The U.S. military is developing augmented reality (AR) capabilities for use on the battlefield as a means of achieving greater situational awareness. The superimposition of digital data—designed to expand surveillance, enhance geospatial understanding, and facilitate target identification—onto a live view of the battlefield has important implications for virtuous conduct in war: Can the soldier exercise practical wisdom while integrated into a system of militarized legibility? Adopting a virtue ethics perspective, I argue that AR disrupts the soldier’s immersion in the scene (...) such that he is blinded to features beyond those identified in advance by the military’s system of cybernetic judgment. I turn to Michael Walzer’s classic account of the “naked soldier” dilemma to illustrate how AR capabilities radically shrink the bounds within which the soldier can cultivate the capacity for right conduct. By transforming the ambiguous ethical matter of killing an enemy combatant into the straightforward application of a rule, AR hollows out the soldier’s potential for virtuous action. The “smart battlefield” leaves no space for deliberative judgments that transcend the technical and legal determinations already written into the soldier’s view of the scene. (shrink)

Introduction -- The ethics of care and global politics -- Rethinking human security -- 'Women's work' : the global care and sex economies -- Humanitarian intervention and global security governance -- Peacebuilding and paternalism : reading care through postcolonialism -- Health and human security : gender, care and HIV/AIDS -- Gender, care, and the ethics of environmental security -- Conclusion. Security through care.

Unlike human soldiers, autonomous weapons systems are unaffected by psychological factors that would cause them to act outside the chain of command. This is a compelling moral justification for their development and eventual deployment in war. To achieve this level of sophistication, the software that runs AWS will have to first solve two problems: the frame problem and the representation problem. Solutions to these problems will inevitably involve complex software. Complex software will create security risks and will make AWS (...) critically vulnerable to hacking. I claim that the political and tactical consequences of hacked AWS far outweigh the purported advantages of AWS not being affected by psychological factors and always following orders. Therefore, one of the moral justifications for the deployment of AWS is undermined. (shrink)

In this paper, we critically interrogate the benefits of an interdisciplinary and theoretically diverse dialogue between ‘local food’ and ‘alternative food networks’ and outline how this dialogue might be enriched by a closer engagement with discourses of food sovereignty and the politics of scale. In arguing for a shift towards a greater emphasis on food sovereignty, we contend that contemporary discourses of food security are inadequate for the ongoing task of ensuring a just and sustainable economy of food. Further, (...) rather than treating the local and the global as ontologically given categories around which to contest the politics of food, it is our contention that recognising the socio-spatial aspects of the politics of scale has the potential to reinvigorate discourses of food security, food sovereignty and AFNs. Understanding scale as both fixed to a degree as well as contingent and dynamic has implications for an understanding of the role of food systems, for how the rescaled state privileges certain food systems and the possibilities for resistance through ‘jumping scale’ and food utopias. All of these aspects are significant if we are to fully comprehend and contest the challenges of envisioning and enacting real utopias of food sovereignty. (shrink)

I argue for an account of the vulnerability of trust, as a product of our need for secure social attachments to individuals and to a group. This account seeks to explain why it is true that, when we trust or distrust someone, we are susceptible to being betrayed by them, rather than merely disappointed or frustrated in our goals. What we are concerned about in matters of trust is, at the basic level, whether we matter, in a non-instrumental way, to (...) that individual, or to the group of which they are a member. We have this concern as a result of a drive to form secure social attachments. This makes us vulnerable in the characteristic way of being susceptible to betrayal, because how the other acts in such matters can demonstrate our lack of worth to them, or to the group, thereby threatening the security of our attachment, and eliciting the reactive attitudes characteristic of betrayal. (shrink)

Guns occupy a major—sometimes terrible—place in contemporary American life. Do Americans have not only a legal right, but also a moral right, to own handguns? After introducing the topic, this paper examines what a moral right to private handgun ownership would amount to. It then elucidates the logical structure of the strongest argument in favor of such a right, an argument that appeals to physical security, before assessing its cogency and identifying two questionable assumptions. In light of persisting reasonable (...) disagreement about the argument’s soundness, the paper identifies two gun control measures—demonstrated need for a gun as a condition of eligibility and the requirement to pass a rigorous gun safety course—that reasonable disputants on both sides of the issue have principled reasons to accept. The paper also advances the thesis that, if anyone has an undefeated moral right to own handguns, it is precisely those individuals who have a special need and demonstrate the relevant safety-related competence. (shrink)

