EGE round table on the ethics of security and surveillance technologies : Brussels, 18 September 2013..
Date: 2014-06-30
Institutions: Bureau of European Policy Advisers, European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies
Subjects: conference proceedings, digital technology, ethics, information technology, international meeting, international security, security services, threat to national security, video surveillance

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Ethics of security 

and surveillance technologies

PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROUND-TABLE DEBATE

Brussels, 18 September 2013

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
European Group
on Ethics in Science
and New Technologies
to the European Commission

Round table on the 
ethics of security 
and surveillance 
technologies

Brussels, 18 September 2013

Jim Dratwa
Chief Editor
Head of the EGE Secretariat
Head of Ethics in Science and New Technologies
Bureau of European Policy Advisers
European Commission

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Contents

INTRODUCTION 

ROUND-TABLE REPORT 
Programme 

PRESENTATIONS 

Mr Hendrik Keersmaekers 

Dr Ben Hayes 

Professor Giorgio Agamben 

Dr Patryk Pawlak 

ANNEX I
List of participants 

ANNEX II
EGE Secretariat 

5

7
15

17

61

71

77

89

97

101

EGE round table on the ethics of 
security and surveillance technologies

Introduction

The European Group on Ethics in Science and New Tech-
nologies  (EGE)  is  an  independent,  pluralist  and  multi-
disciplinary body which, since its inception in 1991, has 
advised the European Commission on ethical aspects of 
science  and  new  technologies  in  connection  with  the 
preparation  and  implementation  of  European  Union 
legislation or policies.

In January 2011 the President of the European Commis-
sion,  José  Manuel  Barroso,  appointed  the  15  members 
of the EGE for 2011–16. The selected members serve in 
a  personal  capacity  and  collectively  offer  independent 
advice to the Commission. On 22 March 2011 Mr Barroso 
requested that the EGE issue an opinion on the ethical 
implications  of  information  and  communication  tech-
nologies  (ICT)  (1).  The  opinion  was  adopted  on  22 Feb-
ruary 2012. The president of the European Commission 
also asked for an opinion on the ethical implications of 
security  and  surveillance  technologies.  In  March  2012 
the EGE started its work on ‘Opinion No 27 — An ethical 
framework  for  assessing  research,  production  and  use 
of energy’ (2). Opinion No 27 was adopted on 16 Janu-
ary 2013.  After  the  adoption  of  its  opinion,  the  group 
came  back  to  President  Barroso’s  request  on  writing 
an  opinion  on  the  ethical  implications  of  security  and 
surveillance  technologies.  The  EGE  started  working  on 
‘Opinion  No  28  —  Ethics  of  security  and  surveillance 
technologies’ as of February 2013.

On  21 March 2011  President  José  Manuel  Barroso 
requested that the EGE draft an opinion on the ethical 
implications  of  information  and  communication  tech-
nologies and produce, subsequently and separately, an 
opinion on the ethical implications of security technolo-
gies,  with  due  attention  given  to  the  development  of 
security technologies and to surveillance technologies. 
The  EGE  provided  the  Commission  with  its  opinion  on 
ethics  of  information  and  communication  technolo-
gies on 22 February 2012. It also developed and issued 
an opinion on research, production and use of energy, 
which was published on 16 January 2013, in response to 
an intervening request from the president of the Com-
mission.  In  February  2013  the  EGE  started  working  on 
opinion No 28 addressing the issues of security and sur-
veillance technologies from an ethical perspective.

When preparing its opinions the EGE engages in a broad 
consultation  involving  individual  experts,  representa-
tives of the European institutions, of other international 
institutions  and  of  civil  society  and  the  chairs  of  the 
national  ethics  councils  in  the  European  Union  Mem-
ber  States.  The  group  organised  an  open  round  table 
in  Brussels  on  18 September 2013  in  order  to  promote 
a  transparent  dialogue  between  parties  representing 
different  interests.  This  report  gives  a  summary  of  the 
presentations and discussions put forward.

(1)  http://ec.europa.eu/bepa/european-group-ethics/docs/publications/ict_final_22_february-adopted.pdf
(2)  http://ec.europa.eu/bepa/european-group-ethics/docs/publications/opinion_no_27.pdf

5

EGE round table on the ethics of 
security and surveillance technologies

Round-table report

1. Main goal of the round table

The EGE is preparing an opinion on the ethics of security 
and surveillance technologies. As part of its preparatory 
work the EGE held an open round-table debate on the 
issues raised by the implications of security and surveil-
lance  technologies.  The  round  table  was  organised  by 
the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA).

As was the case for previous EGE opinions, and in accord-
ance with the Commission decision on the EGE mandate 
(Decision 2005/383/EC), a public round table was organ-
ised to debate openly the ethical, social and legal impli-
cations  of  security  and  surveillance  technologies.  The 
main  goal  was  to  give  stakeholders  an  opportunity  to 
provide the EGE with the relevant data, considerations 
and viewpoints before it would finalise opinion No 28 by 
spring 2014.

2. Elements of context

The European Group on Ethics in Science 
and New Technologies

The  EGE  was  established  in  1991  (with  the  name  the 
Group of Advisers on the Ethical Implications of Biotech-
nology (GAEIB)), and the new EGE mandate was adopted 
by  Commission  Decision  2010/1/EU  of  23 Decem-
ber 2009 (3). According to this remit the role of the EGE is 
to provide the Commission with high-quality and inde-
pendent  advice  on  the  ethical  aspects  of  science  and 
new  technologies  in  connection  with  the  preparation 
and  implementation  of  European  Union  legislation  or 
policies (4).

On 10 January 2011 the President of the European Com-
mission,  José  Manuel  Barroso,  appointed  the  15  mem-
bers of the EGE for 2011–16. The selected EGE members 
serve in a personal capacity and are asked to offer inde-
pendent  advice  to  the  Commission.  They  have  been 
appointed  on  the  basis  of  their  expertise  and  a  geo-
graphical  distribution  that  reflects  Europe’s  diversity. 
The EGE held its first meeting on 8 and 9 February 2011 
in  Brussels  and  had  a  session  with  President  Barroso. 
A second meeting took place on 15 and 16 March 2011. 
Professor  Julian  Kinderlerer  was  elected  as  the  group’s 
president and Professor Linda Nielsen as vice-president. 
The rules of procedure were adopted on 15 March 2011.

The EGE opinion on ethics of security 
and surveillance technologies

At  the  request  of  the  president  of  the  European  Com-
mission, the EGE is currently working on an opinion on 
ethics  of  security  and  surveillance  technologies,  which 
will provide the Commission with policy options for the 
use of such technologies.

The EGE round table on ethics of security 
and surveillance technologies

When preparing its opinions the EGE engages in broad 
consultations  involving  individual  experts,  representa-
tives of European institutions, other international insti-
tutions  and  civil  society  and  the  chairs  of  the  national 
ethics councils in the European Union Member States.

The EGE organised an open round table on 18 Septem-
ber 2013,  at  the  European  Commission,  in  the  Robert 
Schuman room (Berlaymont building).

(3) 

(4) 

The EGE’s mandate was renewed by the Commission Decision of 26 March 2001 for a 4-year period and its remit was slightly modified to 
improve  the  group’s  working  methods.  The  EGE’s  mandate  was  decided  on  11 May 2005  (Decision  2005/383/EC)  and  extended  by  Com-
mission Decision 2009/757/EC. Members of the European Parliament cannot be selected as EGE members because this may be considered 
a conflict of interest and would contradict provisions stated in the remit of the group (Legal Service (JUR(2006)30358 JFP/fag, dated 3.7.2006).
The Parliament and the Council may draw the Commission’s attention to questions which they consider to be of major ethical importance.

7

Participants came from a broad cross-section of European 
society,  including  the  scientific  community,  industry, 
civil society, policymakers, media and the general public. 
Furthermore, the EGE also welcomed the active partici-
pation  of  some  members  of  the  International  Dialogue 
on Bioethics. Invited speakers included Professor Inez de 
Beaufort  (Professor  of  Healthcare  Ethics  at  the  Erasmus 
Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands), Mr Hen-
drik Keersmaekers (Legal Affairs Manager, G4S Belgium), 
Dr Ben Hayes (Statewatch), Professor Giorgio Agamben 
(Professor of Philosophy, University of Verona, Italy) and 
Dr Patryk Pawlak (EU Institute for Security Studies).

3. Report of the EGE round table

Professor Julian Kinderlerer, President of the EGE, chaired 
the  meeting.  He  welcomed  the  participants  and  intro-
duced  the  public  to  the  role  of  the  EGE.  He  explained 

that, at the request of the European Council, the group 
was asked to give its opinion on the ethics of energy pro-
duction  and  research,  thus  stepping  outside  its  remit. 
Opinion  27  was  adopted  in  February  2013  and  as  of 
March 2013 the group is working on ‘Opinion No 28 — 
Ethics of security and surveillance technologies’. Profes-
sor Kinderlerer highlighted that the PRISM and Snowden 
scandal shed a different light on the weight of the EGE’s 
opinion, which would have to be presented to the presi-
dent of the European Commission at the end of 2013 or 
the beginning of 2014.

Professor  Kinderlerer  also  explained  that,  during  the 
process of writing its opinions, the EGE organises open 
round tables so as to discuss the topic with all interested 
parties,  to  increase  transparency  and  to  create  a  dia-
logue  between  representatives  of  academia,  industry 
and civil society.

8

10:10–11:10 — Prof. Inez de Beaufort 
(Erasmus Rotterdam University)

Prof. de Beaufort began her presentation by emphasis-
ing the accuracy of surveillance technologies nowadays 
(e.g.  NSA  surveillance  operations  in  Europe  and  the 
PRISM  scandal).  Prof.  de  Beaufort  explained  the  ‘why 
now’ question to participants through the advancement 
of security and surveillance technologies post 9/11.

Presently,  state  and  private  surveillance  are  so  inter-
woven  that  a  distinction  between  the  two  becomes 
impossible (see American lawyer Neil Richards). Not only 
is  it  hard  to  distinguish  between  types  of  surveillance, 
but  also  our  society  faces  dramatic  changes  (moving 
from local villages to a ‘global village’ or a ‘global aquar-
ium’).

So  as  to  produce  opinion  No  28,  the  EGE  has  to  look 
at different contexts and purposes and to find the link 
between the development of new technologies and the 
harms  (threats)  that  these  technologies  are  to  resolve. 
Ethical issues at stake when it comes to security/safety 
are, among others, privacy, liberty/freedom, justice, dig-
nity, stigmatisation, efficacy and proportionality.

fort  spoke  about  ‘intellectual  privacy’,  a  term  that  sug-
gests the need to protect one’s intellectual freedom, or 
the ability to think without state monitoring or intrusion.

The EGE is now working on a set of recommendations in 
the field of security and surveillance technologies. Iden-
tified areas include:

•	 broadening the concept of efficacy;

•	

further  research  into  the  ethical,  social  and  legal 
aspects;

•	 PET and ‘privacy by design’;

•	 privacy impact assessments;

•	

•	

transparency;

increasing knowledge and awareness;

•	 governance (self-governance, special authority);

•	

legal measures to curtail power (banning drones for 
private use);

At the beginning of 2010, the Council of the European 
Union defined security as follows:

•	 proportionality and contextuality;

‘… security means protecting people and the values of 
freedom  and  democracy,  so  that  everyone  can  enjoy 
their daily lives without fear.’

Moreover,  academics  distinguish  between  different 
types  of  privacy  adapted  to  different  contexts,  such  as 
physical,  psychological,  economic,  informational  and 
decisional. No agreement on the role of privacy in mod-
ern society has been reached until now. Prof. de Beau-

9

•	 developing the concept of effectiveness;

•	 depicting a balancing model.

Concluding, Prof. de Beaufort mentioned Prof. Mordini’s 
viewpoint on the importance of politeness, to which dis-
cretion was also added, a lost virtue thought of as a sign 
of respect for others.

Mr Hendrik Keersmaekers (G4S Belgium)

Mr  Keersmaekers,  Legal  Affairs  Manager,  represented 
the  private  security  company  G4S  Belgium  at  the  EGE 
round table. G4S Belgium is part of G4S, an international 
company present in more than 125 countries with more 
than 650 000 employees. When providing security solu-
tions  the  company  focuses  on  integrated  solutions, 
resulting in partnerships with its customers.

Since 9/11 the industry sector has been facing a continu-
ous increase in the security services provided, combined 
with fast-changing technological development.

G4S bases its strategy on four pillars, as follows.

