The Need for an Informational Systems Approach to Security

Different senses of security and its related assumptions, methodologies and contexts are analyzed by first reviewing the liberalistic notions of security and trust, unveiling, on the one hand, the contradictions exhibited between discourse and practice; on the other hand, the historical strategy of concentration of power behind the liberalistic doctrines. The weakness, limits and implications of the liberalistic notions and methods on security and trust are inquired, and subsequently a genuine horizon of security as sustainable and general procurement of positive freedom is advocated. The CyberSyn project successfully implemented in Chile, but tragically and prematurely ending under the hard power in the 9/11 of 1973, serves as model of the posed system approach to security. However, the system model is actualized and completed with elements of the general theory of information in virtue of: the increased complexity of societal systems, its ultimate global dimension, its biospherical closure, the increase of information assets and processes, and some epistemological boundaries. These reasons also set the need of keeping – beside the system approach – a critical and ethical stance.