The Ethics of Surveillance in Times of Emergency - Hardcover

by Kevin Macnish (Editor), Adam Henschke (Editor)

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

The Ethics of Surveillance in Times of Emergency draws from the use of modern surveillance technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic to explore a set of issues and challenges facing decision-makers and designers in times of emergency: how do we respond to emergencies in ways that are both consistent with democratic and community principles, and that are ethically justifiable? Emergencies, like public health pandemics, not only place stress on existing infrastructure and communities, but put significant pressure on our decision-making. The use of surveillance technologies during public health crises is a vital frame to explore the challenge of acting in times of emergency. Moreover, as an exercise in reflective applied ethics, this book does not just seek to apply a given theory or principle to the problem of surveillance in times of emergency, but to use the challenges facing us to critically engage with, reflect upon, and develop those theories and principles.

The book's authors recognize this challenge--is it possible to respond to exceptional conditions in ways that either preserve our core values, or must these core values be subsumed under the need to respond to the particular emergency? The book offers responses to this challenge by looking at three interrelated ways in which can manifest: first, the democratic challenges; second, the ethical challenges; and third the design challenges faced in developing ethical solutions.

Author Biography

Kevin Macnish, Digital Ethics Senior Managing Consultant, Sopra Steria, Adam Henschke, Assistant Professor, Philosophy Section, University of Twente

Kevin Macnish is Digital Ethics Consulting Senior Manager with Sopra Steria. He is a former analyst and manager at GCHQ and the US DOD, and an assistant professor at the universities of Leeds and Twente. He has been interviewed widely, including on BBC national television and radio, and has spoken at both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Kevin has published 50 academic articles, chapters, and books on ethics and technology. He is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds and a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals' Research Advisory Board.

Adam Henschke is an Assistant Professor with the Philosophy Section at the University of Twente. He works primarily in the ethics of technology, with much of his work focusing on security. He has written on the ethics of surveillance, the internet of things, human military enhancement, just war, counter-terrorism, and intelligence institutions. Recent publications include the co-edited books Counter-Terrorism, Ethics and Technology: Emerging Challenges at the Frontiers of Counter-Terrorism (2021), The Palgrave Handbook of National Security (2021), and Counter-Terrorism: The Ethical Issues (2021).