José Jorge Mendoza argues that the difficulty with resolving the issue of immigration is primarily a conflict over competing moral and political principles and is, at its core, a problem of philosophy. This book brings into dialogue various contemporary philosophical texts that deal with immigration to provide some normative guidance to immigration policy and reform.

In this paper, we present a new account of teleological reasons, i.e. reasons to perform a particular action because of the outcomes it promotes. Our account gives the desired verdict in a number of difficult cases, including cases of overdetermination and non-threshold cases like Parfit’s famous _Drops of water._ The key to our account is to look more closely at the metaphysics of causation. According to Touborg (_The dual nature of causation_, 2018), it is a necessary condition for causation that (...) a cause increases the security of its effect. Building on this idea, we suggest, roughly, that you have a teleological reason to act in a certain way when doing so increases the security of some good outcome. This represents a middle way between the proposal that you have a reason to act in a certain way just in case this _would_ cause a good outcome and the proposal that you have a reason to act in a certain way just in case this _could_ cause a good outcome. (shrink)

Biometric technology was once the purview of security, with face recognition and fingerprint scans used for identification and law enforcement. This is no longer the case; biometrics is increasingly used for commercial and civil applications. Due to the widespread diffusion of biometrics, it is important to address the ethical issues inherent to the development and deployment of the technology. This article explores the burgeoning research on biometrics for non-security purposes and the ethical implications for organizations. This will be (...) achieved by reviewing the literature on biometrics and business ethics and drawing from disciplines such as computer ethics to inform a more robust discussion of key themes. Although there are many ethical concerns, privacy is the key issue, with associated themes. These include definitions of privacy, the privacy paradox, informed consent, regulatory frameworks and guidelines, and discrimination. Despite the proliferation of biometric technology, there is little empirical research on applied biometrics and business ethics. As such, there are several avenues for research to improve understanding of the ethical implications of using this technology. (shrink)

This article presents a conceptual investigation into the value impacts and relations of algorithms in the domain of justice and security. As a conceptual investigation, it represents one step in a value sensitive design based methodology. Here, we explicate and analyse the expression of values of accuracy, privacy, fairness and equality, property and ownership, and accountability and transparency in this context. We find that values are sensitive to disvalue if algorithms are designed, implemented or deployed inappropriately or without sufficient (...) consideration for their value impacts, potentially resulting in problems including discrimination and constrained autonomy. Furthermore, we outline a framework of conceptual relations of values indicated by our analysis, and potential value tensions in their implementation and deployment with a view towards supporting future research, and supporting the value sensitive design of algorithms in justice and security. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the socio-cultural threats to the information security of Russian citizens associated with ChatGPT technologies (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, a machine-generated text response generator simulating a dialogue). The object of research − evaluation of the ratio of advantages and threats of generative language models based on "machine learning" in modern (2021-2023) scientific literature (journals HAC K1, K2 and Scopus Q1, Q2). The scientific novelty of the research lies in the culturological approach to the analysis (...) of threats to the security of Russian citizens associated with the use of ChatGPT as one of the technologies of "artificial intelligence". The formulation of the problem of the classical Turing test "to distinguish a person from a machine" is characterized as a scholastic abstraction, instead a more correct and productive approach is proposed: a socio-cultural assessment of the value (based on cultural axiology) of new computer technologies. The starting point of the analysis is the determination of socio-cultural value (or, conversely, damage) as a result of the use of generative language models based on machine learning. Further, the contribution and responsibility of various socio-cultural subjects of its creation and application are revealed − user, creator and developer. The result of the application of the proposed approach is the deconstruction of the discourse of the "philosophy of artificial intelligence" in terms of uncritical translation of developer declarations intended for marketing and attracting financing. Hypertrophied perception, precariously balancing on the edge of utopia and dystopia, is assessed as a risk of incorrect identification and ranking of threats to information security. Assumptions about the hypothetical "superweapon of psychological warfare" mask modern incidents of cross-border leakage of confidential data, the risks of being held accountable for publishing deliberately false information and illegal content as a result of using ChatGPT. National security measures are recommended, including restrictive measures and increasing the general civil culture of information security of users, as well as the orientation of domestic developments of solutions of this type on traditional values, socio-cultural identity and interests of Russian citizens. (shrink)

