Old Threats, New Challenges: Transnational Organised Crime and Policing

Abstract

Security is crucial in the legitimacy and functioning of the State and it has always been so for the past centuries. Despite the progress and increasing importance of social rights, bureaucracy, institutions and ideologies, security keeps its key role in a political community which continues to seek order to exist. Politics and public action demands for permanent innovation to influence and peacefully transform and accommodate diverse kinds of needs and individual and collective interests. In such complex society some challenges emerge in a not so peaceful way and become security threats. The case of terrorism and transnational organized crime are perfect examples of threats that need to adapt to survive State interventions. This panel proposes an interdisciplinary examination to the new challenges that these old threats bring to security through a dual examination: a wider perspective that encompasses an international and European focus and a narrower approach that intends to enrich the debate with a national/Portuguese focus – a country often neglected from the political and security studies. Hence, it will firstly be analyzed the role of the State in the field of internal security; secondly, the public security policies in Portugal; thirdly, an overview on the political and normative European frameworks to prevent terrorist actions against civil aviation; and finally, the economic impact and motivation of security measures with the increasing reliance in biometrics which raise ethical challenges.