The Criminology of Normalised Cyber Insecurity: A Critical Macro Perspective on Persistent Government Data Breaches

Abstract Government data breaches have become routine features of digital governance, yet they rarely provoke sustained public outrage or political mobilisation. This paper offers an alternative explanation for the persistence of government data breaches from a critical criminology perspective, reframing public inaction not as ignorance but as a structurally cultivated affect. Drawing on state crime theory, surveillance capitalism, cultural criminology, and governmentality, it introduces the Criminology of Normalised Cyber Insecurity (CNCI): a framework explaining how insecurity and resignation are co-produced through abstraction, omission, and emotional governance. Empirically anchored in Indonesian responses to recurring breaches, the proposed framework shows how informated harms render violations emotionally distant, while institutional silences and discursive strategies normalise insecurity. Indifference, in this formulation, is not a void but a product—an affective artefact of power that sustains systemic vulnerability.