PATS

While it can be assumed that the security industry and organisations will increase their efforts to keep and to strengthen trust relations with citizens, the question however remains: how can one raise more awareness of social conflicts and privacy concerns among those public and private agencies that undermine privacy necessarily on a daily basis in their mission to provide security?

PATS follows an approach known as Constructive Technology Assessment (CTA). One central attempt of it is to broaden the design process of new technologies through dialogue between innovators and the public so that developments meet social needs and mismatches, wrong investments, and possible social conflicts can be minimized. The aim of PATS is to increase privacy awareness across various sectors, from firms to government agencies focussing especially on the development and use of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) and biometrics. On the basis of a socio-technical mapping the idea is to create security brand indicators that refer to the value of privacy. It is well known that neither laws nor other organizational practices can exclusively provide a reasonable level of protection for privacy today. There is some evidence that its protection may well be linked to higher levels of trust and that is a powerful motive for serious self-regulation. What is necessary is to build into the security agencies and actors itself a reflexive capacity that encourages more critical communication and awareness among the stakeholders.

The overall objective of PATS is to demonstrate how certain standards of privacy can become a brand label for security organisations on a voluntary but binding basis. Using more reflexive measures such as open expert interviews, dialogue work shops, expert evaluations/focus groups and two major conferences PATS seeks to initiate not only an informed but a constructive debate between stakeholders in order to enable rather proactive than reactive for future policies.