The Instrumentalization of Fear

Posted on October 20, 2005

An interesting article by Denis Duclos, sociologist and research director at the CNRS. He is the author of works such as The Werewolf Complex and The Fascination of Violence in American Culture, published in 2005 with a new postscript by La Découverte, Paris.

Source: http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2005/08/DUCLOS/12433

These thriving industries of perpetual fear

Domestically, the “war on terrorism” leads to an unlimited accumulation of all kinds of data about individuals: their occupations, friendships, purchases, and reading habits. In a race toward technological advancement, the failure of each new technology justifies the deployment of ever more complex systems—yet these remain equally ineffective in achieving their stated goals. But there are other, more clandestine motives behind the growth of this “fear market”…

The deadly attacks in London last July are part of a series of acts targeting countries involved in military occupation in the Middle East. They are products of asymmetric warfare (1), leaving little choice for those—religious or not—who believe they’re fighting a “crusade” aimed at controlling resources rather than promoting democracy.

That said, whether through resistance or blind terrorism, affected countries must protect their citizens. And as G8 leaders finally admitted, the real solution to violence lies in eradicating oppression and poverty (2). In the short term, Spain chose an effective response after the horrific March 11, 2004 attacks in Madrid that killed 186 people: withdrawing its troops from Iraq, coupled with thorough police investigations.

This isn’t the path taken by other major countries: instead, priority was given to a “technology-centered” approach, targeting large numbers of foreigners deemed—for reasons unrelated to terrorism—“undesirable” (3), as well as entire populations.

Coming at a time when U.S. intelligence agencies were in disarray, the dramatic September 11, 2001 attacks immediately spurred efforts to gather detailed information on millions of people, in order to identify potential threats. Four years later, this techno-security apparatus operates at full capacity, especially in so-called free countries. Travelers and their luggage are scanned; biometric data is stored; mobile phones monitored; countless phone numbers archived; fingerprints digitized; massive databases maintained by governments and corporations cross-referenced.

This frenzy is no longer justified by the need to find a needle in a haystack: while the FBI still doesn’t know the identities of some of the 9/11 attackers, analysts working with Matrix files sent it 120,000 names of ordinary Americans labeled “high-risk terrorists.” Tens of thousands of “false positives”—almost judicial errors—result from biometric screenings at borders: pregnant women arrested by body-heat detectors (supposedly revealing emotional terrorists) deserve special mention!

Since 2001, many airports, municipalities, and companies have replicated Tampa’s disastrous experiment: Graphco, Raytheon, and Viisage offered this city a comparative analysis of 24,000 criminal photos against the faces of 100,000 attendees at its famous football championship. Only a handful of unfortunate individuals ended up charged...

Contrary to the supposed goal of preventing suicide attacks, mass surveillance bears no relation to curbing illegal immigration—which by nature defies any form of control and can only be managed through global economic equilibrium.

So how can we explain this relentless drive, criticized by most anti-terrorism professionals—police officers and soldiers alike? Why, despite its proven ineffectiveness and disproportionate scale relative to its aims, does there persist such a hunger for data collection, personal information storage, and constant physical monitoring via touch, vision, heat, smell, and radio waves? Why photograph Londoners 300 times daily and monitor them via 2.5 million cameras, knowing full well this didn’t prevent terrorists from detonating bombs on July 7? Why push for mandatory ID cards and abandon principles of privacy (4) and anonymity vis-à-vis state and corporate powers?

Beyond pretexts of maintaining order, there’s only one valid explanation: institutions and corporations see managing fear as a sustainable source of power, control, and profit.

Since September 11, President George W. Bush’s policies have offered a plausible solution: mobilize the entire planet around security objectives. A stroke of genius. Unlike oil, this “fear resource,” fueled by economic crisis, climate change, and population growth, won’t run out anytime soon. Provocations capable of inciting outrage exist at all times. The urgency justifies actions without democratic safeguards; thus companies and institutions selling “security” can fully engage in the fear business (5), confident of state backing—even though anxiety generally harms commerce.

