40. How do you decide whether law enforcement and national security operations are ethically justified? With Joe Fogarty

Ethics Untangled

Joe Fogarty has spent over 30 years working in national security and law enforcement, in the UK and elsewhere. He's currently working on cyber-security risks and organised crime for the UK's central government, as the Head of the Government's Cyber Resilience Centre. Recently, he's been looking at security and law enforcement through a philosophical lens, through studying for a Masters in Applied and Professional Ethics at IDEA, the Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. One of the big questions for these areas of work is how to balance privacy concerns against the public good, and we discuss that question, among others, in this interview.

Some extra reading suggested by Joe:

Omand, D. 2023. Examining the Ethics of Spying: A Practitioner’s View. Criminal Law and Philosophy. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s11572-023-09704-5). [Online]. Available from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11572-023-09704-5.

Omand, D. and Phythian, M. 2023. Principled Spying - The Ethics of Secret Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/principled-spying-the-ethics-of-secret-intelligence-david-omand/3583190.

Fabre, C. 2022. Spying Through A Glass Darkly. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spying-Through-Glass-Darkly-Counter-Intelligence/dp/019891217X.

And if listeners are interested in a view from the top of the domestic national security establishment, there is an excellent Reith Lecture by former Head of MI5 Eliza Manningham-Buller here, which echoes some of the themes in the podcast:

BBC Radio 4. 2011. Eliza Manningham-Buller - Securing Freedom: Security. [Online]. Available from http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/2011_reith4.pdf.

Book your place at our public event with Gavin Esler, "Dead Cats, Strategic Lying and Truth Decay", here.

Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.
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