Security Glitches

The Failure of the Universal Camouflage Pattern and the Fantasy of “Identity Intelligence

Bibliographic Data

ID5338216
AuthorsRebecca A Adelman (Department of Media and Communication Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume43
Issue3
Pages431-463
Publication date2018-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0162243917724515
OpenAlexW2743131702
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited29

Focusing on the paradoxes revealed in the multibillion dollar mistake of the Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP) and the expansive ambit of a leaked National Security Agency briefing on its approach to "identity intelligence," this article analyzes security glitches arising from the state's application of mechanized logics to security and visibility. Presuming that a digital-looking pattern would be more deceptive than designs inspired by natural forms, in 2004, the US Army adopted a pixelated "digital" camouflage pattern, a print that rendered soldiers more, rather than less, visible in the field; it acknowledged this error in 2012. Two years later, "Identity Intelligence: Image Is Everything" visualized the episteme of National Security Agency surveillance with an illustration detailing hundreds of different types of data-biometric, biographic, and contextual-that the agency believes it could exploit to identify and monitor "targets of interest." These glitches originate in technofetishistic convictions about the nature of digital images and information, limited ways of imagining bodies and lives, and reductive understandings of complex relationships between power and perception. Together, they expose the paradoxes that arise as the state tries to extend its power over the body and the contingency of that power on the smallest of things

Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Art · Computer security · Field (mathematics · Identity (music · National security · Ontological security · Panopticon · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Security studies · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science · United States National Security Agency · Computer Science · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Global Security and Public Health · Law · Photography and Visual Culture