The concept of food sovereignty is primarily taken as an alternative to the prevailing neoliberal food security model. However, the approach has hitherto not received adequate attention from policy makers. This could be because the discourse is marked by controversies and contradictions, particularly regarding its ability to address the challenges of feeding a rapidly growing global population. In response to these criticisms, this paper argues that the principles of food sovereignty, such as democratic and transparent food systems, agroecology, and (...) local market prioritization, should be fundamental pillars for achieving sustainable food security. It acknowledges that neither food sovereignty nor food security models alone can guarantee long-term food security, thus advocating for a blended approach that integrates these perspectives into a complex and interconnected system. This paper makes three significant contributions to the existing literature. Firstly, it emphasizes that food sovereignty should be seen as an integral component of transforming food systems towards sustainability, rather than a complete departure from neoliberal food systems. Secondly, it highlights the importance of adopting a multi-scalar approach, where decisions and policies for transforming food systems are context-specific and tailored to local circumstances. Lastly, the paper recognizes the necessity of institutional transformations that involve nation-states, social movements, and civil society organizations as key actors in the process of food system transformation. By reframing the discussion on food sovereignty and its relationship with food security, this paper provides insights into how these concepts can be mutually reinforcing, leading to more sustainable and equitable food systems. (shrink)

This study explored the global cyberspace security issues, with the purpose of breaking the stereotype of people’s cognition of cyberspace problems, which reflects the relationship between interdependence and association. Based on the Apriori algorithm in association rules, a total of 181 strong rules were mined from 40 target websites and 56,096 web pages were associated with global cyberspace security. Moreover, this study analyzed support, confidence, promotion, leverage, and reliability to achieve comprehensive coverage of data. A total of 15,661 (...) sites mentioned cyberspace security-related words from the total sample of 22,493 professional websites, accounting for 69.6%, while only 735 sites mentioned cyberspace security-related words from the total sample of 33,603 non-professional sites, accounting for 2%. Due to restrictions of language, the number of samples of target professional websites and non-target websites is limited. Meanwhile, the number of selections of strong rules is not satisfactory. Nowadays, the cores of global cyberspace security issues include internet sovereignty, cyberspace security, cyber attack, cyber crime, data leakage, and data protection. (shrink)

In 1945–46, representatives of the U.S. government made similar discoveries in both Germany and Japan, unearthing evidence of unethical experiments on human beings that could be viewed as war crimes. The outcomes in the two defeated nations, however, were strikingly different. In Germany, the United States, influenced by the Canadian physician John Thompson, played a key role in bringing Nazi physicians to trial and publicizing their misdeeds. In Japan, the United States played an equally key role in concealing information about (...) the biological warfare experiments and in securing immunity from prosecution for the perpetrators. The greater force of appeals to national security and wartime exigency help to explain these different outcomes. (shrink)

