Setting the Watch Privacy and the Ethics of CCTV Surveillance

Many liberals consider CCTV surveillance in public places - particularly when it is as extensive as it is in England - to be an infringement of important privacy-based rights. An influential report by the House of Lords in 2009 took this view. However there has been little public, or academic, discussion about and analysis of the underlying principles and ethical issues. What rights of privacy or anonymity do people have when abroad in public space?

What is the rationale of these rights? In what respect does CCTV surveillance compromise them? To what extent does the state's interest in crime prevention warrant encroachment upon such privacy/anonymity rights? This book offers the first extended, systematic treatment of these issues.

In it the author develops a theory concerning the normative basis of the entitlement to privacy/anonymity in public space - a theory based on notions of liberty and dignity. She examines in depth how CCTV surveillance might compromise these entitlements, drawing on everyday conventions of nonattendance among people in the public domain, and considering whether and to what extent crime-control concerns might justify overriding these entitlements. Her conclusion is that they might do so only in certain restrictively-defined situations, and the book therefore ends with a proposal for a scheme of regulation which might be appropriate for CCTV.

Announced as - The Ethics of CCTV Surveillance in Public Places