LEGAL ISSUES

Legal issues related to Private Security Management

Legal issues related to Private Security Management

Introduction

The new legal doctrine of security law and law on security technology recognizes security as a third fundamental factor besides matter and energy. This concept realizes that modern security technology alters the characteristics of security, especially by strengthening its importance and by treating it as an active factor that works without human intervention in automatic processing systems. In this new approach, it is obvious that the legal evaluation of corporeal and incorporeal (security) objects differs considerably. Security, being an intangible and an entity that can be possessed, shared and reproduced by many, is not capable of being property as most corporeal objects do. Unlike corporeal objects, which are more exclusively attributed to certain persons, security is rather a public good. As such it must principally flow freely in a free society.

Background

This basic principle of free flow of security is essential for the economic and political system, as indispensable for the government=s accountability and the maintenance of a democratic order. A second difference between the legal regime of tangibles and intangibles is that the protection of security has not only to consider the economic interests of its proprietor or holder, but at the same time must preserve the interests of those, who are concerned with the contents of security - an aspect resulting in new issues of privacy protection. A third difference originates from the vulnerability of personnel for manipulation, interception and erasure - proprieties that constitute a major concern of computer security, and the criminal law provisions on computer crime. (Helen Caterson 2001 Pp. 55)

In most countries, the disclosure of government documents is largely discretionary. Government agencies, at both the central and the local level, are rarely forthcoming with security unless it is in their interest. There are no general laws that provided a mechanism for public access. Generally, access to government security can be defined as the availability for inspection or coping of both records and recordings, possessed or controlled by a public authority. This mechanism came, for the first time in history, in the eighteenth century Sweden with the passage of the Act on Freedom of the Press (1766). After 1945 this regulatory approach was followed in other Scandinavian countries, in the United States (since 1996, when the Freedom of Security Act was enacted), and in several other countries. Among these are Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Some other countries have constitutional clauses relating to a right of access, but not always transformative legislation1. The route by which the promotion of the rights of access to official security has become a strong political issue is varied. Initially, the public=s right to government security had been found to be closely related to the concept of human rights. Because of its importance for democratic society, the public=s right to security was even acknowledged to constitute a third generation of human rights, after the civil and political rights of the eighteenth century, and the ...