Food systems are being affected by multiple shocks related to climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical events. Food prices and food insecurity are rising globally as a result, raising questions about the effective governance of food security during shocks. This paper critically examines the governance of food security in Melbourne, Australia during a major food system shock, the COVID-19 pandemic. It draws on document analysis and 34 stakeholder interviews with 41 participants from government, industry and civil society (...) between May 2020 and March 2021. The paper examines the role of these actors in governance mechanisms for two important aspects of food system governance during the COVID-19 pandemic, continuity of food supply and delivery of emergency food relief. Clark et al.’s ( 2021 ) “governance engagement continuum” is used to show how civil society groups were excluded from these formal governance mechanisms, instead establishing their own spaces of “self-governance”. The resilience aims associated with these governance mechanisms are also analyzed using Zurek et al.’s ( 2022 ) “three R’s” (robustness, recovery and reorientation) framework. Our study highlights the significant role of food industry actors in the continuity of food supply and delivery of emergency food relief, and it shows the vulnerabilities of emergency food relief that depends on industry food “surpluses” as a model for addressing food insecurity during food system shocks. We conclude that greater government leadership is needed in the governance of food security during food system shocks, and in implementation of legislative and policy approaches that are grounded in the human right to food. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in medicine are gradually changing biomedical research and patient care. High expectations and promises from novel AI applications aiming to positively impact society raise new ethical considerations for patients and caregivers who use these technologies. Based on a qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews and focus groups with healthcare professionals (HCPs), patients, and family members of patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD), the present study investigates participant views on the comparative benefits and problems of using human versus (...) AI predictive computer vision health monitoring, as well as participants’ ethical concerns regarding these technologies. Participants presumed that AI monitoring would enhance information sharing and treatment, but voiced concerns about data ownership, data protection, commercialization of patient data, and privacy at home. They highlighted that privacy issues at home and data security issues are often linked and should be investigated together. Findings may help technologists, HCPs, and policymakers determine how to incorporate stakeholders’ intersecting but divergent concerns into developing and implementing AI PD monitoring tools. (shrink)

As global governance institutions proliferate and become more powerful, their legitimacy is subject to ever sharper scrutiny. Yet what legitimacy means in this context and how it is to be ascertained are often unclear. In a previous paper in this journal, we offered a general account of the legitimacy of such institutions and a set of standards for determining when they are legitimate. In this paper we focus on the legitimacy of the UN Security Council as an institution for (...) making decisions concerning the use of military force across state borders. The context for this topic has changed over the last decade as a result of the ongoing development of the responsibility to protect (RtoP) doctrine and extensive discussions about it in the United Nations. Yet the mostly widely accepted proposals for RtoP still require Security Council authorization for forceful intervention, and strictly limit the conditions under which such intervention may take place. (shrink)

Recent research into climate shocks and what this means for the on-farm production of food revealed mixed and unanticipated results. Whilst the research was triggered by a series of catastrophic, climate related disruptions, Australian beef producers interviewed for the study downplayed the immediate and direct impacts of climate shocks. When considering the changing nature of production under shifting climatic conditions, producers offered a commentary on the digital technology and data which interconnected with climate solutions deriving from both on and off (...) the farm. Perceptions of digital technologies were mixed. Some viewpoints outlined how data driven climate solutions supported on farm planning and decision making, helping to manage climate risks and shocks. However, alongside these narratives, concerns were raised about satellite-based sustainability surveillance and their implications for producer agency. These concerns include the data-informed actions of non-farming third parties, such as bank loan call-ins for properties perceived to be a climate risk, remote surveillance of ground cover, and the commercial re-appraisal of pastoral lands as carbon sinks. Digital solutions to climate shocks thus emerge as inherently ambivalent, a response to shocks and a potential catalyst for renewed crisis. Drawing upon the theoretical lens of relationality, we argue that digital data are increasingly entangled with other material and non-material elements that may disrupt and/or reconfigure the management of farming and with that, the future security of food production. In some instances, data-based solutions to climate risks and shocks present even greater risks to producer agency than climate risks and shocks themselves. (shrink)

Development projects in Sub-Saharan Africa propose to alleviate hunger in rural areas by introducing new agricultural practices and technologies, yet there is limited empirical evidence of how an agricultural intervention can lead farming households to transition to food security. Research on food security pathways considers agricultural interventions that increase farmers’ income to be particularly effective for reducing food insecurity. Consistent with this stance, Malawian agricultural policy aims to address hunger by encouraging smallholder farmers to intensify and commercialize maize (...) production. This paper explores if smallholders’ market and livelihood orientations do indeed lead them to favor an income pathway to food security. Qualitative analysis of 60 smallholder farmer interviews in Malawi found that, upon achieving improvements in production yields and diversity, rather than commercialize, many farmers re-organized their production and consumption to reduce market dependency. Farmers deployed this strategy to increase their food security, explaining that the choice to self-provision food and farming inputs was both an expression of farming identity and a lived understanding of their marginal position in commodity markets. The author finds that, in failing to consider how production relations affect food access, scholarship inadequately theorizes farm-level food security transitions and reproduces discursive framings of hunger. Food sovereignty narratives more accurately captured what mattered for Malawian smallholders’ food security, suggesting that engagement with this concept could improve scientific understandings of food security transitions. (shrink)