1.  Prevention.

2.  Transparent regulatory framework.

3.  Feasibility and practicability.

4.  Partnerships (private–public, the public at large).

Mr  Keersmaekers  explained  that  the  security  industry 
(G4S  particularly)  focuses  on  prevention  and  risk  mini-
misation  by  the  use  of  remote  monitoring,  manned 
guarding and surveillance equipment, all of these aimed 
at  creating  a  dissuasion  effect.  Responding  in  case  of 

incidents  that  have  occurred  is  equally  important  and 
is  based  on  customised  training  offered  by  G4S  to  its 
employees,  creating  job  opportunities  regardless  of 
their social background or previous experience.

On  the  importance  of  a  transparent  regulatory  frame-
work,  Mr  Keersemaekers  highlighted  that  regulations 
should be based on practical solutions, striking the bal-
ance between the rights and obligations of the parties 
concerned.  Regulations  should  create  a  level  playing 
field, making clear what is expected from all actors con-
cerned, and making sure ‘free riders’ are not allowed to 
falsify competition.

Lawmakers  should  have  a  higher  level  of  flexibility  to 
be  able  to  cope  with  fast-changing  technological  and 
industrial  advances  and,  for  this  to  be  achieved,  this 
flexibility should be built in at the outset (e.g. a ‘sunset’ 
clause  or  ‘life-cycle  analysis’  clause  for  technical  and 
societal evolutions).

G4S  also  welcomes  partnerships  with  society  and  with 
public  authorities.  Mr  Keersmaekers  pointed  the  audi-
ence  towards  different  public–private  partnerships  in 
which G4S is involved, such as in port and airport envir-
onments,  or  supporting  states  in  outsourcing  certain 
police  tasks  (administrative  tasks,  supporting  immigra-
tion centres in the Netherlands, etc.).

10

Dr Ben Hayes (Statewatch)

Dr Ben Hayes presented Statewatch’s experience of the 
development of surveillance and security technologies. 
Among their main concerns is the use of public funds by 
European institutions for developing new security tech-
nologies in the absence of proper democratic controls.

The criticism of EU security research funding is based on 
two of the programme’s founding principles.

1.  The transfer of technologies from the military to the 
civilian field for things like fighting crime, terrorism 
or immigration.

Dr  Hayes  called  for  ethicists  to  develop  so-called  red 
lines, or lists of banned security applications.

On the matter of surveillance technologies, Dr Hayes has 
argued that one of the most profound effects of the post 
9/11  era  in  Europe  has  been  the  creation  of  a  surveil-
lance-industrial complex.

The  use  of  data  collected  through  surveillance  should 
be properly regulated and strictly limited to that which 
is  absolutely  necessary  and  proportionate,  argued  Dr 
Hayes,  with  sensitive  data  subject  to  an  even  higher 
level of protection. As a result of Snowden’s revelations, 
the EU data protection regulation will be strengthened, 
but much more reform is needed.

2.  The need to subsidise the European security industry 
to render it more competitive in the global market-
place.

Q & A session

Dr Hayes focused his intervention on the issues of drones 
and  surveillance  technologies.  He  stated  that  despite 
the considerable funds invested by the EU in this field, 
no ethical framework is yet in place.

On the issue of drones, Dr Hayes mentioned the continu-
ous development and improvement of remotely piloted 
vehicle technologies, to the point where these devices 
will become not only smaller but also faster and smarter. 
Recent research undertaken by Statewatch showed that 
the EU’s total drone investment (e.g. satellite navigation 
systems,  collision  avoidance  systems,  communication 
systems, etc.) is almost EUR 500 million, with the possi-
bility of a substantial increase in the coming years.

Among the major ethical concerns in this case is the impos-
sibility of preventing dual-use research and the funding of 
technologies and infrastructure in the name of civil secu-
rity that can easily be adapted in the military field.

During the question and answer session, the following 
were discussed:

•	 ethics and its flexibility;

•	

the notion of the ethical corporate citizen;

•	 understanding ‘flexible regulations’;

•	 appropriate  training  in  the  industry  field,  based  on 

geographical location, age group, etc.;

identifying the red lines that should not be crossed;

interpreting and applying the sunset clause model in 
Europe.

•	

•	

11

Afternoon session

14:30–15:30 — Prof. Giorgio Agamben 
(University of Verona)

Professor  Giorgio  Agamben  began  his  presentation  by  
reminding  that  ethics  cannot  consist  in  the  de  facto 
acceptation  of  an  inhumane  situation  and  in  the  vain 
attempt  of  putting  de  iure  restrictions  to  it.  Therefore 
he strongly criticized the  idea that an ethics of security 
could limit itself to recommending a safer use of tech-
nologies  that  threaten  the  political  freedom  of  men, 
without  first  questioning    the  very  legitimacy  of  those 
technologies.

Professor  Agamben  has  as  a  starting  point  the  wide-
spread  syntagm  ‘for  security  reasons’.  This  syntagm 
should have a different understanding, since it does not 
simply  consist  in  preventing  dangers  or  catastrophes. 
For a better consideration of this syntagm, a thorough 
knowledge of the concept and history of the term ‘secu-
rity’  is  needed,  according  to  Professor  Agamben.  The 
origins  of  security  are  to  be  found  in  the  times  of  the 
Roman  Empire  (the  dicta  salus publica suprema lex and 
consultum ultimum), and more recently the French Revo-
lution and the famous Article 18 of the Weimar Consti-
tution (the cornerstone of the national socialist regime).

According to Professor Agamben, the origins of security 
are to be found at the beginning of modern economy, 

through the works of François Quesnay, the physiocrats 
and the Treaty of Westphalia where the absolutist pow-
ers began to spread the idea that the ruler had to ensure 
the security of his/her subjects.

Slowly,  the  ancient  way  of  governing  was  replaced  by 
the modern interpretation whereby, as Professor Agam-
ben observes, modernity no longer governs the causes 
but  the  effects.  Continuing  this  line  of  thinking,  if  the 
objective  of  the  government  is  that  of  managing  the 
effects  and  not  the  causes,  a  multiplication  of  controls 
occurs as a result.

Due to rapid changes in technology and the increase in 
control by the state, Professor Agamben observes that 
legislation  in  certain  EU  countries  in  terms  of  security 
is  more  restrictive  than  the  1926  Italian  fascist  regime. 
Presently, the public and the private spheres are blurred 
and interwoven.

The  wide  use  of  video  surveillance  devices  to  monitor 
streets and public places results from the model used in 
prisons for monitoring convicts. Moreover, in the Ameri-
can  doctrine  post  9/11,  the  syntagm  ‘security  state’ 
appears, referring to the fact that the state views each 
citizen as a potential criminal. Having all these different 
interpretations of the term, Professor Agamben invited 
guests to reflect on the following definition: ‘the police 
are the strength ratio of a state with itself’.

12

Dr Patryk Pawlak 
(EU Institute for Security Studies)

Dr  Pawlak  began  his  presentation  by  highlighting  that 
some security and surveillance technologies can benefit 
society at large, assuming that ethics, the rule of law and 
political responsibility are part of the equation. His pres-
entation was based on four main ideas, as shown below.

1.  Fewer  security  and  surveillance  technologies  (SSTs) 
is  also  an  ethical  choice  which  potentially  exposes 
the lives of innocent individuals to terrorist attacks or 
criminal activities:

3.  The choice to invest in the development of SSTs is an 
ethical choice in itself since it has an impact on other 
areas,  including  spending  on  education  and  social 
programmes.

•	 Spending more money on prevention or educa-

tion.

4.  Leaders are politically responsible for investment in 
SSTs and the consequences of their use. It is not tech-
nology that is a problem but how people use it.

•	 a  recent  Eurobarometer  shows  that  more  than 
six Europeans out of 10 agree that their govern-
ments are asking for more personal information;

During the question and answer session, the following 
were discussed:

Q & A session

•	 3 600 organised crime groups were identified as 

•	

being active in the EU;

security  is  presented  by  some  as  being  linked  to 
a certain extent to industry, competitiveness and job 
opportunities;

•	

security technologies are not only about surveil-
lance — for example Copernicus (a Commission 
programme which provides up-to-date informa-
tion  on  environmental  management)  provides 
early  warnings  in  case  of  floods,  droughts  and 
desertification.

2. 

In democratic societies the rule of law and oversight 
mechanisms  are  used  to  deal  with  the  unethical 
application of SSTs or their unethical or illegal use.

•	 For  example,  European  Parliament,  European 
Commission, Member States, European Data Pro-
tection  Supervisor,  Fundamental  Rights  Agency, 
European Court of Human Rights, Statewatch, Pri-
vacy International, Transparency International, etc.

•	

the scope of the EGE opinion and limiting the scope 
to certain technologies;

•	 attempting  to  divide  technology  from  the  use  of 

technology;

•	

•	

the lack of historical references when discussing the 
issue of security and surveillance;

intergenerational justice and its inclusion in the EGE 
opinion.

17:30  End of the round table

13

EGE round table on the ethics of 
security and surveillance technologies

Programme

Brussels — Berlaymont building, Schuman room 
Wednesday, 18 September 2013 
10:00–17:30

AGENDA

09:30 

Registration — coffee

Afternoon session

10:00–10:10 

 Welcome address to the round table 
by Prof. Julian Kinderlerer, 
President of the EGE

10:10–11:10 

 Prof. Inez de Beaufort 
(Erasmus Rotterdam University) 

Mr Hendrik Keersmaekers 
(G4S Belgium) 

Dr Ben Hayes (Statewatch)

11:10–11:30  Coffee break

11:30–12:00  Questions to speakers and EGE

12:00–13:00 

 Discussion and contributions 
from participants

13:00–14:30  Lunch (Berlaymont hall)

14:30–15:30 

 Prof. Giorgio Agamben 
(University of Verona) 

Dr Patryk Pawlak 
(EU Institute for Security Studies)

15:30–15:50  Coffee break

15:50–16:20  Questions to speakers and EGE

16:20–17:20 

 Discussion and contributions 
from participants

17:20–17:30  Closing remarks from EGE President 

17:30 

End of round table

The round table will be broadcast 
http://scic.ec.europa.eu/streaming/index.php?es=2&sessionno=e0eacd983971634327ae1819ea8b6214 
http://ec.europa.eu/bepa/european-group-ethics/index_en.htm

15

 
 
 
Presentations

EGE round table on the ethics of 
security and surveillance technologies

17

EGE round table on the ethics of 
security and surveillance technologies

Professor 
Inez de Beaufort

(Erasmus Rotterdam University)

Inez  de  Beaufort  has  been  Professor  of  Healthcare  Eth-
ics  and  Head  of  the  Department  of  Medical  Ethics  and 
Philosophy  of  Medicine  at  the  Erasmus  Medical  Centre 
in  Rotterdam,  the  Netherlands,  since  1991.  She  studied 
theology  at  the  University  of  Utrecht  and  has  a  PhD  in 
human  research  from  the  University  of  Groningen  (cum 
laude 1985). She has published on various subjects relat-
ing  to  medical  ethics,  e.g.  human  research,  productive 
technologies,  personal  responsibility  for  health,  ethics 
and  beauty,  medical  ethics  in  fiction  (films  and  novels), 
the elderly (euthanasia and dementia) and public health 
issues. Together with Frans Meulenberg she wrote a med-
ical ethical soap story for the Journal of Medical Ethics.

Although  of  an  ‘omnivorous’  ethical  disposition  her 
present  research  themes  are  ethics  and  obesity,  ethics 

and  paediatrics,  ethics  and  ageing,  ethics  and  beauty, 
enhancement and medical ethics in literature and films. 
She  has  been  a  member  of  many  hospital  ethics  com-
mittees and national committees, such  as  the National 
Council for Healthcare, and the Dutch National Commit-
tee for Ethics and Medical Research.

She is, among others, an honorary member of the Dutch 
Health  Council,  a  member  of  a  regional  euthanasia 
review committee, a member of the Board of Advice to 
Dutch Healthcare Insurers, a member of the Healthcare 
Package  Appraisal  Committee  of  the  Healthcare  Insur-
ance Board and a member of the Board of the Interna-
tional Association of Bioethics. She has served two terms 
on the EGE.

19

Ethics and surveillance 

Global overview of issues to present in the 
next opinion

This is an informal talk.

Introduction

Do you know who knows what about you? That you are 
here in Brussels, that you took a certain flight, that you 
paid by a certain credit card, what you purchased at the 
airport  tax-free  shop,  that  you  called  home  (or  maybe 
not  home)  to  say  you  arrived  safely,  what  you  were 
wearing  when  checking  in,  where  you  are  staying  and 
who else is staying there, what you mailed to whom, etc. 
It is quite frightening, I must say.

In the words of the House of Lords:

‘Individuals … leave electronic footprints behind with 
the click of the mouse, making a phone call, paying 
with a payment card, using “joined up” government 
services or just walking down a street where CCTV is 
in operation. Our transactions are tracked, our inter-
actions identified and our preferences profiles — all 
with  potential  to  build  up  an  increasingly  detailed 
and intrusive picture of how each of us lives our life.’

