Securityism in Opposition to Privacy Protection in the Stage of Crime Detection; A Comparative Study of Iranian and American Laws

Securitism, as an intellectual point of view, makes it possible to maintain the order and security of the society through the strict control of the ruling powers and extensive intervention in the scope of individual freedoms and privacy of people, and does not attend to endogenous security and relying on the civil society. The result of securityism in the criminal justice system, especially in the crime detection stage, is the granting of wide powers to officers and investigation authorities, in such a way that maintaining security is preferred over individual freedoms and privacy. Recruiting a descriptive-analytical design and analyzing the laws and regulations and the judicial procedures of Iran and the United States in relation to the challenges of security and privacy of individuals in the stage of crime detection, it was revealed that the criminal justice system of Iran is transitioning from the traditional security-oriented system to the citizen-oriented justice system. This transition period can be clearly seen in the Criminal Procedure Law approved in 2014. On the other hand, despite the long history of the United States in protecting privacy, with the events of September 11, 2001, relying on laws such as the Patriot Act and under the pretext of ensuring the security of society, the police and the judicial system of the country considerably violated citizens' privacy; to the extent that this approach has caught the American criminal justice system in the vortex of a kind of new securityism.