According to one influential response to evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism, debunking arguments fail to undermine our moral beliefs because they fail to imply that those beliefs are insensitive or unsafe. The position that information about the explanatory history of our belief must imply that our beliefs are insensitive or unsafe in order to undermine those beliefs has been dubbed “Modal Security”, and I therefore label this style of response to debunking arguments the “modal security response”. An (...) alternative position, that our beliefs can be defeated if we accept those beliefs are not explained by the relevant facts, I call “explanationism”. In this article, I argue against Modal Security in favour of explanationism. First, I present two examples from the literature that appear to support explanationism, and I argue that these examples imply that the modal security response is fundamentally misguided about the nature of epistemic defeat. I then consider a recent response from Justin Clarke-Doane and Dan Baras, who claim that examples of this kind fail because they are either incoherent or involve a failure of modal security. I argue that, due to their position on the failure of evolutionary debunking arguments, Clarke Doane and Dan Baras are committed to the existence of coherent, sufficiently simple examples that can help us arbitrate between explanationism and modal security. I then construct such an example and argue that it clearly indicates that we should reject Modal Security in favour of explanationism. This implies the modal security response to debunking arguments fails. (shrink)

This introduction to the special issue of the same title sets out the context for a critical examination of contemporary developments in sociotechnical systems deployed in the name of security. Our focus is on technologies of tracking, with their claims to enable the identification of those who comprise legitimate targets for the use of violent force. Taking these claims as deeply problematic, we join a growing body of scholarship on the technopolitical logics that underpin an increasingly violent landscape of (...) institutions, infrastructures, and actions, promising protection to some but arguably contributing to our collective insecurity. We examine the asymmetric distributions of sociotechnologies of security; their deadly and injurious effects; and the legal, ethical, and moral questions that haunt their operations. (shrink)

This study investigated the impact of maternal reflective functioning (RF) and attachment security on children’s mentalization. The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) was administered to mothers in a sample of 41 mother–preadolescent dyads. AAI transcripts were rated in terms of the Berkeley AAI System ( Main and Goldwyn, 1998 ) and the Reflective Functioning Scale (RFS; Fonagy et al., 1998 ). Preadolescent mentalization was assessed using a semi-structured interview adapted from O’Connor and Hirsch (1999) and also by analyzing mental-state talk (...) produced during an autobiographical interview. Relationships between maternal RF and children’s mentalization were analyzed, with consideration given to the different RFS markers and references to positive, negative, and mixed-ambivalent mental states. Children’s mentalization was positively correlated with the mother’s RF, particularly the mother’s ability to mentalize negative or mixed-ambivalent mental states. No significant differences in mentalization were observed between children of secure and insecure mothers. (shrink)

In May 2021, when the Delta variant of SARS-CoV2 was wreaking havoc in India, the Australian Federal Government banned its citizens and residents who were there from coming back to Australia for 14 days on penalty of fines or imprisonment. These measures were justified on the grounds of protecting the broader Australian public from potentially importing the Delta strain, which officials feared would then seed a local outbreak. Those Australians stranded in India, and their families and communities back home, claimed (...) that they were abandoned by Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government. This case—along with other barriers used as part of border control measures in the name of public health—raises the following question: is it ever morally permissible for a state to ban its citizens and residents from entering their own country during a pandemic? I conclude that it’s impermissible. I argue that persons have a right of entry that should be understood as a security right. This security right should be non-derogable because it’s a foundational good that is necessary for life-planning purposes. Moreover, it is a right that people should be able to rely upon absolutely, even during pandemics. At the very least, should someone believe that there are rare exceptions to the right of entry on public health grounds, governments have a duty—grounded in the principle of reciprocity—to support those who are temporarily denied entry. In the case of Australians stranded in India, I will argue that the Australian Federal Government failed on all accounts. (shrink)