Neil Richards, a Harvard lawyer, states:

‘The  digital  technologies  that  have  revolutionised 
our  daily  lives  have  also  created  minutely  detailed 
records  of  those  lives.  In  an  age  of  terror,  our  gov-
ernment  has  shown  a  keen  willingness  to  acquire 
this data and use it for unknown purposes. We know 
that governments have been buying and borrowing 
private-sector  databases,  and  we  recently  learned 
that  the  National  Security  Agency  (NSA)  has  been 
building a massive data and supercomputing centre 
in Utah, apparently with the goal of intercepting and 
storing  much  of  the  world’s  Internet  communica-
tions for decryption and analysis.’

So,  we  are  watched,  observed,  tracked,  followed.  Not 
only us, but also criminals and terrorists. The main argu-
ment brought forward for (increasing) surveillance is the 
war against terror and combating crime. This is after all 
the post-9/11 era. That is provided as justification for the 
PRISM operations that whistle-blower Edward Snowden 
has recently made public. 

(We did not plan that, of course, but we are even more 
convinced that this opinion is quite timely.)

Our next opinion is a follow-up of our previous opinion 
that discussed ethics and the Internet.

On  behalf  of  the  group  and  my  colleague  rapporteurs 
Siobhan  O’Sullivan  and  Linda  Nielsen,  I  give  this  short 
presentation. We welcome your comments and views.

Why now?

There  are  new  technologies  —  think  of  GPS,  face  rec-
ognition,  combinations  of  different  technologies  and 
combinations  of  different  data  collections.  From  the 
babyphone  and  the  nannycam  to  something  very 
sophisticated called Google Glass.

There are different technologies that survey our behav-
iour in different contexts for different purposes: for our 
security to protect us from violence, but also in the con-
text  of  healthcare  to  prevent,  for  example,  demented 
persons  from  losing  their  way,  observing  us  to  ensure 
we are alright in order to intervene just in case, tracking 
the spread of contagious diseases and, in the commercial 
arena, to know about our buying choices and target pub-
licity. As well as in the work sphere to observe if we work 
hard, where our employers can use keyboard tracking.

So  both  in  the  governmental  as  well  as  in  the  non-
governmental sphere many different surveillance tech-
nologies are used.

According to the abovementioned American lawyer Neil 
Richards it is impossible to disentangle government and 
private surveillance:

20

‘Government and non-government surveillance support 
each  other  in  a  complex  manner  that  is  often  impos-
sible to disentangle. At the outset, the technologies of 
surveillance — software, RFID chips, GPS trackers, cam-
eras and other cheap sensors — are being used almost 
interchangeably  by  government  and  non-government 
watchers. Private industry is also marketing new surveil-
lance technologies to the state.’

Societies have changed dramatically, also through mod-
ern  ICT  technologies.  In  a  small,  nice  village,  of  course 
people  knew  things  about  people,  eavesdropped  and 
gossiped  and  had  opinions  about  their  fellow  village 
inhabitants,  but  we  now  live  in  a  truly  global  arena. 
Maybe  a  global  aquarium.  This  raises  different  funda-
mental  debates.  What  do  we  mean  by  security?  What 
actually is security? Is it still the privilege of the state in 
a Hobbesian way to use violence to protect citizens or is 
a complete conceptual and moral approach necessary?

The fact that it is about different contexts and different 
purposes, as well as the interconnectedness of technol-
ogies and problems, makes our task very complex. We 
have to focus, to unravel and analyse.

Ethical issues

The Council of the EU in early 2010 gave the following 
definition:

‘Security means protecting people and the values of 
freedom and democracy, so that everyone can enjoy 
their daily lives without fear.’

The  1994  UNDP  Human  Development  Report  (HDR) 
(UNDP  1994)  synthesised  threats  to  human  security  in 
seven  components:  economic,  food,  health,  environ-
mental, personal, community and political security (5).

Privacy

Privacy also is a complex notion. There is a lot of debate 
on different forms of privacy and different definitions.

In the report on challenges for the EU, scholars distinguish 
between physical (related to physical protection), psycho-
logical (related to personal autonomy), economic (related 
to  property),  informational  (related  to  personal  informa-
tion) and decisional (related to decisional power) privacy. 
In  fact,  privacy  means  different  things  in  different  con-
texts. Although the term ‘privacy’ cannot be found in all 
languages, the experience of privacy is a cultural univer-
sal, an essential part of human flourishing and well-being.

What  are  the  ethical  issues  at  stake  when  it  comes  to 
security and safety? (This is not an exhaustive list.)

Privacy, liberty/freedom, dignity, justice, stigmatisation, 
efficacy, proportionality.

These are some ethical considerations we will discuss in 
our opinion.

And there is no agreement on the role of privacy in mod-
ern society. There is the extreme ‘privacy is dead, accept 
it’ view.

Few,  however,  would  like  to  live  in  a  panoptic  world 
in  which  we  are  watched  all  the  time.  Why  is  that  such 
a nightmare? Well that is in a way a rhetorical question. 
We flourish in freedom and the liberty to pursue our goals.

Security

Of course we all value security, but which security and at 
what price? And what is security?

We  flourish  if  we  can  trust  people.  It  is  almost  unbear-
able to live in a society in which you cannot trust any-
one, not even your loved ones.

(5)  http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/human_security_guidance_note_r-nhdrs.pdf

21

It is a dystopic scenario to imagine that someone might 
read  your  thoughts  and  that  we  will  have  mind  scans. 
How many enemies and how few friends we would have.

In the words of David Lyon, Surveillance Studies Centre, 
Queen’s University, Canada:

‘Today’s surveillance processes and practices bespeak 
a world where we know we are not really trusted. Sur-
veillance  fosters  suspicion  and  thus  threatens  social 
cohesion and solidarity. The employer who installs key-
stroke monitors at workstations or GPS devices in ser-
vice vehicles is saying in effect that he does not trust his 
employees … Some of this, you object, may seem like 
simple prudence. But how far can this go? Social rela-
tionships depend on trust and permitting ourselves to 
undermine it in this way seems like slow social suicide.’

Therefore the right to privacy is an important right in the 
European Convention.

It can be humiliating and degrading to be observed in 
situations that we usually consider to be intimate, per-
sonal.  Even  against  human  dignity.  Imagine  cameras 
watching  your  sexual  activities  or  your  other  intimate 
behaviour. There has been a scandal over cameras put in 
the toilets of schools.

One of the criticisms of the body scan at airports is the 
intrusiveness into our most intimate sphere.

We  do  not  want  people  to  share  moments  that  they 
were not invited to. They belong to us and not to oth-
ers.  Recently  a  law  was  passed  in  Sweden  stating  that 
one cannot take photographs of people unless you have 
explicit permission. 

If we are surveyed we will behave differently and lose our 
intellectual privacy, as Neil Richards again has stressed. This 
is the Orwellian fear of being punished for thought crime.

In the words of Richards: 

‘First, surveillance is harmful because it can chill the 
exercise of our civil liberties, and because it gives the 
watcher  power  over  the  watched.  With  respect  to 

civil  liberties,  consider  surveillance  of  people  when 
they are thinking, reading and communicating with 
others in order to make up their minds about politi-
cal and social issues. Such intellectual surveillance is 
especially  dangerous  because  it  can  cause  people 
not to experiment with new, controversial or deviant 
ideas.  To  protect  our  intellectual  freedom  to  think 
without  state  oversight  or  interference,  we  need 
what I have elsewhere called “intellectual privacy”.’

An  interesting issue  is: what  about  consent? Does  that 
make it alright? Think of all the television programmes 
that  involve  living  in  public.  Can  one  relinquish  one’s 
right to privacy by consenting to being surveyed, filmed, 
e.g. in television programmes?

So far privacy.

The ‘usual suspects’ and the problem 
of stigmatisation

Some people are ‘sorted’ out when, for example, observed 
by CCTV. Others are not. Social sorting: the term itself is 
actually quite frightening. This can be an intrusion into 
privacy, and also a serious problem of justice.

Think of the example of the mass fingerprinting of Roma 
in Italy.

Are we safer? Do we feel safer?

Are we safe? Do we feel safe? What is the efficacy of the 
measures? Does it lead to even more surveillance tech-
niques?

Whose data is it anyway?

There are data brokers who sell data to companies who 
may  be  interested.  Data  are  big  business.  Big  data  are 
even  bigger  business.  This  of  course  also  gives  rise  to 
issues of privacy, freedom and possibly justice.

These are just some examples of issues.

22

Possible areas for recommendations

It  is  too  early  to  speak  about  recommendations.  But 
of  course  we  will  discuss  a  conceptual  issue  regarding 
security, power and privacy.

And we will look into the efficacy of measures in relation 
to ethical acceptability.

We will surely say something about:

may in practice aggravate worry on the part of search 
subjects  and  create  a  false  sense  of  security  that 
leads  to  a  relaxation  of  other  security  procedures. 
Finally,  a  reduction  in  privacy  may  have  a  targeted 
negative effect on certain groups and categories. As 
security increases, it is common that certain types of 
individuals  are  disproportionately  included  in  the 
false positives turned up by government surveillance 
schemes.’

•	

research into the ethical, social and legal aspects;

Personal view

•	 privacy enhancing technologies and privacy by design;

•	 privacy impact assessments;

•	

•	

transparency;

increasing  knowledge  and  awareness,  the  recent 
events that were probably quite a shock to many citi-
zens and options to withhold consent;

•	 governance, 
authority, etc.

including  self-governance,  special 

•	

legal measures to curtail power, strict rules on when 
one  can  get  data,  etc.  —  sometimes  a  ban  may  be 
called for, e.g. on drones for private use;

•	 we  will  look  into  proportionality  and  contextuality. 
Some measures may be justified in one case but not 
in the other.

And how to balance all that.

It is insightful that, in an EU report, it is stated that 

‘The  balance  model  is  nevertheless  problematic, 
since  any  reduction  in  privacy  to  increase  security 
tends  to  create  new  forms  of  insecurity.  The  crea-
tion  of  centralised  data  banks  that  facilitate  law 
enforcement can also expose personal data to new 
risks related to misuse and theft. Technological body 
searches (e.g. metal detectors, advanced body scan-
ners) that in theory should prevent terrorist attacks 

It is interesting that we often think of regulation and the 
authorities  doing  something  to  resolve  our  problems. 
And  of  course  that  is  needed.  But  that  does  not  mean 
that  individuals  cannot  contribute,  even  by  means  of 
old-fashioned virtues.

Emilio  Mordini,  the  Italian  expert  on  surveillance  and 
ethics, stresses politeness. I would also like to stress that 
discretion as a sign of respect for others is a virtue that 
somehow seems to have got lost. Respecting other peo-
ple’s privacy and knowing that some things should stay 
private, some secrets should be respected, would help. 
We all are curious enough to want to be a fly on the wall 
sometimes — well I am — but we don’t want a drone fly 
(and they exist) to be in our bedroom, reporting every-
thing to who knows who.

This is what the EGE will discuss.

References

European  Commission,  ‘Ethical  and  regulatory  chal-
lenges to science and research policy at the global level’, 
2012.

House of Lords, ‘Surveillance: citizens and the state’, 2009.

Lyon,  D.,  ‘Surveillance  society’,  talk  for  the  Festival 
Diritto, Italy, 2008.

Richards,  N.,  ‘The  dangers  of  society’,  Harvard  Law 
Review, Vol. 126, No 7, 2013.

23

Professor Inez de Beaufort

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60

EGE round table on the ethics of 
security and surveillance technologies

Mr Hendrik 
Keersmaekers

(Legal Affairs Manager, G4S)

Hendrik  Keersmaekers  studied  law  at  KU  Leuven,  Bel-
gium,  holds  an  LL.M.  in  international  and  comparative 
law from McGill University, Canada, and a DES in envir-
onmental and public law from FUSL, Belgium. Hendrik is 
a former member of the Brussels bar, and is currently legal 
affairs manager at G4S Belgium, where he is responsible 

for the BELUX region. Hendrik represents G4S within the 
trade  association  for  guarding  companies  APEG-BVBO, 
is a member of various professional legal organisations, 
a member of the redaction board of Private Veiligheid — 
Sécurité  Privé  and  the  author  of  articles  and  contribu-
tions on various legal and security-related topics.

61

Ethics and security in a changing world — the 
industry perspective

We endeavour to create partnerships with our clients in 
order to develop and modify the chosen security solu-
tions to adapting circumstances.

