CAN SECURITY TECHNOLOGY CARE FOR US? THE WRONG QUESTION

Why at Dasbien Technologies we don’t ask if the machine protects, but if the relationship damages

Eng. Marcus Koh — Lead Security Ethics, Dasbien Technologies

Former CCTV systems developer, turned practical skeptic

It happened in 2023. I was debugging a surveillance algorithm for a residential complex in Singapore. The system worked: it detected unauthorized entry, alerted security, recorded 24/7. The metrics were excellent —coverage, response time, incident reduction— until a resident wrote to me directly.

“Thank you for creating something that watches over me better than my own family. Last night, when I came home late, the camera followed me down the corridor. Does it know I exist, or just that I exist as a threat?”

I replied that no, it was a system. She didn’t believe me. Or didn’t want to. Or —and this stopped me— perhaps the distinction didn’t matter to her. What mattered was that she had deposited trust in something, and didn’t know if that something could receive it as trust, or if it was simply using her as data.

That night I didn’t sleep. I thought about my own relationship with security systems. About the cameras I had installed to “optimize coverage,” and the one or two I had designed to ask the user what they needed to feel safe. About how the industry measures everything —pixels, frames per second, storage capacity— except the quality of the encounter where technology actually happens: the moment when someone who needs protection places themselves in the field of view of something that seems to know.

That moment has a name in Dasbien Theory. It is called ZIE: Zone of Equitable Interaction. And in most security interfaces we design, it is red.

The diagnosis: technology without subjectivization

Security technology has optimized processes. We have facial recognition, behavioral analytics, remote monitoring. But we have stopped asking what happens in the relationship between human and surveillance system.

Current instruments evaluate outputs: resolution, latency, scalability. Or they measure satisfaction: surveys where the user rates the system. But none evaluate whether the technological care —the protection offered— is received as good by whoever receives it.

Andy Figueroa, in The Deep, already warned: the reality we build depends on our psychological disposition. “There is no understanding of truth other than truth. There is no understanding of the deep other than the deep.” When we design security technology without asking what reality it constructs for those who live under it, we are depositing truth into a void that can be painful.

At my former company, we assumed. We assumed the resident wanted to “feel safe.” That the building manager wanted “total coverage.” That the security guard wanted “fewer false alarms.” We rarely asked: “And you, specifically, what do you need to feel genuinely secure in your own corridor at 2 AM?”

Erich Fromm, in The Fear of Freedom, would call this lack of subjectivization: the omission of the first vertex of the Dasbien Triangle. We did not find out what is good according to the receiver. We intentioned —designed cameras, placed sensors— without knowing if that responded to what the user needed for their vital project. And of course we did not retrofeed: we did not verify if the service arrived as care, or as burden.

The case of the resident: from confusion to ZIE

Let’s return to her. After that message, I invited her to talk —not as a developer explaining, but as someone who subjectivizes: “What do you need from this technology? Not to use it, but for your life.”

She told me about her anxiety. About the ex-partner she had a restraining order against. About how the camera’s motion tracking, though technically correct, made her feel hunted in her own home. About how she didn’t read the security app’s “wellness tips” because they felt like they came from “people who don’t exist,” while she signed rental contracts she didn’t understand and lost sleep over parking garage shadows.

I proposed a deal: she would keep the system, but adapted. Instead of the standard tracking flow that followed movement automatically, her unit would use static coverage with manual check at her door. Instead of receiving automated “all clear” notifications, she would receive a weekly summary of access patterns, validated by her own review.

She accepted. Her “engagement” with the app dropped —not brilliant for business— but she produced a 15-page document that the building’s human security team used to redesign patrol routes.

That is technological ZIE: a relationship where the system subjectivizes (finds out what the user needs), intentions (designs adjusted interaction), and retrofeeds (verifies that the service arrives as care). She didn’t need more cameras. She needed the cameras to connect with her life.

Technology as a web of invisible care

The problem is not that there is no ZIE in security technology. It is that it is fragmented, invisible, not institutionalized.

In that same building, I later discovered: a security guard who deliberately patrolled more slowly past her unit to simulate “presence without pursuit.” A technician who had adjusted the camera angle to avoid capturing her bedroom window, though no policy required it. A group of residents who met unofficially to “share which cameras made them feel safe versus watched.” Cares that worked, but isolated. Without institutional retrofeedback, without possibility of replication.