Thus, under the guise of fighting a myriad of threats, a global security apparatus is being built. Its rapid functional integration suggests it may become the core of a new emerging capitalism: capitalism of fear.

Four intertwined trends shape this transformation:

– Accelerated connections between innovations across various segments of the fear market: identification, surveillance, protection, arrest, detention;

– Merging of converted war industries and military organizations into training and equipping repressive forces, accompanied by militarization of civilian security forces;

– Growing cooperation between public and private powers, both in identity control and in imposing restrictions;

– Ideological campaigns across legal, political, administrative, economic, and media spheres, aiming to normalize pervasive preventive control as a new human norm.

Most major industrial and tech groups now promote “security” services or products derived from their traditional expertise. Each acronym denotes a growing market: AFIS (Automatic Finger Imaging System—matching fingerprints against databases); CCTV (Closed Circuit Television—video surveillance); EM (Electronic Monitoring—remote individual tracking); EMHA (Electronic Monitored House Arrest—electronic ankle bracelets); GPS (Global Positioning System—tracking people); RFID (Radio Frequency Identification—electronic tags storing info transmitted via radio waves); and countless “X-ray systems” for scanning passengers, not to mention software for processing intelligence data. Technological offerings proliferate everywhere.

A few examples: In France, Visiowave, a subsidiary of TF1, uses TV expertise to detect suspicious behavior in public spaces via gesture-interpretation software, then produces promotional reports shown on subway and bus screens. Thales (formerly Thomson CSF) manufactures video-surveillance kits, even selling them to authoritarian regimes. Tech giants like Microsoft and Sony aren’t far behind: Microsoft’s Palladium chip controls PC file management remotely; Sony plans to distribute globally its RFID-enabled tags by 2009, generating $3 billion in revenue, able to track products down to buyers’ homes—or thieves’!

Several firms already employ similar methods: UK-based Tesco (2,000 stores worldwide) experiments with radio-frequency tagging of packaging.

One can also launch a “patriotic” venture based on a specific profession: a major electronics manufacturer offers the Sticky Shocker—an electric “pacification” weapon (6). Applied Digital, a small U.S. firm formerly producing innocuous humidity-control boxes, car keys, and garage openers, created the Verichip—an implantable skin chip enabling individual tracking...

Another example: Eli Lilly, famed for Prozac, researches remote monitoring of home-detained criminals, developing wristbands that detect alcohol and marijuana consumption, triggering inhibitory substances or electric shocks.

Biometric records and subcutaneous chips: Many states’ eagerness to electronically identify foreigners, criminals, and even their own citizens proves decisive. Orders from the “security state” rival those of former welfare states. Public budgets fuel the biometric market, valued at tens of billions of dollars in 2007. Thus, the U.S. government ordered 1,000 readers from Anteon for “US Visit” (7), monitoring 13 million foreign residents and border-crossers.

Pre-screening travelers, customs marking personal indicators, storing digitized fingerprints—such as Canada’s automated fingerprint identification system (SAID) or the planned Schengen Information System (SIS) for non-residents—represent highly lucrative markets firms aim to dominate.

States are also essential in establishing a new socio-technical organizational framework. From Britain to Estonia, Italy, and Belgium, European nations deliberate over universal identification tools: civil status, photo ID, fingerprint and iris scans. Not to mention digital signatures facilitating private transactions, turning states into automatic contract certifiers.

In France, the mandatory, paid electronic ID card project (CNIE) was rejected by the National Commission on Informatics and Liberties (CNIL) and condemned as “evil” by the Human Rights League. It goes beyond mere “more identification” trends seen for two centuries in most developed nations, always justified by fraud prevention, immigrant control, and modernization. It merges four normally separate elements: the bearer’s body, traces left by it, a card combining traces and personal info, and a comprehensive central database issuing authentic cards.

