Are We Secure, Or Just Afraid?
TRIGGER WARNING
This blog discusses violence against women and specifically discusses terrorism and murder.
I’ve worked in this industry for so long, I’ve realised that security is supposed to make us feel safe, so why does so much of the language used in security make us feel like we’re constantly in danger?
FIREWALL
DISCRETIONARY ACCESS CONTROL
CYBER ATTACK
COMPROMISE
VULNERABILITY
THREAT
BREACH
INCIDENT
ADVERSARY
and finally, KUBER-NET-ES, whatever that is.
Anyway, you get the point. The careful usage of language in security goes a very long way towards actually making us safe, the problem being that security requires constant attention to dangers. However, we’ve learnt that paying too much attention can change the way you experience the world, a paradox where vigilance meets safety desires.
Does our desire to be secure actually make us less secure? Because the notion that nothing is happening doesn’t actually constitute the idea that nothing is going to happen, and that’s where the theory of hypervigilance perpetuates a perceptually aware state of mind.
In 2017, my daughter attended a concert in Manchester, the Manchester Arena to see Ariana Grande perform. A place that had represented music, excitement, experience and a life event became associated with danger. After the concert ended, a terrorist detonated a bomb, killing twenty-two and injuring hundreds. My daughter was unharmed, however, the psychological trauma she, and the thousands who survived this attack, changed the perceived safety of a place of celebration and still does to this day.
A very crude, but real-world example of how the perception of safety can transition to collective trauma and a long-term association with that location.
Sarah Everard. I don’t wish to misappropriate the entirety of this incident, so I’ll quote Wikipedia in the hope of a higher level of accuracy:
On the evening of 3 March 2021, 33-year-old Sarah Everard was kidnapped in South London, England, as she was walking home to the Brixton Hill area from a friend’s house near Clapham Common. She was stopped by off-duty Metropolitan Police constable Wayne Couzens, who identified himself as a police officer and handcuffed her. He drove Everard to Kent, where he raped and strangled her before burning her body and disposing of her remains in a pond in woodland.
This particular incident is likely the most extreme and tragic example of how security can transform the view of a perceived threat, and a clear example of the ongoing, daily threats of how women assess threats in everyday environments and how they differ to those that men face, and let me be clear - those threats are incredibly more dangerous for women than men.
The point here is the authority in most democratic states are those in uniform are designed to protect us and keep us safe from harm, so what happens when that possibility of violence becomes part of the navigation of life?
Going for a Run?
Parking a car in a car park?
Taxi home after a night out?
The very possibility of danger is part of security, and the fear is the very thing that is working to keep us safe. However, the persistent nature of violence shapes behaviours of those at risk, and even those who are not, when there is no specific threat present. That’s when we become hypervigilant. This leaves me with a question for myself, and for anyone who has read these blogs! (thank you!)
If security changes the way we behave because of what might happen, how do we know when vigilance has become something else?