Blurring the dimensions of privacy? Law enforcement and trusted traveler programs

Risk has become a ubiquitous tool for security governance. This paper analyzes the ongoing shift in airport/aviation security from rule-based to risk-based screening. Seeking to explore the effects of data based passenger risk assessment on privacy through the collection and processing of personal data, it is argued that risk is likely to enroll passengers into a partly voluntary, partly enforced membership in trusted traveler schemes in order to enhance the database, thus enabling a more precise assessment of risk levels. In a disciplinary spatial setting, the once distinct privacy dimensions of citizen-state and consumer-market become increasingly blurred, as law enforcement authorities seek to exploit data that was originally obtained for commercial purposes to improve risk calculations.