ABSTRACT
In the legislative act of establishing security bureaucracies a world of secrets was created, and yet this secretive world must, in theory, justify itself in terms of the public good. The “public” is legally required, and not just by secret colleges where experts cast themselves as protectors of those who sleep safely. Building on earlier discussion of “paranoia within reason”, this chapter discusses conspiracies, conspiracy theories, and what the public does not know. The chapter discusses the post-9/11 “behavioral detection” efforts to understand the public in airports and other critical infrastructure sites. Such experimentation shows the gap in knowledge where “the public” ought to be. The chapter then describes Mark Maguire’s recent research on public behavior during terror attacks, and his conversations with numerous experts, including members of US, Irish, UK and French special forces. For special forces, the public are something of a mystery too. This chapter poses a central question for the contemporary: how can one take jurisdiction over human life without understanding the lives that are to be protected? The chapter concludes by proposing that ethnography allows one to step “outside” the security discourse, and ask after public values.
