ABSTRACT
The purpose of this essay is to explore a range of issues that are too often overlooked in discussions about national security issues and institutions. These are matters, primarily normative but to some extent also empirical, that should logically precede discussions and recommendations relating to public policy. Put simply, every view expressed about what security and policing agencies should or should not be permitted to do, and what limits should be placed on how they do it, ultimately draws upon judgements about what these agencies are meant to ‘secure’. Such judgements are no less real for never being expressly made or discussed: unarticulated assumptions can be equally controlling. Yet nearly always in what little public debate there is on these issues, the fundamental questions are either passed over entirely or are treated as subject to an assumed consensus. The result is to validate things as usual. This essay seeks to challenge the consensus by performing the essential first step of placing the fundamental normative questions at centre stage.