Linking biometric data (a modern term for Alphonse Bertillon’s anthropometry) with social data facilitates creation and interconnectivity of vast centralized databases (whose existence in 1943 would have prevented escape from Nazi roundups). Additionally, embedding electronic chips and mandating card possession—like under Vichy—promotes subcutaneous chips, effectively equivalent to branding repeat offenders with hot irons until 1832 in France or indelible ink in 19th-century Britain.

Granted, mandatory implants aren’t yet reality; skin penetration probably never will occur. Yet relieved that this horror was avoided via majority rejection, we risk overlooking how the CNIE would function “as if” bodies were indeed tagged. It could, for instance, precisely track our movements—far more reliably than Napoleonic or Soviet police regimes used worker books or internal passports. Even more, such “contactless” cards might allow foreign authorities (like Bush’s U.S.) to instantly locate any foreign visitor. This evolution is underway: U.S. government agencies already produce millions of employee ID cards tracking movement, computer usage, salary levels, etc.

Finally, once linked to other computerized systems (health cards, contactless credit cards, online digital signatures), the radio-information fusion of data, traces, and bodies creates a new social order where state and corporations merge into omnipotent control over individuals. These successive security innovations outline, in increasingly dense dots, a society governed by unrestricted cooperation between private powers and public institutions.

Following this technological buildup preparing a “control society”, the second hallmark of this new capitalism lies in gradually merging fear of enemies with distrust of citizens, blending military and police functions... This trend affects most Western nations, which partially redirect arms races toward escalating civilian security. As security industry fairs like Milipol (8) demonstrate, “civilianizing” armies and “militarizing” police forces—public and private—accelerates. Military journals normalize concepts like “crowd-control infantry”.

Nowadays, most security firms assign staff almost interchangeably to guarding facilities, prisons, bodyguarding, and “security officer” roles for official armies. Witness the alliance among Wackenhut, Serco, and Group 4-Falk (U.S.-UK-Canada-Sweden based), commanding $5 billion annually, employing 360,000 workers across 100 countries. Their services range from managing private prisons (63 prisons, 67,000 inmates in the U.S.) and various private police units to training entire military security companies... and researching remote criminal monitoring and identification/tracking systems.

Such professionalism doesn’t preclude barbarity: Wackenhut faced accusations regarding treatment of U.S. prisoners; CACI International and Titan Corporation, heavily involved in “Homeland Security” (9), figured in scandals involving torture inflicted by CIA-contracted civilians at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay (10). Is it coincidence Titan also researches biometric identification? Technologically, scientific, military, and police applications intertwine inextricably.

In France, Sagem manufactures helicopters, drones, scopes, simulations, secure gaming terminals, and credit cards. But it’s also the world leader in fingerprint measurement, offering “government solutions” for tough issues like crisis management.

Another example: American Science and Engineering (AS&E), which equipped missiles with X-ray devices and now helps customs detect narcotics. The firm takes pride in its Mobile Search system, which has detained hundreds of undocumented Mexican immigrants.

Sandia Labs—traditional partner of the U.S. military-industrial complex—develops prisoner tracking via satellite GPS... and explosive sniffers. Diverse U.S. firm Foster-Miller builds machines making candy or Pepsi... and nets to capture enemies you don’t want to kill. It also helped create Talon robot capable of wielding assault weapons in urban guerrilla warfare. Thus, the novel concept of “non-lethal weapons” (11) aids merging vastly different industrial professions.

Among inventions straddling capture and killing: the 7-hertz wave generator, invented in France in 1972, causing hours-long illness. Since then, progress abounded: “voice-to-skull” technology, used to scare birds away from airports, might also target human skulls. Radiofrequency thermal shock disrupts synapses, immobilizes victims remotely, induces fever, and ultimately cooks or fries persistent opponents. Ultraviolet lasers damage bone tissue, optionally inducing heart attacks or blindness...

Furthermore, ideological labor-sharing between industrial lobbies, police agencies, and the media-driven “perpetual fear” narrative becomes systematic. Without it, restructuring societies around “total control” would be impossible. True, the Total Information Awareness program, meant to collect data on all 6.5 billion Earth inhabitants post-9/11, was delusional (12). Yet its underlying intent was more enduring and dangerous: a global security proselytism seeking to erode democratic and liberal principles underpinning our societies.