Round table on the ethics of security and 
surveillance technologies

A changing security environment

In a fast-changing world, both on account of technologi-
cal developments, security threats and of expectations 
of  society,  the  private  security  industry  needs  to  focus 
on  security  solutions  that  respond  to  these  facts.  For 
G4S,  faced  with  these  developments,  good  corporate 
citizenship works around four cornerstones: a solid focus 
on  prevention;  a  clear,  transparent  and  flexible  regula-
tory  framework;  which  is  practical  and  balanced;  and 
allows for partnerships between the industry, the public 
authorities and the public at large. Taking up its role in 
the public security debate is for G4S part and parcel of 
ethical behaviour.

Introduction

First and foremost, please allow me to thank you for the 
invitation to the round table and the opportunity to pre-
sent our views on the ethics of security and surveillance 
technologies. As legal affairs manager for G4S Belgium, 
managing  risks,  also  of  an  ethical  nature,  is  what  I  am 
mostly  confronted  with.  I  am  therefore  pleased  to  join 
this debate.

On G4S

G4S is a world leader in providing security and surveil-
lance solutions. We are active worldwide, in more than 
125 countries, and employ over 675 000 employees. In 
Belgium  we  work  for  international  institutions  (among 
others in this very building), airports, ports, large indus-
tries, office environments, SMEs, the retail business, hos-
pitals, sports facilities, events and home owners. We pro-
vide  a  mix  of  security  solutions,  consisting  of  manned 
guarding,  remote  monitoring,  surveillance  technolo-
gies,  security  audits  and/or  training  services.  Our  cli-
ents  are  individuals,  companies  or  public  authorities. 

In  today’s  world  we  are  faced  with  four  facts  that 
determine  our  role:  security  is  challenged  increasingly 
and  security  threats  change  rapidly,  e.g.  international 
threats,  cross-border  crime,  organised  crime,  targeting 
specific  targets  such  as  private  homes,  retail  environ-
ments, certain valuables, (air)ports or international insti-
tutions. Perhaps because of this there has been a sharp 
rise in security awareness since incidents such as 9/11. 
Our  industry  faces  a  regulatory  framework  which  is 
expanding, and obviously technology is changing at an 
ever-growing pace.

Facing  these  developments,  one  must  continuously 
question how to act as a responsible corporate citizen. 
For G4S, this works around four main milestones: focus 
on  prevention,  uphold  regulation,  promote  feasibility 
and practicability, and foster partnerships.

Good corporate citizenship

First and foremost, our industry is all about prevention: 
the solutions we offer, the needs of our clients, the con-
cerns of our employees — nobody wants the very secu-
rity  threats  we  deal  with  to  occur.  The  very  essence  of 
our  business  is  prevention,  and  minimising  harmful 
behaviour is therefore our prime ethical motive.

For G4S, the most effective prevention consists of a com-
bination  of  manned  guarding,  remote  monitoring  and 
surveillance  equipment,  and  visible  solutions  with  the 
aim of deterring — the dissuasion effect. If an incident 
occurs, these measures result in evidence that our clients 
(or police authorities) may use to uphold their rights. It’s 
also about organising effective response when an inci-
dent occurs, making sure our clients’ goods and prem-
ises are affected at little as possible. We see security as 

62

a basic right for all and crime prevention as a matter for 
both the public and the private sector.

Good  corporate  citizenship  in  this  sense  includes,  for 
G4S,  a  solid  focus  on  diversity  in  recruitment,  equal 
opportunity  and  health  and  safety  for  all  our  employ-
ees, with an important focus on training and screening. 
Our  goal  is  to  create  opportunities  through  objective 
recruitment  criteria  and  training  regardless  of  back-
ground  or  level  of  education.  Many  job  candidates, 
without  any  background  in  security,  join  G4S  and  are 
able to give their career a new start through our train-
ing programmes. Lastly, good corporate citizenship for 
G4S and its employees means compliance with all appli-
cable regulations and guidelines (both legal obligations 
as contractual agreements or clients’ on-site guidelines).

A  second  milestone  is  the  importance  of  a  regulatory 
framework which is clear and transparent, and balanced, 
taking into account the rights and responsibilities of all 
stakeholders concerned — private industry, the general 
public and the public authorities involved when it comes 
to security (police, judicial authorities, local authorities). 
A regulatory framework which applies to all concerned 
and creates a level playing field, in which it is clear what 
to expect from all actors in this debate and by which all 
industry players are treated equally — which is impor-
tant for legal certainty but also for competitive fairness 
and to avoid free riders.

It  is  of  great  importance  that  regulations  focus  on  the 
essence and on practical solutions, and strike the right 
balance  between  the  rights  and  obligations  of  all  con-
cerned.  We  subscribe  in  this  respect  to  the  principle 
of  proportionality,  meaning  —  also  for  legislators  — 
that  regulatory  measures  should  be  proportionate  to 
the  objective  they  seek  to  fulfil.  Outright  prohibitions 
should be avoided when measures with smaller impact 
resulting in like effects would do the job. This of course 
requires  flexibility  from  lawmakers  to  meet  the  chang-
ing  needs  of  society,  of  the  security  industry  and  of 
technological  developments.  Such  flexibility  should  be 
incorporated  into  the  regulatory  framework  through, 
for  example,  sunset  clauses  or  life-cycle  analysis-type 
clauses for technological developments.

The search for practical solutions and feasibility is there-
fore of the essence: an ethical rule is a rule that works in 
practice,  not  only  in  theory.  Our  regulatory  framework 
should either be practical, or should not exist. Transpar-
ency, for example by using easy-to-use techniques, pic-
tograms,  security  methods.  Deadlines  and  transitional 
periods  which  work  in  practice.  Prior  information  and 
consultation with the industry sector, and hearing what 
they have to say. Easy-to-use solutions are key. Balanced 
and proportionate, without the prohibition of technolo-
gies or use thereof for one actor that is lawful for another 
without profound reason.

Lastly, our industry advocates partnerships between all 
partners in the security debate. G4S believes that, in the 
currently  ongoing  debate  on  the  core  activities  of  the 
police  and  judicial  authorities,  private  industry  can  act 
as  partner  for  certain  tasks  and  activities  (more  of  an 
administrative  or  support  nature)  so  public  authorities 
can focus on their core activities. This of course requires 
openness  and  flexibility  from  both  sides.  It  requires 
guarantees  from  private  industry,  in  terms  of  training, 
screening and confidentiality, of a high standard. G4S is 
ready to take up its role in the public security environ-
ment, and is doing so already in numerous EU countries: 
Belgium  (ports,  airports,  public  buildings,  international 
institutions), the Netherlands (immigration centres), the 
United Kingdom (prisons, detention centres, police cen-
tres) and numerous other countries.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I believe it is fair to say that the security 
world  changes  rapidly,  on  account  of  technological 
developments,  the  type  and  nature  of  security  threats 
and the expectations of society towards security in gen-
eral. For G4S, faced with these developments, good cor-
porate citizenship works around four milestones: a solid 
focus  on  prevention;  a  clear,  transparent  and  flexible 
regulatory framework; which is practical and balanced; 
and  allows  for  partnerships  between  the  industry,  the 
public authorities and the public at large. Taking up its 
role in the public security debate is for G4S part and par-
cel of ethical behaviour.

63

Mr Hendrik Keersmaekers

Ethics and Security in a changing world – the 
Industry Perspective

EGE Round Table on the Ethics of Security and 
Surveillance Technologies

Brussels, 18 September 2013
Hendrik Keersmaekers
Legal Affairs Manager – G4S

G4S Group

G4S present globally, in more than 125 countries, with over 
675.000 employees
G4S Belgium : international institutions, airports, ports, large 
industries, office environments, retail, SMEʼs, hospitals, 
sports facilities, events, homes.

64

G4S Group

Security today = combination of audits & training, manned-guarding, 
remote monitoring and surveillance technologies
“clients” are individuals, private companies and public authorities
Focus on flexible, integrated security solutions in partnership with 
clients

Ethics and Security

4 Facts facing the Security and Surveillance Industry

Increasing security challenges (e.g. international, organised, 
targeted)
Rise in public security awareness
Expanding regulatory framework
Ever-changing technology

4 Cornerstones of Ethical behaviour in the Security and Surveillance 
Industry

Focus on Prevention
Uphold Regulation
Promote Feasibility / Practicability
Foster Partnerships

65

Prevention

Cornerstone 1 : Ethics of the Security Industry = Prevention
Ethical behaviour of a good corporate citizen starts with focus on 
prevention

Prevention = how to minimise harmful behaviour

• Combination of manned guarding, remote monitoring and surveillance equipment 

results in visible security – dissuasion

• Establish proof for prosecution / damage claims
• Organise effective response to potential security incidents

Security = a basic right, both on individual level as society level
Crime Prevention & Security = a matter of both public and private sector

For G4S, ethical corporate citizenship includes

focus on diversity in the workforce, equal opportunity, H&S
focus on security training and screening

= creating opportunities through objective recruitment criteria and training 
regardless of level of education

focus on compliance

Regulation

Cornerstone 2 = the importance of regulatory framework

A clear, transparent regulatory framework
Taking into account the rights and responsibilities of all stakeholders 
(industry – general public – police authorities)
Creating a level playing field for all actors concerned
• Towards society : clear what to expect from industry players
•

Internal : all industry players equally treated – competitive concern –
no free-riders

Focussing on the essence : practical solutions, balance between 
rights and obligations (proportionality)
Flexible enough to meet the challenges of technological evolution
• = requires flexibility from lawmakers
• = ideally “incorporated” in regulations

e.g. sunset clause, “life-cycle analysis” clause for technological / society evolution  

66

Feasibility

Cornerstone 3 : promotion of feasible / practical solutions
Regulatory framework should be practical or not be
•

transparancy e.g. by using easy to use, uniform pictograms; 
straightforward methods

• Feasible deadlines / transition periods
• Prior information and consultation of industry
Upholding regulations that are not feasible in practice, is harmful for 
all stakeholders involved – industry, general public, public 
authorities.
Focus on easy solutions – keep it simple
Focus on balance between stakeholders : donʼt necessarily prohibit 
what is lawful for other stakeholders

Privacy rules, Private Security regulations, rules on the use of CCTV 
equipment, etc should always focus on transparency, proportionality 
and practicality.

Partnerships

Cornerstone 4 : the fostering of Partnerships

All stakeholders are Partners in the Security Debate
Core activities of public authorities versus “administrative” or 
“support” tasks
Role of Private Security Industry = an effective partner for public 
authorities, taking over “administrative” or “support” tasks so public 
authorities can focus on their core business
Requires flexibility and openness from both sides

Private Security Industry is ready to take up its role in the public 
security environment – and is doing so in numerous EU countries.

e.g. in ports and airports (BE)

e.g. in migration centers (NL)
e.g. in prisons and detention centers (UK)
e.g. in police stations and community centers (UK)

67

Conclusion

Changes in security threats, expectations of society, expanding 
legislative requirements and technological developments are here to 
stay (and even increase in impact)
For G4S, when facing these developments, good corporate 
citizenship and ethical behaviour works around 
• Prevention / equal opportunity / training / compliance
• A clear and transparant regulatory framework
• Which is practical and balanced
• And promotes partnerships with authorities, the public at large
G4S calls on lawmakers to create clear, practical and flexible rules, 
and to jointly promote these partnerships.

G4S – contact us

Hendrik Keersmaekers
Legal Affairs Manager
G4S Belgium
Koning Boudewijnlaan 30
1800 Vilvoorde

t : 00 32 499 86 12 35
@ : hendrik.keersmaekers@be.g4s.com

68

TEAMWORK & 
COLLABORATION

BEST PEOPLE

CUSTOMER FOCUS 

EXPERTISE

INTEGRITY

PERFORMANCE

69

EGE round table on the ethics of 
security and surveillance technologies

Dr Ben Hayes

(Statewatch)

Dr Ben Hayes has worked for the civil liberties organisation 
Statewatch since 1996 and is a fellow of the Trans national 
Institute.  He  has  written  extensively  on  the  impact  of 
international surveillance, security and counterterrorism 
policies  and  EU  justice  and  home  affairs  law.  Dr  Hayes 
also works as an independent researcher and consultant 
to NGOs and IGOs such as the European Centre for Consti-

tutional and Human Rights, the European Parliament, the 
Centre for European Policy Studies and the Heinrich Boll 
Foundation.  He  been  involved  in  various  ethical  review 
groups  relating  to  EU-funded  security  projects  and  pro-
vided extensive advice to the European Commission on 
its  security  research  programme.  For  more  information 
see: http://www.tni.org/users/ben-hayes

71

Thanks for having me here.

This  initiative  is  something  I’ve  long  advocated  so  I’m 
delighted to see the EGE now addressing these issues.

