Peter Lehr

Piracy and maritime governance in the Indian Ocean

Abstract During the late 1990s and the early 2000s, this author conducted a comparative study on regime building in the worlds three maritime ‘mega regions’, i.e., the Atlantic, the (Asia-) Pacific and the Indian Ocean. The aim was to explain why regime building is so difficult in the latter as compared to the former two, and why newly formed regimes tend to end up as ‘sandbanks of shattered hope’ soon after their inauguration. Many reasons were offered both by the authors numerous respondents and by the author himself, but amongst the findings was the widely shared opinion of specialists from various Indian Ocean Rim countries that attempts at regime building tended to fail because their aims and objectives were too lofty. Rather, it was argued that regime-building attempts should start on the relatively modest level of confidence building measures which all potential participants could agree on, such as disaster relief, search and rescue (SAR), sustainable development of marine resources, fisheries protection, and the fight against piracy. All those measures can be subsumed under the label ‘maritime governance’, which will be define below.

Responding to Terrorism and Ideologies of Hate

The controversy around the film The Innocence of Muslims, manifesting itself in violent demonstrations and counter-demonstrations basically all around the world in September 2012 brought a debate into the open that has kept academics, policy makers and security officials busy for some years now: how to respond to terrorism, and to ideologies of hate? Many strategies have been suggested on how to combat ‘them’ and to win ‘their’ audiences’ hearts and minds. This contribution aims to shed some light on the main conceptual issues around this question, commenting on ‘modern’ mass media (TV, radio, print press) first before discussing the dissemination of ideologies of hate in the ‘post-modern’ media (Internet, YouTube, twitter) and how to counter them (if possible at all), which seem to be the more pressing issues for reasons to be explained below. It will conclude with suggesting that responding may not be as urgent or necessary as it may look at first sight.

Consequences: The Urban Space as a (Limited) Battlespace

In this short concluding chapter of the first part, I bring all the argumentative strands together to then comment on the ‘action-reaction’ pattern that became obvious: terrorists act, counter-terrorists react – and so do politicians and academics. I argue that an array of various solutions has been offered to break through this cycle – amongst them technology as the proverbial ‘silver bullet’.

Actions: The Return of Urban Guerrillas

In this opening chapter of the first part of this book, I analyse the current threat of terrorism as regards the safety and security of our cities and our open societies. The themes of vulnerability of these open societies, and the criticality of certain parts of urban infrastructures the existence and smooth functioning of which we tend to take for granted form the backdrop to the discussion of the growing threat to our cities, moving from assassination-style attacks of, for example, the German Red Army Faction and the bombing attacks of the IRA against the City of London to mass-casualty attacks targeting our Western way of life and our ‘sinful’ cities as such by actors associated with Al Qaeda and ISIS/Daesh on the one hand and attacks by way of weaponizing ‘mundane objects’ such as cars, vans, trucks or simple knifes for that matter. My main argument here is that our growing urban sprawls now provide terrorists with an ‘urban jungle’ Marighella could only dream of when he wrote his Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla in the late 1960s.

The Quest for Silver Bullets: Implications for Our Construction of Citizenship

In this first chapter of the book’s third part, I set the scene by discussing our conception and construction of citizenship. My core argument here is that new technologies, especially security-related technologies, change our view of what it means to be a citizen. In particular, I draw on the ‘Agency of Things’ as well as the ‘Internet of Things’ to highlight the relevance of technology in that regard. Since it is not only about technology per se but also the willingness to make use of it without too many critical questions asked, I also discuss some controversial views of politicians who seem to be willing to trade civil liberties for more security. I conclude this chapter by pointing out that we are already on a slippery slope in that regard, sleepwalking away from being citizens of liberal democracies towards being citizens of less liberal states driven by an ‘us versus them’ dichotomy much more pronounced than it is right now.

Identification: Biometrics, or a Real-Time ‘Who Is Who’

In this first chapter of the book’s second part, I argue that the best way to deal with terrorism is to nip a planned terrorist attack in the bud. One way to do so is by discerning innocent citizens who have a right to be at certain locations from those who have not, and whose intentions are dubious, via a swift and reliable but non-intrusive identification and verification process. I introduce the main biometrics that are used in this regard, first discussing physical biometrics such as facial recognition, iris scans, voice scans or fingerprints, to then move on to behavioural ones such as one’s gait. Since most of them are not (yet) fool proof, especially not as stand-alone technologies, I make the case for multimodal-based biometric systems which currently are under development.

Outlook: The Need for ‘Critical’ Critical Infrastructure Protection Studies

In this final ‘outlook’ chapter, I pull out three main issues that should be taken home as the main lessons of this book. Firstly, I draw attention on the importance of the art of critical infrastructure protection (CIP) as an effort to ‘control the uncontrollable’. Secondly, I highlight the urgent need of a ‘critical’ critical infrastructure protection approach that steers away from the solely technocratic approach chosen so far. And thirdly, I conclude with the warning that a focus on counter-terrorism technology as a ‘silver bullet’ to the detriment of addressing the root causes of terrorism might lead to an ‘arms race’ between terrorists and counter-terrorists that cannot possibly be won especially not by us ordinary citizens who might well end up ‘temporarily’ surrendering civil rights in vain, and without getting them back any time soon since the war on terrorism is an interminable one.

Archipelagos of Fear: CT Technology and the Securitisation of Everyday Life

In this chapter, I re-examine the transformation of our cities under the impression of recent terrorist attacks from a critical perspective. I argue that a ‘discourse of fear’ enables a process that turns ever more of our public spaces into ‘safe spaces’ which are essentially ‘quasi-public’ only – quasi-public in the sense that they can be accessed only by those citizens fortunate enough to have the right credentials, thus excluding or ‘othering’ all those we deem to be ‘undesirables’, however defined. I point out that this exclusion already is a common practice – and not necessarily connected to the threat of terrorism. Rather, in my view a ‘hostile architecture’ has emerged that targets everyone who does not fit in. To defend my point of view, I discuss concepts such as ‘defensible space’, ‘architecture of fear’ and ‘archipelagos of fear’ in the shape of loosely connected inner-cities citadels and gated communities in the suburbs.

Prediction and Postdiction: Real-Time Data Mining and Data Analytics

In this chapter, I focus on data-mining and data analytics. It is obvious that without integrated databases set up for collecting, collating, managing and disseminating data derived from various identification, monitoring and surveillance systems, all efforts in this direction would be in vain – which is why we need to discuss such computerized databases first. But databases are just the beginning: nowadays, computers can tap into the World Wide Web to proactively search all kinds of social media including listen in on phone calls to detect suspicious behaviour, to profile individual terrorists or suspects. This process is known as data mining and acquisition, and similar to what many private companies such as Google or Facebook routinely do ways as well. I argue that currently, the ‘holy grail’ of data-mining and acquisition is to be able to do so in real time, while ‘it’ happens. With a discussion of this current cutting edge of research and the implications for our civil liberties, I conclude this chapter.

Protection: Defensible Spaces

In this chapter, I discuss passive and mostly ‘low-tech’ defences in the shape of barricades (i.e. counter-intrusion devices) and citadels (i.e. facilities hardened against terrorist or criminal attacks). After all, in my opinion, these modern avatars of time-honoured brick-and-mortar curtain walls still have a formidable role to play in the times of global terrorism: basically, they are our last line of defence against terrorists who have managed to evade all other high-tech measures described above without being detected and are now ready to strike. Hence, I will take a look at modern city walls such as the City of London’s ‘Ring of Steel’/Ring of Glass’, at modern citadels such as One World Trade Center in New York, and at barricades (temporarily) deployed to deny access to certain areas.