Identity theft vulnerability
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480609102877 |
| Author | Torin Monahan |
| Date | 01 May 2009 |
| Published date | 01 May 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Identity theft vulnerability
Neoliberal governance through crime construction
TORIN MONAHAN
Vanderbilt University, USA
Abstract
Under the rubric of neoliberalism, the governance of populations
occurs through new technologies and techniques of social control.
Contemporary neoliberal discourses of crime control, in particular,
normalize conditions of individual insecurity and responsibility while
diverting attention away from root causes of social problems. The
phenomenon of identity theft offers a generative case study for
theorizing the ramifications of neoliberalism as a mode of crime
control. The field is marked by the production of consumer-citizen
subjects, who embrace self-discipline to mitigate crime threats; the
transformation of mundane criminal acts into national security
threats; the development of flexible accumulation skills, on the part
of identity thieves, to compensate for the decline in state support
for social reproduction; and the maintenance of insecure
information infrastructures, which simultaneously increase the
profitability of industry and vulnerability of the public.
Key Words
governance •identity theft •neoliberalism •security •social control
•technology
Contemporary insecurity now extends well beyond individual bodies, national
borders and material infrastructures. It includes, as well, the electronic data
required for people to function in societies. Identity theft, which is perceived as
being one of the greatest threats to people’s critical data, now represents the
largest category of fraud-related complaints in the United States. According to
Theoretical Criminology
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Vol. 13(2): 155–176; 1362–4806
DOI: 10.1177/1362480609102877
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the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), roughly 9 million US adults are victims
of identity theft each year (Federal Trade Commission, 2008). These include
cases of credit card theft, illegal wire transfers, Internet scams, phone and utili-
ties fraud and theft of business data. Police agencies haveresponded to this new
crime threat by launching coordinatedpublic education programs to teach con-
sumers to ‘protect themselves’ better. Some police recommendations include
buying paper shredders for home use, shielding the keypad when using an
ATM, not disclosing any personal information over the telephone or the
Internet and setting up network ‘firewalls’ to safeguard electronic data. Indeed,
the general law-enforcement response to this rapidly growing crime is to push
responsibility onto individuals (or victims) to protect themselves. While self-
protection is crucially important within the current climate of enhanced data
vulnerability, this approach neglects the political and economic forces and sys-
temic vulnerabilities that may be contributing to identity theft in the first place.
This article analyzes identity theft as a generative case study for theorizing
the ramifications of neoliberalism as a mode of crime control. Neoliberalism
has been explained as a set of policies, systems and ideologies that enforce
and justify: state withdrawal from the provision of social welfare (Bourdieu,
1998; Katz, 2006); privatization of public services, spaces and resources
(Graham and Marvin, 2001; Giroux, 2004; Monahan, 2005); increasingly
disciplinary control and surveillance of ‘risky’ populations (Garland, 2001;
Wacquant, 2001; Haggerty, 2004a; O’Malley, 2004; Simon, 2006); and the
rescripting of citizen rights as consumer choices, such that citizens are obli-
gated to consume in order to meet their basic needs or solve social problems
(Rose, 1999; Comaroff and Comaroff, 2000; Duggan, 2003; W. Brown,
2006; Fisher, 2007). Threats of identity theft and related discourses of indi-
vidual responsibility indicate a neoliberal relationship among individuals,
public institutions and private industries. The mythology of identity theft
actively structures new relations of social control, whereby individuals adopt
responsibility for certain police and social service functions of the State while
deeper conditions of vulnerability and insecurity remain unaddressed.
Industry profits underpin the logics of social control that emerge. Moral
panics surrounding identity theft propel concerned individuals toward con-
sumption alternatives to state regulation—seen with the purchase of tech-
nological fixes such as paper shredders or with the purchase of services such
as credit-monitoring alerts. Self-discipline and consumption merge neatly as
risk-management techniques that fuel security industries but do not alter
the structural conditions of identity theft. All the while, economic vulnera-
bilities caused by post-industrialization and reduced social welfare create an
ecology within which identity theft thrives. Finally, relaxed regulations for
data protection increase industry stockpiling and trading of personal data,
thus facilitating capital accumulation and increasing data vulnerability.
Identity theft can be understood, at least initially, as a set of practices for
stealing someone’s personal information. This is usually done for the sake of
receiving profit from a third party, whichis a practice known as ‘financialiden-
tity theft’, but other forms include ‘criminal identity theft’, where one provides
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