Christopher Nathan and Francesca Melhuish organised a workshop on ‘The Ethics of Intelligence’ on 6th May 2016, with funds from the Faculty of Social Sciences and the ESRC. Among the speakers was Tom Sorell of the Interdisciplinary Ethics Research Group, who talked on the topic of ‘Angela Merkel’s Telephone’ and the ethics of states intruding upon one another. The other speakers were Richard Aldrich (Warwick) on 'Does Intelligence Make the World Safer?’; Kira Vrist Rønn (Copenhagen) and Adam Diderichsen (Danish National Police College) on 'Just War Theory as a Framework for Intelligence Ethics’; Adam Diderichsen on ‘Intelligence and its Legitimacy Crisis’; Simon Willmetts (Hull) on ‘21st Century Orwells: Privacy, Transparency and the Ethics of Surveillance in Contemporary Digital Dystopias’; and Ross Bellaby (Sheffield) on ‘Only Guilty People Hide: The Dark-Net and Cyber-Intelligence: Legitimating Surveillance or Legitimating Resistance’.

As part of the GULF project, IERG recently visited Hong Kong and Australia to share research ideas and plan future collaborations. Click through for more details.

On June 16th the IERG, in association with Tom Sorell's GU Leadership Fellowship, held an event entitled 'Disruption, Policing, and Ethics'.

The event was well attended by leading academics, serving and retired members of the police force, and several officials concerned with police regulation.

Topics which were discussed were:

• What different forms of disruption are appropriate to serious and organised crime and terrorism?
• How do agencies decide between disruption and e.g. further surveillance?
• Is disruption sometimes preferable on cost grounds to further investigation?
• Is disruption more harmless ethically than surveillance and other preventive measures?
• How is the effectiveness of disruption to be measured?

For further information about the event: Disruption, Policing, and Ethics