borders in relation to national security is a fast-growing trend in several global regions. Sharing information is seen as key to the possibility of concerted action. Security requirements have been raised to a high level of priority in nations around the world following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Among other outcomes, the resulting increase in the routine surveillance of citizens, and especially of travelers, raises questions of sociological interest regarding the intensified means of technology-dependent governance common to many countries. The study includes matters of governance, human rights, and civil liberties in a world where certain cultural aspects are rapidly transcending specific territorial boundaries in a world that consists of things fundamentally in motion using computer networks while creating new social spaces and practices that go beyond conventional sociological analysis. Notes, references