Policing Cyberthreats: Regulating Exceptional Police Actions

This paper will proceed as follows: First I provide a brief overview of what exactly I mean when discussing Cyber (or Cyberspace) and Cybersurveillance. Second, I outline the ostensibly neutral definition of privacy given by Ruth Gavison. This definition defines privacy as being an issue of accessibility rather than one of control, and I offer a brief summary of the reasons behind this. Next I briefly examine why we might think that restrictions of privacy are ethically problematic. Finally, I apply this analysis to the issue of cyber-surveillance to argue that societies that claim to value freedom and individual rights should place strong restrictions on the use of such technology by the state. I then briefly outline what these restrictions might look like, and explain when the state might be ethically justified in using such technology.