Control Creep

Abstract

Reacting to the attacks on September 11th and subsequently, governments in both the USA and UK have identified a need to enhance the social control apparatus in order to protect citizens from forms of ‘asymmetric warfare’ conducted by terrorist groups. These attempts to reform the provision of security and control cannot be understood in isolation. They are connected to a deeply entrenched process of ‘control creep’, whereby the social control apparatus progressively expands and penetrates (or ‘creeps’) into different social arenas, in response to a set of inchoate fears about a sense of security in late-modernity.