Information technologies and constructions of perpetrator identities

Abstract

The capacity of information technologies to identify and respond to perpetrators of mass violence creates an expectation that states should use these technologies to provide security to their citizens. One of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Report was that US intelligence agencies needed to make better use of the information they had on potential terrorists (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States 2004, 417). In the intervening years, the power of information technologies has increased, and so too have the claims about what these information technologies can do to identify the perpetrators of mass violence before such events occur. Show more