We show how more general knowledge can be built in information security, by the building of knowledge of mechanism clusters, some of which are multifield. By doing this, we address in a novel way the longstanding philosophical problem of how, if at all, we come to have knowledge that is in any way general, when we seem to be confined to particular experiences. We also address the issue of building knowledge of mechanisms by studying an area that is new (...) to the mechanisms literature: the methods of what we shall call mechanism discovery in information security. This domain offers a fascinating novel constellation of challenges for building more general knowledge. Specifically, the building of stable communicable mechanistic knowledge is impeded by the inherent changeability of software, which is deployed by malicious actors constantly changing how their software attacks, and also by an ineliminable secrecy concerning the details of attacks not just by attackers, but also by information security defenders as they protect their methods from both attackers and commercial competitors. We draw out ideas from the work of the mechanists Darden, Craver, and Glennan to yield an approach to how general knowledge of mechanisms can be painstakingly built. We then use three related examples of active research problems from information security to develop philosophical thinking about building general knowledge using mechanisms, and also apply this to develop insights for information security. We show that further study would be instructive both for practitioners and for philosophers. (shrink)

In order to correct the deficiencies of intrusion detection technology, the entire computer and network security system are needed to be more perfect. This work proposes an improved k-means algorithm and an improved Apriori algorithm applied in data mining technology to detect network intrusion and security maintenance. The classical KDDCUP99 dataset has been utilized in this work for performing the experimentation with the improved algorithms. The algorithm’s detection rate and false alarm rate are compared with the experimental data (...) before the improvement. The outcomes of proposed algorithms are analyzed in terms of various simulation parameters like average time, false alarm rate, absolute error as well as accuracy value. The results show that the improved algorithm advances the detection efficiency and accuracy using the designed detection model. The improved and tested detection model is then applied to a new intrusion detection system. After intrusion detection experiments, the experimental results show that the proposed system improves detection accuracy and reduces the false alarm rate. A significant improvement of 90.57% can be seen in detecting new attack type intrusion detection using the proposed algorithm. (shrink)

In this article, it is argued that the constitutive principles of Just War Theory and the jus ad bellum/jus in bello duality do not transfer all that well to national security intelligence activity...

We propose a multi-step evaluation schema designed to help procurement agencies and others to examine the ethical dimensions of autonomous systems to be applied in the security sector, including autonomous weapons systems.

This article takes the failure to grasp fully the paradigmatic case of European security after the Cold War as an example of how International Relations (IR) would benefit from reformulating not only its empirical research questions but also several of its central conceptual building blocks with the aid of Bourdieusian sociology. The separation between theory and practice and the overemphasis on military power and state actors blind IR from seeing the power struggles that reshaped European security. Instead, a (...) Bourdieusian reformulation adds new types of agency, focuses on the social production of forms of power, and stresses the processual rather than the substantive character of social reality. (shrink)

This paper theorizes that the effect of human rights violations on US economic aid is conditioned by the salience of US national security concerns. National security concerns will be more salient in situations where recipients contribute to maintaining US security and in temporal eras when the USA is perceived as being under increased external threat. As the relational and temporal salience of national security increases, any negative effect of human rights violations on US economic aid should (...) decrease. I test this hypothesis by examining US economic aid allocations to states from 1977 to 2005. The results show that the salience of national security concerns present in the US-recipient relationship does condition the relationship between human rights violations and US economic aid. There are also significant differences between different temporal eras of US foreign aid allocation. Future work should address how conflicts between interests and values in US foreign policy are negotiated. (shrink)

