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Abstract: "Modern societies have massively invested in technologies that enforce safety, such as sensors, satellites, CCTV cameras, body scans, data mining and profiling software. In recent decades, digital technologies and communication media have pushed local systems of private control and public safe-guarding into transnational spaces of monitoring and surveillance. Surprisingly, the troubles with, and the costs of, deficiencies, accidents, data crimes, terroristic acts or catastrophic events, have not been reduced. On the contrary, the objective scope of risk and the subjective sense of insecurity seem to have increased. The contribution provides an answer to the question of why increasing technologies of safety does not automatically lead to an increased safety. As far as the social practices and processes of designing and instituting new technologies are concerned, this contribution argues further that a) the belief in 'ruly technology' b) the under-estimation of unplanned interference
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