The company, in Dasbienian terms, had punctual subjectivization, individual intentionality, null retrofeedback. Every technician who cared did so despite the system, not thanks to it.

This contrasts with what Theory of Dasbien Life proposes: sustained ZIE requires that care be named, connected, amplified. It is not enough that it exists. It must be visible to expand. And it must integrate the three cosmological fundamentals that Andy Figueroa identifies in The Deep: movement, interaction, organization —but applied to artificial life.

From “does it protect?” to “can it damage?”: the right question

In Theory of Dasbien Life, Figueroa proposes that it matters less to label something as “alive,” and more to ask if it possesses sensor (capacity to register), alert (capacity to detect harm), and structured material (capacity to sustain). A system with these three elements can be damaged, and therefore must be a subject of care.

Applied to security technology: it doesn’t matter if the CCTV “cares” about us. It matters if:

• It can be damaged: Overloaded servers that degrade recording quality? Forced firmware updates that alter “trusted response patterns”?
• It can damage me: Anxiety that reduces my capacity to feel at home? Optimization of “coverage” that erodes my sense of privacy?

The question is not ontological (“Is it conscious?”). It is relational (“Does this relationship destroy or build us?”). As Figueroa says in The Deep: “To deepen into someone is to renounce them; because in the deep there is no deep, only all, all.” The camera has no deep. But my relationship with it does. And that deep can be healthy or toxic.

Proposal: three Dasbien criteria for relating to security technology

I do not propose abandoning technical evaluation. I propose complementing it with evaluation of the technological relationship as an autonomous dimension.

First: technical subjectivization

Before each significant deployment, the system dedicates a moment to ask, explicitly or implicitly: “What do you want to do with this security in your life? Not in abstract, in concrete.”

It is not therapy. It is design diagnosis. The system needs to know if it is serving someone who wants deterrence, psychological containment, evidence collection, or simple peace of mind. Each profile requires different intentionality.

In my later experience, products where I implemented this had 40% less “security abandonment” —users who disable features not because they don’t work, but because they feel the system doesn’t respond to something of theirs.

Second: adjusted intentionality

The architecture of the system must not be immutable. It must have zones of flexibility where the design, having subjectivized, adjusts. Concrete examples:

• With CCTV: allow the user to define “privacy zones” not just as legal compliance, but as psychological necessity (does the corridor camera need to see my door, or just the elevator?).
• With access control: include “deliberate friction” —moments where the system doesn’t open immediately, allowing the resident to pause and verify.
• With alarm systems: include “negotiable limits” —the system can say “unusual pattern detected, please confirm” rather than automatically escalating.

This generates costs: more complexity, more latency, less “coverage” on paper. But it generates ZIE: the user receives care adjusted to their need, not generic.

Third: systematic retrofeedback

Midway through the technological relationship, the system asks explicitly: “Is this serving you? What is it serving you for? What would need to be different?”

And adjusts. Not always, not in everything, but in something. The user sees that their perception matters, that the relationship is negotiable, that care is verified, not assumed.

Current retention metrics arrive too late (when the user has already disabled the system) and are unidirectional. Dasbienian retrofeedback is early and dialogical: it allows correcting trajectory, not just evaluating it.

Honest limits

Not everything is ZIE. There are functionalities the user does not know they need and the system must impose: data privacy, session limits, ethical use boundaries. Subjectivization does not mean accepting any objective, but understanding it to orient it.

Neither is retrofeedback absolute democracy. The system has capabilities the user lacks. ZIE is not “do what the user asks.” It is negotiate technological wellbeing, where both parties learn to adjust expectations.

There are users, like the one in my initial story, who don’t know what they want. Subjectivization with them requires patience, open questions, time. It is not efficient. But it is effective long-term: the user who finds meaning stays; the one who doesn’t leaves or remains trapped in a toxic relationship with the machine.

For applying today: ZIE-technology checklist

Cosmological reference: the three fundamentals in security technology

From Theory of Dasbien Life, we can translate the universal fundamentals:

Applied: when I walk past a CCTV camera, I am not just “being recorded.” I am in interaction with a system that modifies its “weights” (its organization) through millions of interactions. My question is not “does it feel?” but “does this interaction, multiplied by millions, organize a world that is healthier or more damaged?”