My talk today is going to draw on my experience of the 
EU security research programme, about which I’ve writ-
ten several critical reports.

I  guess  I’m  broadly  interested  in  the  consequences  for 
civil liberties of throwing taxpayers’ money at the devel-
opment of new security technologies in the absence of 
meaningful democratic controls.

My criticism of EU security research funding — which has 
already totalled EUR 1.5 billion to date and which is going 
to  be  worth  much  more  as  the  new  Horizon  2020  pro-
gramme gets underway — stems from the three guiding 
principles on which this programme has been developed:

•	 we need to develop technologies to help us fight ter-
rorism,  crime,  immigration,  crisis  situations,  etc.  — 
we could talk about what that means but let’s leave 
those aside for now;

•	 we need to support the transfer of technologies from 
the military to the civilian domain to help us do this;

•	 we  need  to  subsidise  the  development  of  the  EU 
security industry so they can compete in the increas-
ingly lucrative global market for ‘homeland security’.

I’ve argued that these premises — which are mirrored in 
the EU Member States and copied from the United States 
—  have  essentially  unleashed  a  new  kind  of  arms  race, 
one in which all the weapons are steadily turning inwards, 
as governments move away from external threats to the 
threats allegedly posed by their own citizens.

Since  writing  these  reports  I’ve  spent  far  longer  than 
I could ever have imagined looking at how EU security 
research is done. I’ve sat on three European Commission 
advisory groups; I’ve been an ethical reviewer of funding 
applications for the EC; and I’ve sat on ethical advisory 
boards for EU security projects.

So what I’m going to say today is very much influenced 
by the practical experience of how ethics are addressed 
in the security research field at the EU level.

And I’m going to talk about two of my research interests 
— drones and surveillance technologies — to try to help 
us think through the problems of applying and enforc-
ing meaningful ethical standards.

But  I  want  to  preface  what  I’m  about  to  say  by  stat-
ing  that  I’m  fairly  cynical  about  what  can  be  achieved 
through the application of ‘better ethics’ because I think 
that many of the problems that we face are fundamen-
tally of a political and legal nature.

Political in the sense of the  mania for all things home-
land security that I’ve written about in my work over the 
past decade.

Legal in the sense of the failure of the law to keep pace 
with  the  proliferation  of  new  security  and  surveillance 
technologies — which brings us back to politics again.

So to temper my cynicism I want to start by encouraging 
you to be as ambitious as you can in your forthcoming 
opinion.

I for one find it extremely troubling that while the pur-
veyors  and  users  of  some  new  security  technologies 
have  clearly  lost  their  moral  compass,  we  still  haven’t 
managed to develop anything like the kind of dedicated 
ethical  frameworks  that  exist  for  the  development  of 
medicine or biotechnologies in the security field.

This despite the billions that we’re throwing at it and the 
obvious threats to values that society holds dear.

On the contrary, all we’ve really done is borrow from those 
other fields with the result — at least at the EU level — that 
ethics in the security field still resembles little more than 
a checkbox exercise: animals (no), children (no), informed 
consent (yes), data protection (yes) and so on.

Unless  we  can  move  beyond  this,  I  fear  our  time  here 
may be wasted.

72

So let’s start with drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, 
or remotely piloted vehicles as industry now prefers us 
to call them. I’m going to call them drones.

Drones  have  sadly  become  synonymous  with  the  tar-
geted killing programme of the United States in which 
pilotless  aircraft  controlled  by  domestic  operators  are 
sent  to  deliver  precision  missile  strikes  in  places  like 
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

Except  that  they’re  not  apparently  all  that  precise  and 
countless  innocents  have  died.  That’s  not  the  fault  of 
drone  technology,  of  course,  that’s  the  fault  of  the  US 
government  and  an  international  community  that  has 
failed to check their use.

So  that’s  how  we  perceive  of  drones  now,  but  this  is 
apparently just the beginning of the drone revolution.

Drones  are  going  to  get  smarter;  they’re  going  to  get 
smaller.

And they’re going to get much more problematic from 
a civil liberties perspective. The drone industry promises 
a world awash with drones:

•	 microdrones,

•	

surveillance drones,

•	 weaponised drones,

•	

less lethal drones,

•	 autonomous drones — and we’re talking here about 

both flight and target acquisition,

•	 aggressive drones,

•	 defensive drones,

•	 passive drones,

•	

life-saving drones,

•	 passenger-carrying drones,

•	 even  drones  that  deliver  the  mail,  if  the  industry 

salesman are to be believed.

It seems to me that the fundamental question for ethics 
that the drone revolution now poses, and please excuse 
me for oversimplifying things, is how to stop the devel-
opment of the ‘bad drones’, for want of a better descrip-
tion, without impeding the development of drones for 
legitimate purposes, of which there are surely many.

Before we try to answer that question its worth looking at 
what’s  happening  in  the  EU,  which  has  decided  that  we 
need to invest heavily in the good drones to enhance both 
our security and our global competitiveness. For example:

•	

•	

the  drones  that  we’re  going  to  use  to  intercept 
unwanted  migrants  and  refugees  in  the  Mediterra-
nean;

the drones that we need to use to stop stolen or sus-
picious vehicles autonomously;

•	 and the drones that we’re going to use for search and 
rescue and crisis management in the event of man-
made or natural disasters.

All of these are actual EU-funded research and develop-
ment projects by the way.

The EU is also making substantial investments in generic 
drone technologies and the infrastructure needed to fly 
them  —  satellite  navigation  systems,  communications 
systems,  air  traffic  control  systems,  collision  avoidance 
systems,  autonomous  flight  and  targeting  capacities 
and so on.

Our research suggests that the EU’s drone investment is 
already fast approaching EUR 500 million and is likely to 
increase substantially over the coming years.

And while it hasn’t funded any of the really bad drones — 
the  autonomous  killing  machines  that  so  many  have 
warned  of  —  it  is  simultaneously  subsidising  many  of 

73

the components used by those drones and the defence 
conglomerates that are making them.

All  of  this  in  the  name  of  ensuring  that  drones  can  be 
introduced into Europe’s civilian airspace by 2028.

What are the problems with this approach and what is 
the role of applied ethics here?

To my mind the principle problem is one of dual use. We 
are  funding  technologies  in  the  name  of  civil  security 
that are every bit as likely to be used in a military scenario 
or for new forms of highly militarised internal security.

I also fear that once the genie is out of the bottle in terms 
of  the  technology  —  be  it  military,  surveillance,  less 
lethal or whatever — it is extremely difficult if not impos-
sible to put it back in. The technology is ubiquitous and 
the technological development is spread across global 
production and development lines.

So what can be done?

I  think  that  we  obviously  need  to  think  very  carefully 
about  how  to  prevent  new  drone  technologies  being 
used for nefarious purposes.

I  think  we  need  to  think  about  research  and  develop-
ment, not just the use of new technologies.

I think we need to think about dual use and whether we 
have the proper safeguards in place to prevent nefarious 
technologies  being  developed  on  the  back  of  benign 
investment.

Is the fact that the same GPS applications and satellites 
are  used  to  fly  armed  drones,  surveillance  drones  and 
guided missiles an issue that can be addressed through 
applied ethics?

How can dual use controls be effective when security is 
the new defence, to coin a well-worn phrase?

Is  it  relevant  that  security  technologies  subject  to 
notional democratic control in the EU can become overt 

instruments of repression in the hands of undemocratic 
governments  (a  problem  made  more  pressing  by  the 
absence of effective export controls)?

What is the role of applied ethics in the governance of 
new security technologies? At present it plays no formal 
role — why? How does this compare to other new fields 
and technologies?

Ultimately I think we’re going to have to start thinking 
and talking about red lines — a list of banned applica-
tions and such like.

And, given the failure of politicians and lawyers, we need 
ethicists, among others, to tell us where those red lines 
are.

Now a few words about surveillance technologies.

When  I  started  at  Statewatch  in  1996  we  were  on  the 
cusp of the current surveillance revolution.

Prior  to  that  point,  surveillance  was  targeted  at  sus-
pected  individuals  and  regulated  by  the  judiciary, 
through warrants and legal controls.

Since  then  we  have  moved  rapidly  towards  an  era  of 
mass surveillance in which everyone is considered a pri-
ori a suspect, and in which many of the entities doing the 
surveillance are now self-regulating rather than strictly 
controlled by the judiciary.

I’ve also argued that the post-9/11 confluence of politi-
cal  and  economic  relations  has  created  a  surveillance-
industrial  complex  in  Europe,  and  that  left  unchecked 
this promises to deliver ever more powerful surveillance 
technologies in perpetuity.

The genie is already out of the bottle and, as more and 
more  of  our  social  and  material  lives  move  online,  the 
more difficult it is to put it back in.

Edward  Snowden  has  revealed  not  just  the  extent  of 
communications surveillance in the US, but the way in 
which  the  NSA  was  evidently  trying  to  build  an  infra-

74

structure in which its analysts could effectively Google 
the profiles and social networks of citizens and suspects 
and foreigners alike.

You  may  say  this  is,  again,  a  US  problem  and  one  that 
can be solved through better regulation of the US intel-
ligence services.

I would argue that what Snowden has shown us is the 
tendency  innate  to  the  development  of  surveillance 
and security systems — the idea that we should use all 
available information to develop as detailed as possible 
a  profile  of  individuals  and  to  use  what  is  now  being 
called ‘big data’ to identify risks in large populations.

We see this in the commercial world, at the border and 
in our intelligence and security apparatuses, and we’re 
going to see it more and more in the workplace, on our 
streets and in cyberspace.

We’re also going to see the same kind of automation and 
targeting technology being developed for drones being 
used for surveillance systems — smart CCTV for example.

Of course, we do have laws and principles and standards 
that should govern the use of surveillance, but as I said 
earlier  these  have  not  kept  pace  with  technological  or 
practical developments.

Surveillance should, according to established principles 
of international law and jurisprudence:

•	 only be used where information cannot be obtained 

using less intrusive means;

•	 be targeted rather than indiscriminate;

•	 be prescribed by law and under judicial control;

•	 be  legitimate  and  proportionate  in  a  democratic 

society;

•	 be  transparent  and  accountable,  and  individuals 

should be able to challenge its use and effect.

Moreover, the use of data collected through surveillance 
must be restricted (the so-called purpose limitation prin-
ciple), and sensitive data such as that revealing racial ori-
gin, political beliefs and affiliations, genetic characteris-
tics and so on should be subject to an even higher level 
of protection.

But  policy  and  principle  appear  to  have  long  since 
parted company, a situation which should be modestly 
improved  by  the  new  EU  data  protection  regulation, 
which  thanks  to  Edward  Snowden  is  now  likely  to  be 
stronger than it otherwise would have been.

But  protecting  the  personal  data  gathered  by  private 
entities  is  not  the  same  as  regulating  surveillance, 
never mind mitigating its obviously corrosive effects on 
democracy or human rights.

So what is the role for ethics here?

I’d  like  to  think  that  rigorous  ethical  standards  might 
prevent  the  development  of  surveillance  technologies 
whose  deployment  would  obviously  be  contrary  to 
international law, but I was forced to resign from an EC 
advisory group on ethics after being accused of trying to 
use ethics to enforce the law.

So I’ll finish with a few things that you might like to think 
about.

Is it ethical to develop surveillance technologies whose 
use  would  breach  the  legal  standards  and  principles 
I mentioned a moment ago?

When  is  surveillance  necessary  and  proportionate  in 
a  democratic  society?  Why  aren’t  we  even  thinking 
about — never mind investing in — alternatives to sur-
veillance and control?

Just  because  commercial  entities  are  building  up 
detailed  profiles  about  their  customers,  does  the  state 
have  the  right  to  access  them,  or  to  build  up  its  own 
detailed profiles?

75

Why do we talk about surveillance as if all forms of sur-
veillance are the same?

Isn’t it ridiculous to argue that just because people have 
accepted  CCTV/surveillance  cameras,  they  must  there-
fore be accepting of smart CCTV and surveillance cam-
eras that they can’t even see?

Shouldn’t people have a reasonable expectation of pri-
vacy  in  public  places  and  on  public  communications 
networks?

We wouldn’t accept state agents recording and analys-
ing every conversation we have in a park or a restaurant, 
so why do we accept the argument that social networks 
and websites are fair game?

When is data mining acceptable in a security context?

And  how  do  we  measure  its  acceptability  or  effective-
ness?

I  think  that  civil  libertarians  and  ethicists  would  prob-
ably agree on the answers to many of these questions; 
the difficulty is translating those answers into the practi-
cal tools we need to defend our democracy and human 
rights and hope that the EGE can make a much needed 
contribution in this regard.

Thanks again.