This article advances recent scholarship on energy security by arguing that the concept is best understood as a sociotechnical imaginary, a collective vision for a “good society” realized through technoscientific-oriented policies. Focusing on the 1952 Resources for Freedom report, the authors trace the genealogy of energy security, elucidating how it establishes a morality of efficiency that orients policy action under the guise of security toward the liberalizing of markets in resource states and a robust program of energy (...) research and development in the United States. This evidence challenges the pervasive historical anchoring of the concept in the 1970s and illustrates the importance of the genealogical approach for the emerging literature on energy and sociotechnical imaginaries. Exploring the genealogy of energy security also unpacks key social, political, and economic undercurrents that disrupt the seeming universality of the language of energy, leading the authors to question whether energy security discourse is appropriate for guiding policy action during ongoing global energy transitions. (shrink)

This paper presents a structured comparison of the social quality approach with the UNDP-led 'human development' approach and its sister work on 'human security'. Through clarification of their respective foci, roles and underlying theoretical and value assumptions, the paper suggests that partnership of the social quality approach with these 'human' approaches appears possible and relevant for each side.

This volume examines the ethical issues generated by recent developments in intelligence collection and offers a comprehensive analysis of the key legal, moral and social questions thereby raised. Intelligence officers, whether gatherers, analysts or some combination thereof, are operating in a sea of social, political, scientific and technological change. This book examines the new challenges faced by the intelligence community as a result of these changes. It looks not only at how governments employ spies as a tool of state and (...) how the ultimate outcomes are judged by their societies, but also at the mind-set of the spy. In so doing, this volume casts a rare light on an often ignored dimension of spying: the essential role of truth and how it is defined in an intelligence context. This book offers some insights into the workings of the intelligence community and aims to provide the first comprehensive and unifying analysis of the relevant moral, legal and social questions, with a view toward developing policy that may influence real-world decision making. The contributors analyse the ethics of spying across a broad canvas – historical, philosophical, moral and cultural – with chapters covering interrogation and torture, intelligence’s relation to war, remote killing, cyber surveillance, responsibility and governance. In the wake of the phenomena of WikiLeaks and the Edward Snowden revelations, the intelligence community has entered an unprecedented period of broad public scrutiny and scepticism, making this volume a timely contribution. This book will be of much interest to students of ethics, intelligence studies, security studies, foreign policy and IR in general. (shrink)

The emotional state of war-affected populations has become a central concern for international policy-makers in the last decade. Growing interest in war trauma is influenced by contemporary Anglo-American emotionology, or emotional norms, which tends to pathologize ordinary responses to distress, including anger related to survival strategies. The article critically analyses the ascendancy of a therapeutic security paradigm in international politics, which seeks to explain the prevailing political, economic and social conditions in terms of cycles of emotional dysfunctionalism. The article (...) contends that international therapeutic governance pathologizes waraffected populations as emotionally dysfunctional and problematizes their right to self-government, leading to extensive external intervention. However, international therapeutic governance may be detrimental to postwar recovery as well legitimizing a denial of self-government. (shrink)

The legitimacy of the military is frequently overlooked in standard accounts of jus ad bellum. Accordingly, this paper considers how the military should be organized. It proposes a normative conception of legitimacy – the ‘Moderate Instrumentalist Approach’ – that outlines the qualities that a military should possess. It then assesses the three leading ways of organizing the military according to this approach: the use of private military and security companies (PMSCs), a conscripted force and the all-volunteer force (AVF). The (...) paper argues that the AVF, despite some notable problems, is the most legitimate way of organizing the military. (shrink)

The private military industry has been growing rapidly since the end of the Cold War. The Morality of Private War uses normative political theory to assess the leading moral arguments for and against the use of private military and security companies.

This article explores the construction of extremism in media discourse, the factors driving specific constructions and the implications of these constructions for counterterrorism policy. We contend that extremism has predominantly and increasingly been framed as a security issue. This article explores the implications of this practice through the framework of securitisation. We measure the average intensity of security framing in 38,616 articles found in three major US newspapers, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, between (...) 20 January 1993 and 19 January 2017 comprising the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies, and look at factors influencing the shift in intensity over time. Through our analysis, we show that it is possible to return to a pre-9/11 discourse but that the confluence of real-world events and the strategic choices of political actors have so far prevented this from fully occurring. We then explore the effect of securitisation on public perceptions of the threat from terrorism, finding that increases in the intensity of security framing artificially increases the public’s worry about becoming a victim of terrorism. We conclude by discussing implications for the communication of counterterrorism policy and the requirements for an after, after 9/11 approach. (shrink)

