Security as public and private good: commercial satellite analysis

Security Public or Private

Critical Analysis of article "Security:Public or Private Good-Analysis using commercial satellite"

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Critical Analysis of article "Security: Public or Private Good-Analysis using commercial satellite"

Issue been Addressed

The article "Security: Public or Private Good-Analysis using commercial satellite" addresses the issue of security and how with the emergence of commercial satellite the security has become a private as well as public good. The author is of the view that security in past has been a public good and it was sole responsibility of government but now it has become a common responsibility of government, private or a club where different parties become partners with government and this partnership has implications for market.

Introduction

The introduction of the article is well established. The author introduced the research topic by first defining security and then highlighting how the definition of security has changed as compared to past concept security as "military focus and state vs. state." This notion changed by 1980s from military to non-military issues.

The author described the objective of the study by stating that using public goods theory the issue of security has been discussed by using case of commercial satellite.

Public Goods Theory

In this section the author has conducted debate on what can be a public good and what a private good is and explained it using public goods theory. The author has discussed the notion that it is difficult to separately identify public and private goods as "All goods are more or less private or public" (p.7). Based on this the author concluded that security cannot be put into one specific category. Following the discussion on publicans and privateers of security the author described the main question of the article as should the satellite be compromised and communications is interrupted, the U.S. government or emergency preparedness may be impacted along with the satellite owner-operators?

Baldwin's Seven Questions

In this section the author discussed the issue of security and commercial networks from the perspective of seven questions developed by Baldwin. These seven questions are;

Security for Whom

The author has supported his concept of merging security as both public and private responsibility with the argument that basically the security is for the private company itself but services like voice, data, bandwidth and video services are also being provided for government operations. These also include the "communications used for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq" (p.9). Thus the question of who covers private companies, government and other countries that are benefiting from commercial networks. The author thus proved that "at any moment in time, security has characteristics of both private and club goods." (p. 10)

Security of which Values

Here the author discusses the point for different stakeholders' security has different values and preference level. Companies providing commercial networks and satellite services do this for profit so security may not be the priority for them. Also infrastructure and financial assets are the on-orbit sources, company can prefer one on the other. So the provision of security can be different depending on the values company places.

How much security?

Here again the author discusses the state or government can demand higher or lower level of security with no demand of profit from it while company can respond to by either metering up or down the security measurement taken to this demand

At what cost?

Security always needs a cost which may be sacrifice of other goals. The firms providing commercial networks focus on orbit protection just like physical infrastructure is protected. To make the networks secure member have to pay a fee to join SDA network which in return will provide security to their network in the orbit.

In what time period?

Here again different type of security involve different time period. For example terrorism threats involve less time period and they need protection of infrastructure and personnel. While natural disaster do not usually have exact time period thus there is usually very little prior warning for private companies. "Satellites can be in space and operational for decades, but the firms need to consider losses and plan for replenishment -- not only for cyclical replacement, but catastrophic failures, as well" (p. 13)

Conclusion

Concluding the discussion the author discussed that security now days has become an individual liability rather than collective because of terrorism and transnational crimes. So now there is a need to redefine it as not only a public good but taking it both as public and private good. Though security in past has been sole duty of government yet in the past and present as well the provision of security services have been in the hand of private companies.

In brief the article is well researched and has been presented in appropriate manner. The author debated the issue in an argumentative manner and tried to prove that security is not only the public concern but is combined responsibility of public and private companies as private companies are also involved in it. Author supported the hypothesis with good references but some portions could be improved further and need discussion in detail.