76

EGE round table on the ethics of 
security and surveillance technologies

Professor Giorgio 
Agamben

(University of Verona)

Giorgio  Agamben  graduated  from  the  University  of 
Rome after writing a dissertation on the political thought 
of Simone Weil. In the 1960s he was close friends with 
Elsa  Morante,  Pier  Paolo  Pasolini  and  Ingeborg  Bach-
mann. 

In 1966 and 1968 he participated in Martin Heidegger’s 
Le Thor seminars (on Heraclitus and Hegel).

From  1970 to 1974  he  lived  in  Paris,  where  he  taught 
Italian  at  the  University  of  Haute-Bretagne.  He  studied 
linguistics  and  medieval  culture.  He  was  friends  with 
Pierre Klossowski and Italo Calvino.

From  1975 to 1975  he  conducted  research  at  the  War-
burg Institute library in London. He worked on the book  
Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture (Einaudi, 
1997).

Returning  to  Italy  in  1978  he  edited  the  Italian  edition 
of  the  complete  works  of  Walter  Benjamin  for  Einaudi, 
containing important manuscripts.

From  1968 to 1993  he  was  director  of  programmes  at 
the Collège International de Philosopbie (Paris). 

From 1988 to 2009 he taught at the Universities of Mac-
erata, Verona and Venice. 

He  began  to  work  on  political  philosophy  from  the 
1990s. By rereading Aristotelian politics, and the ideas of 
Michel Foucault and Carl Schmitt, he developed a theory 
on the relationship between law and life and a criticism 
of the concept of sovereignty (Homer Sacer I: Sovereign 
Power  and  Bare  Life  (Einaudi,  1995)  followed  by  Homer 
Sacer II: State of Exception (Bollati 2003)), which marked 
a new direction in contemporary political thought.

Since 1994 he has been a visiting professor at universi-
ties in America (Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, Los Ange-
les and Evanston).

He was appointed Distinguished Professor at New York 
University in 2003, but he left the post in protest against 
the United States’ government policy.

He has received an honorary doctorate from the univer-
sities of Fribourg (Switzerland), Buenos Aires and Rio de 
la Plata (Argentina) and is an Albertus Magnus professor 
at the University of Cologne. He was awarded the Leo-
pold Lucas Prize in 2012 by the University of Tübingen.

77

Présentation (original version in French)

Lorsque j’ai reçu votre invitation, j’ai tout d’abord pensé 
que la seule façon juste d’y répondre était de venir ici et 
de me taire. Car, aujourd’hui, on est arrivé à un tel point en 
matière d’éthique qu’accepter la discussion signifie avoir 
déjà cédé sur l’essentiel. L’éthique ne peut jamais consis-
ter dans l’acceptation de facto d’une situation inhumaine 
et  la  prétention  d’y  poser  des  limites  de  jure.  Si,  après 
la  décision  sur  la  «solution  finale»,  on  avait  trouvé  des 
experts pour s’asseoir autour d’une table et discuter de la 
légitimité des camps et de la façon de les rendre un peu 
moins atroces, on aurait estimé que ces gens-là étaient 
éthiquement  aveugles.  Pourtant,  nous  savons  que  des 
commissions de la Croix-Rouge ont bel et bien visité cer-
tains camps et donné des avis et des conseils tout à fait 
modérés de cet ordre. Ces responsables auraient dû faire 
l’objet d’un procès comme les commandants des camps, 
même si, comme cela a été le cas pour l’architecte d’Aus-
chwitz (qui avait fait ses études au Bauhaus), il est pro-
bable qu’ils eussent été absous. Actuellement, il semble 
que  l’éthique  professionnelle  ne  consiste  pas  à  refuser 
de faire ce qui est inhumain, mais uniquement à le faire 
selon  les  règles  techniques  de  la  profession.  Je  dis  cela 
car il y a en ce moment même des architectes célèbres 
qui bâtissent en Chine des villes nouvelles où le gouver-
nement  chinois  va  loger  des  millions  de  personnes  qui 
ont  été  déplacées  contre  leur  volonté,  sans  se  deman-
der s’il est légitime de collaborer ainsi à ce qu’il faut bien 
appeler une déportation.

Bien  sûr,  aujourd’hui,  personne  n’admettrait  de  telles 
discussions  sur  Auschwitz.  On  trouve  cependant  légi-
time  de  discuter  du  nucléaire,  bien  qu’un  jour  on  esti-
mera peut-être que ceux qui le font sont tout aussi éthi-
quement  aveugles,  mais  ce  genre  d’aveuglement  est 
une pathologie aujourd’hui très répandue, surtout chez 
ceux qui se déclarent experts en bioéthique.

Or,  dans  une  toute  autre  sphère,  qui  est  celle  du  gou-
vernement des hommes, j’estime que la formule qu’on 
entend  constamment  dans  toute  l’Europe  aujourd’hui: 
«pour  des  raisons  de  sécurité»  («for  security  reasons», 
«per ragioni di sicurezza», etc.) ne peut pas être acceptée 
en tant que base de discussion. Mais, au lieu de me taire, 

j’estime pour une fois devoir essayer de vous exposer les 
raisons de ce refus.

Il  s’agit  tout  d’abord  de  comprendre  le  but  véritable 
des mesures de sécurité, qui n’est pas, comme on pour-
rait le croire, de simplement prévenir des dangers, des 
troubles, voire des catastrophes. Il me faudra pour cela 
retracer brièvement les origines du concept de sécurité. 
Il va de soi qu’il ne saurait être question ici de retracer 
l’histoire  de  la  notion.  Les  recherches  historiques  dans 
ce domaine sont d’ailleurs tout à fait insuffisantes, car on 
y  voit  confondus  des  notions  et  des  dispositifs  hétéro-
gènes, et ces dispositifs sont par ailleurs traités sans tenir 
aucun compte de la stratégie dans le cadre de laquelle 
ils sont employés. Ainsi, il semble tout à fait correct de 
faire  remonter  les  origines  de  la  sécurité  au  célèbre 
proverbe  romain  Salus  publica  suprema  lex  et  d’en  ins-
crire  l’histoire  dans  le  paradigme  de  l’état  d’exception. 
On devra alors mentionner le senatus consultum ultimum 
et la dictature à Rome, le principe du droit canon selon 
lequel  necessitas  legem  non  habet,  les  Comités  de  salut 
public  pendant  la  Révolution  française  et  la  Constitu-
tion  du  22  frimaire  de  l’an  VIII  (1799),  qui  évoque  spé-
cifiquement  «les  troubles  qui  menaceraient  la  sécurité 
de l’État», jusqu’au fameux article 18 de la Constitution 
de  Weimar,  qui  fut  le  fondement  juridique  du  régime 
national-socialiste et dans lequel la sécurité publique est 
expressément mentionnée.

Une  telle  généalogie  est  sans  doute  correcte,  mais  elle 
ne  nous  permet  pas  de  comprendre  les  dispositifs  de 
sécurité qui nous sont familiers. Tandis que les dispositifs 
d’exception  visaient  un  état  essentiellement  provisoire, 
une menace immédiate et réelle qu’il fallait à tout prix éli-
miner, en suspendant pour un temps limité les garanties 
de la loi, les raisons de sécurité dont on parle aujourd’hui 
constituent  au  contraire  une  technique  normale  et 
stable  de  gouvernement.  Si  l’on  veut  se  référer  à  l’état 
d’exception, il faut donc le faire à partir d’une situation 
où l’exception se confond avec la règle, comme ce fut le 
cas pour le régime nazi, qui a été du début à la fin parfai-
tement légal, puisque l’état d’exception que Hitler avait 
immédiatement  déclaré  sur  la  base  de  l’article  18  de  la 
Constitution de Weimar ne fut jamais révoqué.

78

Il est donc préférable de suivre le conseil de Michel Fou-
cault  et  de  chercher  l’origine  de  la  sécurité  ailleurs,  au 
début  de  l’économie  moderne,  chez  François  Quesnay 
et  les  physiocrates,  dont  on  ne  saurait  surestimer  l’in-
fluence  sur  la  pratique  gouvernementale  de  la  moder-
nité. Bien avant les physiocrates, à compter du traité de 
Westphalie,  les  grands  États  absolutistes  avaient  com-
mencé à introduire dans leurs discours l’idée que le sou-
verain devait veiller à la sécurité des sujets. Mais ce n’est 
qu’avec Quesnay que la sécurité — ou, comme il le dit, 
la sûreté — devient le concept central de la doctrine du 
gouvernement, et cela, comme nous allons le voir, dans 
une forme très particulière. La lecture de l’article «Grains» 
qu’il  publia  dans  l’Encyclopédie  est  encore  aujourd’hui 
indispensable  pour  comprendre  la  gouvernementalité 
moderne, et on comprend pourquoi Voltaire a pu écrire 
que, une fois cet article paru, tous les Parisiens, au lieu 
de discuter de littérature ou de théâtre, ne parlaient plus 
que de grains et d’économie.

L’un  des  problèmes  majeurs  que  les  gouvernements 
devaient à l’époque affronter était celui des disettes et 
des  famines.  Jusqu’à  Quesnay,  on  essayait  de  prévenir 
les  famines  en  établissant  des  greniers  publics  et  en 
interdisant  l’exportation  de  graines,  mais  ces  mesures 
préventives  avaient  souvent  des  effets  négatifs  sur  la 
production.  L’idée  sans  doute  géniale  de  Quesnay  fut 
de renverser le procédé: au lieu d’essayer de prévenir les 
famines, il fallait les laisser se produire et, par la libéra-
lisation  du  commerce  aussi  bien  extérieur  qu’intérieur, 
être en mesure de les gouverner. Gouverner reprend ici 
son sens étymologique, c’est-à-dire «cybernétique»: un 
bon commandant ne peut pas éviter la tempête, mais, si 
la tempête se produit, il doit être capable de gouverner 
son bateau.

C’est dans ce sens qu’il faut comprendre le fameux dic-
ton qu’on attribue à Quesnay: «laissez faire, laissez pas-
ser».  Ce  n’est  pas  seulement  la  devise  du  libéralisme 
économique, c’est un paradigme de gouvernement, qui 
identifie la sécurité (Quesnay parle de «la sûreté des fer-
miers et des laboureurs») non pas dans la prévention des 
troubles  et  des  désastres,  mais  dans  la  capacité  de  les 
orienter dans une direction utile une fois qu’ils se sont 
produits.

Il  faut  mesurer  toute  la  portée  philosophique  du  ren-
versement dont il est ici question. Il s’agit, en effet, d’un 
tournant dans l’idée même de gouvernement, qui ren-
verse la traditionnelle relation hiérarchique entre causes 
et effets: puisqu’il est vain et, en tout cas, coûteux de gou-
verner les causes, il est plus utile et plus sûr de gouverner les 
effets. On peut donc établir un premier axiome: l’Ancien 
régime  essayait  de  gouverner  les  causes,  les  régimes 
modernes  prétendent  gouverner  les  effets.  L’impor-
tance de cet axiome n’est pas négligeable, car c’est bien 
ce paradigme qui va désormais régir de façon générale 
nos sociétés, de l’économie à l’écologie, de la politique 
étrangère  et  militaire  jusqu’aux  mesures  internes  de 
sécurité et de police. La modernité ne gouverne pas les 
causes mais les effets.

C’est cet axiome qui permet de comprendre ce fait autre-
ment  inexplicable:  la  convergence  actuelle  d’un  para-
digme  libéral  absolu  en  économie  avec  un  paradigme 
étatique  de  contrôle  sécuritaire  peut-être  sans  précé-
dent. Si l’objet du gouvernement est les effets et non pas 
les causes, il est évident qu’on sera forcé d’étendre et de 
multiplier les contrôles.

Je voudrais en donner deux exemples.

L’eau potable

Bien qu’on sache que l’eau potable va bientôt manquer 
dans de nombreux pays de la planète, aucun pays n’a de 
politique sérieuse pour éviter les gaspillages. En même 
temps, on voit se développer et se multiplier dans plu-
sieurs  pays  les  techniques  et  les  usines  pour  le  traite-
ment des eaux polluées, qui vont devenir le grand busi-
ness des années à venir.

Mon  second  exemple  a  trait  aux  dispositifs  biomé-
triques, un des aspects les plus inquiétants des techno-
logies sécuritaires contemporaines.