The article presents a new view on the problem of educating the spiritual security of the personality from the positions of axiological, culturological, civilizational, systemic, and anthropological approaches, on which the research methodology is based. The article describes the basic concepts of research: spirituality, culture, spiritual awakening, spiritual security, and presents the author’s definition of the concept of spiritual security of the personality. The article describes the cultural ideals of coziness in different countries of the world, which (...) allowed us to highlight the features and prove the importance of leading a spiritual way of life, the essence of which is a person’s acquiring of a state of inner peace, coziness, security and which is accompanied by the achievement of pleasure from life. The principles of educating the spiritual security of the personality have been defined. They include the principle of spiritualization, the principle of cooperation, the principle of “live” dialogue based on spiritual and cultural values. The authors have identified the main threats to the spiritual security of the personality and described the ways to overcome them, among which special attention is paid to the importance of reviving the spiritual and cultural educational component, which will be the first step towards educating a positive personality with a human face, the humane, altruistic, creative personality focused on creation, not destruction. (shrink)

In Athens during the late Classical and Hellenistic periods, it was customary for a man who was borrowing a large sum of money to pledge some property as security for the repayment of his loan. To show that this property was legally encumbered, a flat slab of stone, called a horos, was set up, and an inscription, indicating the nature of the lien on the property, was inscribed on the horos. These horoi served to warn third parties that the (...) man who pledged the property as security was not free to sell it or otherwise alienate it until the loan was repaid. The terminology which is used on these horoi to indicate that the property has been pledged as security varies. On a relatively small number of horoi, only seven, the property is described as ‘lying under ’ for a debt, the amount of which may or may not be specified. The texts found on a far greater number of horoi, some 128 in all, use a different type of expression. On these horoi, the property is said to have been ‘sold on condition of release’ . The terminology used on the horoi to describe this kind of lien presents a striking contrast with that employed by the Attic orators: in their speeches we find the verbs ποκεσθαι and ποτιθναι when it is a question of pledging security for a loan, but never ππρασθαι with the addition of the prepositional phrase π λσει. (shrink)

We demonstrate that social capital is associated with positive food security outcomes, using survey data from 378 households in rural Uganda. We measured food security with the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale. For social capital, we measured cognitive and structural indicators, with principal components analysis used to identify key factors of the concept for logistic regression analysis. Households with bridging and linking social capital, characterized by membership in groups, access to information from external institutions, and observance of norms (...) in groups, tended to be more food secure. Households with cognitive social capital, characterized by observance of generalized norms and mutual trust, were also more food secure than others. However, we established that social capital is, by itself, insufficient. It needs to be complemented with human capital enhancement. We recommend that development interventions which focus on strengthening community associations and networks to enhance food security should support activities which enhance cognitive social capital and human capital skills. Such activities include mutual goal setting, trust building and clear communication among actors. Education efforts for community members, both formal and non-formal, should also be supported such that they potentially strengthen social capital to improve food security in rural Uganda. (shrink)

Avoiding severe impacts from anthropogenic climate change requires not only substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions but also further implementation of adaptation measures. In many regions with smallholder farming systems adaptation can help ensure food security despite significantly changing climatic conditions. However, the space for adaptation measures has limits. In this paper, we investigate hard and soft adaptation limits and discuss their relevance to food security in smallholder farming food systems. We argue that soft adaptation limits can be (...) defined by sufficiency levels of justice like basic needs, capabilities, human rights or levels of well-being. Depending on social, cultural, political and economic conditions different communities realize different sufficiency levels of justice. Furthermore, as normative claims of justice, these sufficiency levels not only allow the social, cultural and political and economic conditions of social systems to be described but also define entitlements. We show that for smallholder farming systems with low social and economic standards these entitlements might mean that soft adaptation limits can define entitlements to social and economic improvements despite transformational adaptation to changing climatic conditions. (shrink)