Critical Protection for the Network of Persons

The world is facing a future of sensored surveillance, filled with pervasive ultra-small connected devices, added to relatively larger ones already present in appliances and everyday technology today. Sensors will be bound to people as well as the environment, and people will provide much of the data that will compose the fundamental building blocks of a decisional infrastructure. Threats emanating from incompetence, unethical conduct, criminals, and nation states will put national security at increased risk because of new levels of potential harm to individual citizens as well as potential damage to physical infrastructure. A future that includes intimate electronic connections with a person’s body creates an imperative to secure a Network of Persons (NoP), rather than of things. Sensor driven collection of huge amounts of data from individuals can impact the fundamental meaning of citizenship, affect economic prosperity, and define personal identity, all in a world composed of dwindling nodes of mediation between humans and automated systems. Intimately connected technology is increasingly interweaving persons in ways that extend the importance and relevance of critical infrastructure protections to the person. The present disjointed and fragmented approaches of Europe and the United States exacerbate the problems and elevate the importance of reconsidering designations of critical infrastructure. A new designation of a Critical Network of Persons (CNoP) does not obviate or alleviate the risks associated with the technologies; rather, it begins to shift the burden of risk mitigation and protection away from those least capable, towards the state and its partners. This paper proposes critical infrastructure protection for life critical functions in the NoP and argues that because the person is the building block for this critical infrastructure protection, the government’s duty is qualitatively different from its duty to protect other critical infrastructures. Establishing a CNoP reorients the scope and focus to that of the citizen, the person—the building block of the nation. Ensuring the security at the individual level is imperative for maintaining national security for all.