La biométrie est apparue en France au XIXe siècle avec 
Alphonse  Bertillon,  sous  la  forme  de  la  photographie 
signalétique  et  des  mesures  anthropométriques  qui 
devaient  constituer  ensemble  son  fameux  «portrait 
parlé».  Peu  après,  en  Angleterre,  Francis  Galton,  cou-

79

sin  de  Darwin  et  admirateur  de  Bertillon,  mit  au  point 
la  technologie  des  empreintes  digitales  (qui,  curieuse-
ment,  dans  ses  intentions  était  destinée  aux  indigènes 
des colonies dont les traits physiques tendaient à se res-
sembler pour un œil européen). Or, ces dispositifs ne ser-
vaient pas à prévenir le crime, mais à pouvoir reconnaître 
les criminels récidivistes. C’était encore le paradigme de 
la sécurité des physiocrates: ce n’est qu’une fois le crime 
accompli qu’on peut intervenir de façon efficace.

tronique  qui  contiendra  des  éléments  d’identification 
(empreintes  digitales  et  photographie  numérique). 
Il  semblerait  que  l’avis  négatif  d’une  commission  sem-
blable à la vôtre va retarder sa réalisation; mais, dans la 
dérive  gouvernementale  inéluctable  du  pouvoir  poli-
tique, les démocraties occidentales se préparent à mettre 
en place l’archivage de l’ADN de tous les citoyens, aussi 
bien dans un but de sécurité et de répression du crime 
que dans celui de la gestion de la santé publique.

Les  techniques  anthropométriques,  qui  avaient  donc 
été pensées pour les délinquants récidivistes, ont long-
temps  été  utilisées  dans  ce  but  exclusif.  En  1943,  le 
Congrès des États-Unis refusait encore le Citizen Identi-
fication Act, destiné à établir pour tous les citoyens des 
cartes d’identité avec les empreintes digitales. Mais, en 
vertu de la loi qui veut que ce qui a été inventé pour les 
criminels,  les  étrangers  et  les  Juifs  finisse  immanqua-
blement par être, tôt ou tard, appliqué à tous les êtres 
humains, les techniques qui avaient été élaborées pour 
les récidivistes furent étendues, au cours du XXe siècle, 
à  l’ensemble  des  citoyens.  La  photographie  signalé-
tique, accompagnée parfois des empreintes digitales, fit 
ainsi intégralement partie du document d’identité (une 
sorte de «carte Bertillon» en condensé) qui devenait pro-
gressivement obligatoire dans tous les États du monde.

Mais le dernier pas vient d’être franchi, ou du moins le 
sera-t-il  bientôt  complètement.  Grâce  au  développe-
ment des technologies biométriques qui peuvent rele-
ver rapidement les empreintes digitales ou la structure 
de la rétine ou de l’iris grâce à des scanners optiques, les 
dispositifs  biométriques  tendent  à  sortir  des  commis-
sariats  de  police  et  des  bureaux  de  l’immigration  pour 
pénétrer  dans  la  vie  quotidienne.  Dans  certains  pays, 
l’entrée  dans  les  cantines  d’université,  dans  les  lycées 
et  même  dans  les  écoles  primaires  est  déjà  contrôlée 
par un dispositif biométrique sur lequel l’étudiant pose 
distraitement sa main. Les industries du secteur biomé-
trique, qui connaissent actuellement un développement 
frénétique, préconisent d’habituer les citoyens à ce type 
de contrôle dès leur plus jeune âge.

La  nouvelle  carte  d’identité  biométrique  (INES)  est  en 
préparation;  elle  devrait  être  munie  d’une  puce  élec-

Des voix se sont élevées de différents côtés pour attirer 
l’attention  sur  les  dangers  que  comporte  un  contrôle 
absolu et sans limites de la part d’un pouvoir qui dispo-
serait  des  données  biométriques  et  génétiques  de  ses 
citoyens.  Dans  les  mains  d’un  tel  pouvoir,  l’extermina-
tion  des  Juifs  (et  tout  autre  génocide  imaginable),  qui 
a  été  menée  sur  une  base  documentaire  incompara-
blement moins efficace, eût été totale et extrêmement 
rapide. L’objection selon laquelle ces choses-là ne pour-
raient  pas  arriver  dans  nos  sociétés  démocratiques  est 
particulièrement stupide, vu l’état d’inconsistance et de 
corruption morale extrême dans lequel se trouvent les 
classes dirigeantes.

Il y a d’ailleurs un fait inquiétant sur lequel je vous invite 
à réfléchir: la législation actuellement en vigueur dans les 
pays européens en matière de sécurité est, par certains 
aspects, sensiblement plus restrictive que la législation 
correspondante  dans  les  États  fascistes  du  XXe  siècle. 
En tout cas, en ce qui concerne l’État dans lequel je vis, 
l’Italie, une simple comparaison avec le TULPS, le «texte 
unique des lois sur la sécurité publique» issu du régime 
fasciste  en  1926,  montre  que  celui-ci  est,  pour  l’essen-
tiel, encore en vigueur; mais les lois contre le terrorisme 
votées  dans  les  «années  de  plomb»  (fin  des  années 
70-années  80)  ont  sensiblement  restreint  les  garanties 
qu’il contenait. Et comme la législation française contre 
le terrorisme est plus sévère que la législation italienne, 
je crois que le résultat d’une comparaison avec la législa-
tion fasciste serait le même.

Mais ce n’est pas sur cet aspect important du problème 
sécuritaire  que  je  vais  m’arrêter,  puisque  je  le  suppose 
parfaitement connu par vous. Les réflexions que je vou-
drais vous proposer concernent plutôt la transformation 

80

des  relations  politiques  que  les  dispositifs  sécuritaires 
impliquent.  Cette  transformation  est  si  extrême  qu’on 
peut  légitimement  se  demander  non  seulement  si  les 
sociétés  dans  lesquelles  nous  vivons  peuvent  encore 
être  qualifiées  de  démocratiques,  mais  aussi  et  avant 
tout  si  elles  peuvent  encore  être  considérées  comme 
des sociétés politiques.

Christian Meier a montré comment, au Ve siècle av. J.-C., 
une transformation du concept politique s’est produite 
en Grèce, en passant par le biais d’une politisation (Politi-
sierung) de la citoyenneté. Tandis que, jusque-là, l’appar-
tenance  à  la polis,  à  la  cité,  était  avant  tout  définie  par 
des  conditions  et  statuts  sociaux  différents  (nobles  et 
membres des communautés culturelles, paysans et mar-
chands, seigneurs et clients, pères de famille et parents, 
etc.), désormais, la citoyenneté devient en tant que telle 
le critère de l’identité sociale.

«Il  se  produit  ainsi,  écrit  Meier,  une  identité  politique 
spécifiquement grecque de la citoyenneté, dans laquelle 
le fait que les individus devaient se conduire comme des 
citoyens  trouva  une  forme  institutionnelle.  L’apparte-
nance aux groupes constitués à partir des communautés 
économiques ou religieuses, etc., fut reléguée au second 
plan. Dans la mesure où les citoyens d’une démocratie 
se vouaient à la vie politique, ils se comprenaient eux-
mêmes  comme  membres  de  la  polis.  Polis  et  politela, 
cité  et  citoyenneté,  se  définissaient  réciproquement. 
La citoyenneté devint ainsi une activité et une forme de 
vie, par laquelle la cité (polis) se constitua en un domaine 
clairement  distinct  de  la  maison  (Yoikos).  La  politique 
devint ainsi un espace public opposé à l’espace privé où 
régnait la nécessité.»

Selon  Meier,  ce  processus  de  politisation  spécifique-
ment grec a été transmis en héritage à la politique occi-
dentale, dans laquelle la citoyenneté est restée — bien 
sûr avec des changements et des hauts et des bas — le 
facteur décisif.

dépolitisation.  De  seuil  de  politisation  actif  et  irréduc-
tible,  il  est  devenu  une  condition  purement  passive, 
où l’action et l’inaction, le public et le privé s’estompent 
et  se  confondent.  Ce  processus  de  dépolitisation  de 
la citoyenneté est tellement évident que je ne m’y arrê-
terai pas.

L’hypothèse que je vous propose est que les dispositifs 
de  sécurité  ont  joué  dans  ce  processus  un  rôle  décisif. 
L’extension  progressive  aux  citoyens  des  techniques 
d’identification qui étaient réservées aux criminels (ou, 
plus  tard,  aux  Juifs)  ne  peut  pas  ne  pas  rétroagir  sur 
l’identité politique de ceux-ci. Pour la première fois dans 
l’histoire de l’humanité, l’identité n’est plus fonction de 
la «personne» sociale et de sa reconnaissance, du «nom» 
et de la «renommée», mais de données biologiques qui 
ne peuvent entretenir aucun rapport avec elle, telles les 
arabesques  insensées  que  mon  pouce  teinté  d’encre 
a  laissées  sur  une  feuille  dans  un  bureau  de  police  ou 
l’ordonnance des gènes dans la double hélice de l’ADN. 
Le fait le plus neutre et privé devient ainsi le véhicule de 
l’identité sociale, qui perd ainsi son caractère public.

Mais si mon identité est désormais déterminée en der-
nière analyse par des faits biologiques, qui ne dépendent 
en  rien  de  ma  volonté  et  sur  lesquels  je  n’ai  pas  la 
moindre prise, la construction de quelque chose comme 
une  identité  politique  devient  problématique.  Quel 
type  de  relations  puis-je  établir  avec  mes  empreintes 
digitales  ou  avec  mon  code  génétique?  La  nouvelle 
identité est une identité sans personne, où l’espace de 
l’éthique  et  de  la  politique  que  nous  étions  habitués 
à concevoir perd son sens et exige qu’on le repense de 
fond  en  comble.  Tandis  que  le  citoyen  grec  se  définis-
sait par l’opposition entre le privé et le public, la maison, 
siège de la vie reproductive, et la cité, lieu du politique, 
le  citoyen  moderne  semble  plutôt  évoluer  dans  une 
zone d’indifférence entre le public et le privé, ou, pour 
employer les termes de Hobbes, entre le corps physique 
et le corps politique.

Or,  c’est  précisément  ce  facteur  politique  essentiel  qui 
se trouve pris aujourd’hui de façon progressive et appa-
remment  irrévocable  dans  un  processus  inverse  qu’on 
peut  raisonnablement  définir  comme  un  processus  de 

La  matérialisation  dans  l’espace  de  cette  indifférence 
est la vidéo-surveillance des rues et des places dans nos 
villes. Un dispositif qui avait été conçu pour les prisons 
et les banques a été progressivement étendu aux lieux 

81

publics. Mais il est évident qu’un espace vidéo-surveillé 
n’est plus une agora, n’a plus aucun caractère public, ou, 
mieux,  c’est  un  espace  non  défini  entre  le  public  et  le 
privé, la prison et le forum.

Or,  cette  transformation  est  un  phénomène  complexe, 
qui relève de causes multiples, parmi lesquelles la dérive 
du pouvoir moderne vers la biopolitique et le souci du 
vivant  occupe  une  place  particulière.  C’est  sans  doute 
à  l’émergence  de  la  vie  au  centre  du  politique  qu’on 
doit la primauté de l’identité physique sur l’identité poli-
tique. Mais on ne saurait oublier que l’aplatissement de 
l’identité  sociale  sur  l’identité  corporelle  a  commencé 
par  le  souci  d’identifier  les  criminels  récidivistes  et  les 
individus dangereux. Il ne faudra donc pas s’étonner si 
les citoyens que nous sommes acceptent comme allant 
de soi que le rapport normal que l’État entretient avec 
eux  soit  le  soupçon,  le  fichage  et  le  contrôle.  L’axiome 
tacite, qu’il faut bien prendre ici le risque d’énoncer, est: 
«tout citoyen — en tant qu’être vivant — est un terro-
riste  potentiel».  Mais  qu’est-ce  qu’un  État,  qu’est-ce 
qu’une société régie par un tel axiome? Peut-elle encore 
être  définie  comme  démocratique,  voire  comme  une 
société politique?

Vous savez sans doute qu’une classification typologique 
des États modernes a été esquissée par Michel Foucault 
dans  ses  cours  au  Collège  de  France  et  dans  son  livre 
Surveiller  et  punir.  Foucault  montre  comment  l’État  de 
l’Ancien régime, défini comme État territorial ou de sou-
veraineté,  dont  la  devise  était  «mourir  et  laisser  vivre» 
a  évolué  progressivement  vers  un  État  de  population 
et  vers  un  État  de  discipline  dont  la  devise  s’inverse 
en  «faire  vivre  et  laisser  mourir»,  car  il  va  s’occuper  de 
la  vie  des  sujets  afin  de  produire  des  corps  dociles  et 
ordonnés.

Il est évident que l’État dans lequel nous vivons à présent 
n’est pas un État de discipline. Gilles Deleuze a proposé 
de l’appeler «État de contrôle», car ce que veut cet État, 
ce n’est pas ordonner et discipliner, mais gérer et contrô-
ler. La définition est sans doute correcte, car gestion et 
contrôle  ne  coïncident  pas  nécessairement  avec  ordre 
et discipline. Le fonctionnaire de la police italienne, qui, 
après les émeutes de Gênes en juillet 2001, déclara que 

le  gouvernement  ne  voulait  pas  que  la  police  main-
tienne l’ordre, mais qu’elle gère le désordre, ne croyait 
pas si bien dire.

