NeoConOpticon

The EU Security-Industrial Complex
Septiembre 2009
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Are we turning a blind eye to a new kind of arms race? One in which all the weapons are pointing inwards? This report reveals the extent to which Europe’s largest defence and IT contractors are benefiting from a €1.4 billion EU “security research” programme.

 

The EU’s security and R&D policy is coalescing around a high-tech blueprint for a new kind of security. Eventhough it is often with a benign intent behind collaborative European ‘research’ into integrated land, air, maritime, space and cyber-surveillance systems. It envisages a future world of red zones and green zones; external borders controlled by military force and internally by a sprawling network of physical and virtual security checkpoints; public spaces, micro-states and ‘mega events’ policed by high-tech surveillance systems and rapid reaction forces; ‘peacekeeping’ and ‘crisis management’ missions that make no operational distinction between the suburbs of Basra or the Banlieue; and the increasing integration of defence and national security functions at home and abroad.

It is not just a case of “sleepwalking into” or “waking up to” a “surveillance society”, as the Britain’s Information Commissioner famously warned, it feels more like turning a blind eye to the start of a new kind of arms race, one in which all the weapons are pointing inwards. Welcome to the Neo-ConOpticon.

 

 

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Title of overall publication: 
NeoConOpticon: The EU Security-Industrial Complex
Páginas: 
82pages
ISSN: 
1756-851X

Investigador del TNI para el observatorio Statewatch

Ben Hayes es un investigador del TNI que lleva trabajando para la organización de las libertades civiles Statewatch desde 1996, especializándose en la ley europea sobre justicia y asuntos de interior, cooperación policial, controles fronterizos, tecnologías de vigilancia y políticas antiterroristas.

Ben también trabaja con el Centro Europeo de Derechos Constitucionales y Humanos (ECCHR, Berlín) y asesora a varias organizaciones internacionales que trabajan sobre los derechos humanos, la justicia social y el desarrollo. Ben tiene un doctorado por el Magee College (Derry/Londonderry), concedido por la Universidad de Ulster en 2008.