This is philosophy Bytes with me, David.
Edmonds, and me, Nigel Warburton.
Philosophy Bytes is available at www.philosophybytes.com.
Philosophy Bytes is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.
Cycling to the library this morning, my movements would have been tracked by many CCTV cameras.
Britain is one of the most watched societies in the world.
But if I'm not doing anything criminal, why should I worry what counts as surveillance and what, if anything, is wrong with it?
Philosophy Bytes has been carefully monitoring Tom Sorel for his views on the topic.
Professor Sorel has received two major european research grants to investigate the ethics of surveillance.
Tom Sorel, welcome to philosophy Bites.
Thank you very much.
The topic we're going to focus on is surveillance.
Could you just say at the beginning what surveillance is?
Well, I think we would consider surveillance to be the observation of people by other people.
Sometimes, using technology observation, I can watch.
Somebody across the street.
Am I engaged in an act of surveillance at that point?
Perhaps not.
You'd probably be engaged in surveillance if there were specific questions you wanted to answer in the course of your observation, and if you were targeting your observation on a particular person or maybe a particular set of people or maybe the occupants of a particular space.
Yeah.