Intelligence agencies play a prominent role in the production of knowledge about national security threats and their evaluation. This function is not just a value-neutral technical activity, but a social and political action. The purpose of this article is to explore the ways in which the Slovak Information Service, an intelligence agency responsible for the protection of national security, discursively constructs security threats and assigns enemy images to specific actors. The analysis was conducted on the publicly available parts of the agency's Annual Reports. It utilised qualitative document analysis, supplemented by quantitative analysis of the frequency of use of specific keywords. The analysis, which identified the main threats connected to internal security, is constructed in a manner which connects terrorism with migration and the Muslim faith, assigning terror identities to specific groups. The agency's constructions of internal threats were also utilised in the political discourse. Moreover, securitisation rhetoric was used in connection to the movements promoting human rights and fighting fascism, labelling them as left-wing extremists. In the field of foreign threats, their construction depends on both international developments and domestic political dynamics.

After the fall of the communist regime, Slovakia saw the introduction and subsequent rapid growth of camera surveillance, particularly around the turn of the millennium. These developments occurred in a specific political, cultural, and historical context, which affects perceptions of and reactions to surveillance by individual citizens. The post-communist context is characterised by relatively low levels of resistance to the introduction of various technological surveillance mechanisms, including the rapid introduction of Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) in public spaces. However, individuals who are under surveillance (surveilled subjects) are not passive. They are aware of the surveillance and its mechanisms, they interact with the surveillance devices, and they self-manage their digital image in various surveillance contexts. Using semi-structured qualitative interviews this article examines experiences of and individual attitudes towards the camera surveillance of Slovak citizens against the wider backdrop of the characteristics of post-communist surveillance culture. It is based on an analysis of individual stories of attitudes towards and personal experiences with CCTV in private, semi-private, and public places. The analysis of individual-level interactions reveals that citizens are aware of the presence of cameras and react to them in various ways, ranging from compliance and various strategies of negotiation with surveillance systems right up to some forms of resistance.

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