Privacy and security as ideology

Abstract

Privacy and data protection are among the prime problems of the information society. The terms privacy and security promotes a particular ideology and uses the ethical recognition of the concepts to limit critical discourses. This article uses a critical approach in the tradition of critical theory and its developments in critical research in information systems (CRIS) to expose and overcome these discursive closures. The author begins with a review of the literature on privacy and security, which will support the contention that these are ethical concepts. The concept of ideology and critical research is discussed. This will lead to a critical discourse analysis of a text from a commercial software vendor, which will provide empirical evidence of the ideological use of the terms privacy and security