Paranoid fortresses: Reinforcing this paradigm shift, FBI agents worldwide promote surveillance as a core value in an uncertain world. Hollywood follows suit: films like The Interpreter (13), implausible and ponderous (who’d try murdering an elderly African dictator at UN headquarters?), feature gadget catalogs allowing “homeland” cops to ensnare evil Matabolians.

Facing threats, electronics consortium Gixel suggests in its “blue book” generalizing electronic tracking starting in kindergarten, educating young minds on biometric benefits... Meanwhile, video games from major U.S., Asian, and European producers familiarize teens with worlds requiring proper passwords to access; initiatives like Lyon Aquarium’s “Thumbprint Card” normalize fingerprint identification among children.

This climate encourages ever-less scrupulous assaults on confidentiality norms established by the UN Human Rights Commission. Thus, France’s insurance federation now seeks access to electronic medical records, quietly planning to end medical secrecy. Australia’s Parliament passed laws permitting police email surveillance. Switzerland taps mobile phones; German politicians increasingly endorse “Datenschutz ist Täterschutz” (“protecting data protects criminals”).

In Denmark, democratic virtues don’t prevent passing anti-terror laws restricting liberties. In the U.S., the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows government monitoring of library reading. Worse, Federal Judge David Hurd ruled in January 2005 that installing GPS trackers on suspects’ cars “isn’t a violation of privacy” (14).

Collectively, these signs illustrate erosion of the “old” model of civil liberties. True, resistance exists: from Madrid’s anti-terror summit (15), where participants reaffirmed the “absurdity” of limiting freedoms to combat terror; to the EU Parliament filing a complaint against the U.S.-EU air-passenger data deal; or Spanish and British populations displaying admirable civic calm amid provocations. Elsewhere, notably France, every tragedy becomes pretext for demanding more biometrics and overt repression.

Will fear politics prevail? Then legendary terrorists will have achieved their goal: within four years, they’ll have turned great democracies into paranoid fortresses suffocating their own citizens.

Denis Duclos.

(1) Barthélémy Courmont and Darko Ribnikar, Les Guerres asymétriques, PUF, Paris, 2002.

(2) G8 Summit, Gleneagles, UK, July 2005.

(3) “Undesirable: category targeted by the centralized Schengen Information System (SIS II) managed in Strasbourg; see Jelle Van Buuren, ‘Les tentacules du système Schengen’, Le Monde diplomatique, March 2003.”

(4) According to political scientist Didier Bigo (testified before the National Commission on Informatics and Liberties, March 11, 2005), privacy is a “sphere forbidden to the State,” a positive right to anonymity.

(5) Filmmaker André Weinfeld gave us the concept of “business of fear.”

(6) The Sticky Shocker is an electroshock projectile launched from ten meters away. It contains a small battery and electronics delivering 50-kilowatt impulses causing total muscular loss in victims.

(7) Visitor and Immigration Status Indication Technology: tightening entry procedures at 115 airports and 14 seaports, requiring fingerprinting and electronic photos of visa-holding foreigners upon entering U.S. territory.

(8) Next edition takes place November 20–25, 2005 at Le Bourget.

(9) Name of new U.S. department handling domestic security.

(10) See Ignacio Ramonet, Irak. Histoire d’un désastre, Galilée, Paris, 2005.

(11) Bernard Lavarini: Vaincre sans tuer: du silex aux armes non létales, Stock, Paris, 1997.

(12) Ignacio Ramonet, “Surveillance totale”, Le Monde diplomatique, August 2003.

(13) American film directed by Sydney Pollack, starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn (2005).

(14) Statement by Federal Judge David Hurd during a New York trial on January 8, 2005, cited by all U.S. media.

(15) “Democracy, Terrorism and Security”, May 17–18, 2002. EU-Latin America and Caribbean Summit; final declaration stipulates “the fight against terrorism must respect human rights, fundamental freedoms, and rule of law.”

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