This book 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?

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).

• List of contributors


• Introduction


• Part 1: Democracy in Times of Emergency


• 1: Tom Sorell: Pandemic Population Surveillance: Privacy and Life-Saving


• 2: Patrick Taylor Smith: No States of Exception: A Neo-Republican Theory of Just Emergency Powers


• 3: Seumas Miller and Marcus Smith: Combating COVID 19: Surveillance, Autonomy, and Collective Responsibility


• 4: Haleh Asgarinia: Big Data as Tracking Technology and Problems of the Group and its Members


• 5: Katrina Hutchison and Jane Johnson: Epistemic Dimensions of Surveillance in Public Health Emergencies: Risks of Epistemic Injustice and Dysfunctions of Trust


• Part 2: Ethics in Times of Emergency


• 6: Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen and Kira Vrist Rønn: Surveillance without 'Baddies': Liability and Consent in Non-Antagonistic Surveillance Ethics


• 7: Sahar Lateef: Digital Contact Tracing Applications (DCTAs): Public Health Ethics and Emergency Surveillance


• 8: Kat Hadjimatheou: Surveillance, Democracy, and Protest in a Time of Climate Crisis


• 9: Adam Henschke: The Dynamics of Public Health Ethics: COVID-19 and Surveillance as Justifiable But Abnormal


• Part 3: Ethics by Design in Surveillance Programmes


• 10: Björn Lundgren: Ethical Requirements for Digital Systems for Contact Tracing in Pandemics: A Solution to the Contextual Limits of Ethical Guidelines


• 11: Frej Klem Thomsen: An Unexceptional Theory of Morally Proportional Surveillance in Exceptional Circumstances


• 12: Kevin Macnish: Technofixing Surveillance: A Proportionate Response?


• Index