Security, Concepts of

[Page 891]One of the findings of surveillance studies, certainly since 2001, has been the observation that the term security has become a rhetorical trump card. This trump card situation has been called securitization—that is, the rhetorical process of turning more and more issues into security matters, and security into the priority goal. No matter how often Benjamin Franklin’s warning—“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”—is repeated, securitizing arguments continue to prevail, claiming that privacy, autonomy, freedom of speech, or freedom of assembly, for example, must be relinquished for the sake of security. Aiming to provide a better understanding of the concept of security and the argument that value trade-offs are necessary for security, and ...