Labour and Democracy Hub and the Research Group Labour, democracy and governance at the Work Research Institute AFI, OsloMet, invites you to an afternoon workshop where we will interrogate the logic behind contemporary security screening regimes in Belgium and Norway – from security clearances to background checks.
The current tense geopolitical situation has spurred a revival and further evolution of Cold War tropes, fears and security management strategies – albeit, under radically changed conditions of a hyperconnected world, globalized markets and internationally mobile workforce. Join us to explore what this means for safeguarding national security, how insider risk is sought managed, and how the proliferation of security screenings may impact the future workforce and labour market.
This event is part of the INSIDER project.
Agenda
13:00 - 13:10 Welcome – Tereza Østbø Kuldova, OsloMet
13:10 - 13:40 Proliferation of Security Screenings in a Globalized World – Wauter Van Laethem
In recent decades, the number of security screenings in Belgium has increased exponentially. More and more public and private functions, permits, access, licenses, and so on are subject to prior screening and permanent monitoring. While these ‘permits’ previously concerned mainly Belgians residing in Belgium, today a growing number of cases involve a ‘foreign component.’ This presentation will discuss the particular questions this situation raises and the specific problems it posed for screenings that are essentially aimed at protecting ‘national security’.
13:40 - 14:10 Unstructured Professional Judgement vs. Science-based Methodology: The Qualification Process of Individuals by Intelligence Agencies – Chloé Thomas
The presentation will focus on the methodologies used by intelligences services to qualify individuals as persons of interest or as threats. Based on recent investigations by the Belgian intelligence oversight committee, the qualification and individual threat assessment processes will be discussed against the background of the risk-based approach guiding contemporary Western security policies.
14:10 - 14:20 Short Break
14:20 - 14:50 Geopolitics and the Securitization of Norwegian Workplaces: From the Security Clearance Regime to the Propagation of the ‘Intelligence Logic’ – Tereza Østbø Kuldova
Turning to the Norwegian context, this presentation will offer a brief introduction to the current security clearance regime under the Security Act (2018), while focusing predominantly on the proliferation of new ‘best practices’ in personnel security (from background checks to insider threat programs) heavily inspired by this security regime. These practices, increasingly normalized in Norwegian workplaces with reference to the current geopolitical situation and threat assessments, will be analysed in terms of the propagation of ‘intelligence logic’. The presentation will raise the question of what this means for the ‘Norwegian model’ of workplace relations and the remarkable rise of workplace bureaucratic politics of (national) security.
14:50 - 15:15 Moderated discussion – moderator: Jardar Østbø, Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies
15:15 - 15:30 Q&A
About the presenters
Wauter Van Laethem
Wauter Van Laethem is coordinator of the Legal Section of Standing Committee I, where he has been active for more then 20 years now. He began his career as a researcher at the Faculty of Law of KU Leuven, focusing on private investigation and surveillance. He subsequently worked for several years as an expert in the penitentiary administration and in the Office of the Minister of Justice. Wauter Van Laethem is the author of several legal publications on intelligence services in general and security screenings in particular.
Chloé Thomas
Chloé Thomas is a staff member of the Belgian Standing Intelligence Agencies Review Committee. She holds a PhD in Political Science from University Saint-Louis – Brussels. Her areas of expertise include counterterrorism, intelligence services and fusion centres. She is also a research associate at the Research Centre in Political Science from UCLouvain.
Tereza Østbø Kuldova
Tereza Østbø Kuldova is a Research Director at the Work Research Institute at OsloMet and a social anthropologist. She is the author of, among others, Compliance-Industrial Complex: The Operating System of a Pre-Crime Society (Palgrave, 2022), How Outlaws Win Friends and Influence People (Palgrave, 2019), co-author of Luxury and Corruption: Challenging the Anti-Corruption Consensus (Bristol University Press, 2024, with Jardar Østbø and Thomas Raymen), in addition to several edited volumes and articles. She is currently working on security compliance and management and algorithmic governance in Norwegian working life.
