The Application of Critical Social Theory to National Security Research

High-tech solutions to national security, specifically Location-Based Services (LBS), are attracting increased attention from citizens as they become more pervasive. The connection between LBS and national security has been made in previous ICTstudies but has been limited to either the technological or the privacy impact of LBS. They have not addressed the use of LBS from a `lifeworld' perspective. To do this Habermas's Critical Social Theory (CST) is proposed as a method suitable for investigating the social impact of the technologies and identifying factors driving governments to adopt such technologies. The theory is applied to the national security context.