Dans  la  doctrine  américaine,  qui  a  essayé  de  réfléchir 
sur  les  changements  constitutionnels  induits  par  le 
Patriot Act  et  la  législation  qui  a  suivi  septembre  2001, 
on préfère parler de Security State. Mais que veut dire ici 
security? Il est instructif de voir comment, au cours de la 
Révolution française, la notion de sécurité — ou, comme 
on disait alors, de sûreté — se noue avec celle de police. 
La loi du 16 mars 1791 et la loi suivante du 11 août 1792 
introduisent dans la législation française la notion, qui va 
avoir une longue histoire dans la modernité, de «police 
de sûreté». Si l’on suit les débats qui précédèrent le vote 
de  ces  lois,  on  s’aperçoit  que  police  et  sûreté  se  défi-
nissent réciproquement, mais que les orateurs qui par-
ticipent aux débats (entre autres Gensonné, Hérault de 
Séchelles, Brissot) ne sont pas en mesure de définir ni la 
police ni la sûreté.

Au centre des débats se trouve en effet la situation de 
la police par rapport à la justice et au pouvoir judiciaire. 
Ainsi,  Gensonné  affirme  qu’il  s’agit  de  «deux  pouvoirs 
parfaitement distincts et séparés»; pourtant, tandis que 
le rôle du pouvoir judiciaire est clair, il est impossible de 
définir celui de la police par rapport à la justice. Ce qui 
ressort de l’analyse des discours des députés est que le 
lieu  de  la  police  est  proprement  indéfinissable  et  doit 
rester tel, car si elle était entièrement absorbée dans la 
justice, la police ne pourrait plus exister. C’est la fameuse 
«marge de discrétion» qui caractérise encore maintenant 
l’activité  de  l’officier  de  police,  qui,  par  rapport  à  une 
situation concrète qui menace la sécurité publique, agit 
pour ainsi dire en souverain. Mais, ce faisant, il ne décide 
pas,  comme  fera  le  juge,  ni,  comme  on  le  répète  sans 
fondement,  ne  prépare  la  décision  pour  le  juge.  Toute 
décision implique des causes, tandis que la police inter-
vient sur les effets, c’est-à-dire sur un indécidable.

Cet indécidable ne se nomme plus, comme au XVIIe siècle, 
«raison  d’État»:  il  se  nomme  «raison  de  sécurité».  Le 
«security State» est donc un État de police. Malheureuse-
ment, la définition de la police est une sorte de trou noir 
dans  la  doctrine  du  droit  public.  La  seule  chose  qu’on 

82

peut  dire  est  que,  lorsque,  au  XVIIIe  siècle,  paraissent, 
en France, le Traité de la police de Delamare et, en Alle-
magne, le livre sur la Gesamte Polizeiwissenschaft de Von 
Justi,  la  police  est  ramenée  à  son  étymologie  (politela) 
et tend à se poser comme la politique véritable, en relé-
guant  la  «politique»  à  la  politique  étrangère.  Von  Justi 
appelle ainsi Politik le rapport d’un État avec les autres et 
Polizei le rapport d’un État avec lui-même. Je vous invite 
à réfléchir à cette définition: «La police est le rapport en 
force d’un État avec lui-même.»

On  peut  donc  émettre  l’hypothèse  que,  en  invoquant 
la sécurité, l’État moderne est sorti du domaine du poli-
tique  pour  entrer  dans  un  no  man’s  land  dont  on  per-
çoit mal la géographie et les frontières et pour lequel la 
conceptualité  nous  fait  défaut.  Le  moins  qu’on  puisse 
dire, me semble-t-il, est que cet État, dont le nom ren-
voie étymologiquement à une absence de soucis (secu-
rus  =  sine  cura),  ne  peut  au  contraire  que  nous  rendre 
plus  soucieux  à  l’égard  des  dangers  qu’il  peut  entraî-
ner  pour  la  démocratie,  puisqu’une  vie  politique  y  est 
devenue impossible, et que démocratie et vie politique 
sont — au moins dans notre tradition — synonymes.

Il est tout aussi clair que, face à un tel État, il nous faut 
repenser  de  fond  en  comble  les  stratégies  tradition-
nelles du conflit politique. Il est implicite, dans le para-
digme sécuritaire, que chaque conflit, et chaque tenta-
tive  plus  ou  moins  violente  pour  renverser  l’État,  n’est 
pour lui que l’occasion d’en gouverner les effets au pro-
fit des intérêts qui lui sont propres. C’est ce que montre 
la dialectique qui lie étroitement terrorisme et réponse 
étatique dans une spirale vicieuse et virtuellement infi-
nie.  La  tradition  politique  de  la  modernité  a  pensé  les 
changements  politiques  radicaux  sous  la  forme  d’une 
révolution  qui  agit  comme  le  pouvoir  constituant  d’un 
nouvel  ordre  constitué.  Je  crois  qu’il  faut  abandonner 
ce paradigme et concevoir quelque chose comme une 
puissance purement destituante, qui ne saurait être cap-
turée  dans  le  dogme  de  la  sécurité  à  tout  prix.  Et  si  je 
devais imaginer ici et maintenant un exemple d’une telle 
puissance destituante, ce serait que, face à la politique 
sécuritaire qui domine en Europe, tous les membres de 
l’EGE  démissionnent.  Ce  n’est  qu’une  fiction,  mais  ce 
serait  —  me  semble-t-il  —  la  seule  façon  adéquate  de 
démontrer  l’incompatibilité  entre  démocratie  et  État 
sécuritaire.

83

English translation:

When  I  received  your  invitation,  my  first  thought  was 
that  the  only  appropriate  response  would  be  to  come 
here  and  remain  silent.  Today,  the  whole  question  of 
ethics has reached a point where even to accept debate 
would be to give up what is essential. Ethics can never 
mean de facto acceptance of an inhumane situation and 
claiming to put de jure limits on it. If we were to imagine 
that, after the Final Solution had been decided, a group 
of experts had been chosen to sit around a table and dis-
cuss the legitimacy of concentration camps and ways to 
make them less atrocious, we would consider that such 
people were blind to all ethical considerations. And yet 
we  know  that  Red  Cross  commissions  visited  certain 
camps  and  gave  very  moderate  advice  along  exactly 
these  lines.  These  officials  should  have  been  put  on 
trial alongside the commanders of the camps, although 
like the architect of Auschwitz (who had studied at the 
Bauhaus), they would probably have been acquitted. It 
appears  today  that  professional  ethics  does  not  mean 
refusing  to  do  what  is  inhumane,  but  merely  doing  it 
according to the technical rules of the profession. I say 
this because, at this very moment, famous architects are 
building new towns in China for the government to set-
tle  millions  of  people  in  against  their  will  after  having 
thrown them out of their homes, without asking them-
selves if it is legitimate to collaborate with what can only 
be called deportation.

Obviously, no one today would accept such debate on 
Auschwitz. But we do consider it acceptable to debate 
the  nuclear  issue,  although  one  day  people  may  well 
consider  that  this  is  ethical  blindness,  but  such  blind-
ness is a very common condition these days, especially 
among those who proclaim themselves experts in bio-
ethics.

We must first of all clarify the true aim of security meas-
ures,  which  is  not  simply  to  avert  danger,  trouble  or 
catastrophes,  as  one  might  think.  To  do  this,  I  must 
briefly  explain  the  origins  of  the  concept  of  security. 
Naturally, I cannot give a complete history of the notion 
here. In addition, historical research in this field is insuf-
ficient,  firstly  because  it  does  not  distinguish  between 
different  notions  and  measures,  and  secondly  because 
it observes these measures without examining the con-
text in which they are applied. In this way, it may seem 
justified to retrace the origins of security to the famous 
Roman dictum salus publica suprema lex and to place its 
history within that of the state of exception. This would 
lead us to discuss the senatus consultum ultimatum and 
the Roman dictatorship, the principle of canon law that 
necessitas  legem  non  habet,  the  committees  of  public 
safety  during  the  French  Revolution  and  the  Constitu-
tion of 22 Frimaire VIII (1799) which specifically mentions 
‘disorder threatening state security’, not to mention the 
infamous  Article  18  of  the  Weimar  Constitution,  which 
served as the legal basis for the national socialist regime 
and which explicitly mentions public security.

This family tree is undoubtedly accurate, but it does not 
help  us  to  understand  the  security  measures  that  we 
are  familiar  with.  Exceptional  measures  concern  what 
is essentially a temporary state of affairs, an immediate 
and  real  threat  that  must  be  eliminated  at  any  cost  by 
suspending legal guarantees for a time, whereas the rea-
sons of security we talk about today are, on the contrary, 
an ordinary and stable governing technique. If we want 
to refer to a state of exception, we must examine a situ-
ation where the exception merges with the rule, such as 
the Nazi regime, which was perfectly legal from begin-
ning to end, since the state of emergency Hitler declared 
on the basis of Article 18 of the Weimar Constitution was 
never revoked.

In a completely different sphere, that of human govern-
ment, I do not believe that the words we hear constantly 
all  over  Europe:  ‘pour  raisons  de  sécurité,  for  security 
reasons, per ragioni di sicurezza’, etc. can serve as a basis 
for discussion. Instead of remaining silent, though, I feel 
I must make an attempt to explain why I refuse to enter 
into this debate.

It  would  therefore  be  preferable  to  follow  the  advice 
of  Michel  Foucault  and  look  for  the  origins  of  security 
elsewhere,  at  the  beginning  of  modern  economics  in 
the  theories  of  François  Quesnay  and  the  physiocrats, 
whose  influence  on  modern  governance  cannot  be 
underestimated.  Well  before  the  physiocrats,  around 
the time of the Treaty of Westphalia, the great absolutist 

84

states had started to adopt the position that sovereigns 
should  ensure  the  security  of  their  subjects.  It  was  not 
until Quesnay, though, that security — or safety, to use 
his term — became a central part of the doctrine of gov-
ernment, and in a very specific way, as we will see. Even 
today, one must read the article ‘Grain’ that he published 
in the Encyclopédie in order to understand modern gov-
ernment,  and  it  is  easy  to  see  why  Voltaire  wrote  that 
after  that  article  was  published,  Parisian  conversations 
turned  away  from  literature  and  theatre  and  towards 
grain and the economy.

One  of  the  main  problems  governments  faced  at  that 
time  was  food  shortages  and  famine.  Before  Quesnay, 
they attempted to ward off famine by organising pub-
lic grain reserves and banning grain exports, but these 
preventative  measures  often  had  adverse  effects  on 
production.  Quesnay’s  stroke  of  genius  was  to  invert 
the  equation:  instead  of  trying  to  prevent  famine,  the 
authorities  should  let  famines  happen  and  make  sure 
that  they  are  in  a  position  to  govern  them  when  they 
do occur by liberalising both internal and international 
trade. This brings us back to the etymological — ‘cyber-
netic’ — meaning of the word ‘to govern’ as in ‘to steer’: 
a ship’s pilot cannot avoid storms, but must be able to 
steer the ship when a storm comes.

This is how we must understand the famous expression 
(wrongly) attributed to Quesnay: ‘laisser faire, laisser pas-
ser’ (let do and let pass). This is not just the slogan of eco-
nomic liberalism: it is a paradigm of governance which 
identifies  security  (Quesnay  wrote  about  the  ‘safety  of 
farmers  and  labourers’)  not  as  the  prevention  of  prob-
lems and disasters, but as the ability to deal with them 
appropriately when they occur. 

We should not underestimate the philosophical impor-
tance of this change. It is, in fact, a watershed moment in 
the very idea of government, which overturns the tradi-
tional hierarchical relationship of cause and effect itself: 
since it is pointless and expensive to govern causes, it is 
more useful and more certain to govern effects. On this 
basis, we can establish an axiom: the ancien régime tried 
to govern causes, whereas modern governments claim 
to govern effects. I do not believe we can overlook the 

importance  of  this  axiom,  as  this  is  the  very  paradigm 
that governs our society in general, from economics to 
the environment, and from foreign and defence policy 
to  internal  security  and  policing.  Modernity  does  not 
govern causes, but effects.

This axiom allows us to understand the otherwise inex-
plicable  fact  that  a  paradigm  of  absolute  economic 
liberalism  coexists  with  a  paradigm  of  what  may  be 
unprecedented state control over security. If the focus of 
government is on the effects, and not on the causes, it is 
obvious that controls must be extended and multiplied.

Two examples:

Drinking  water,  on  the  one  hand.  Although  we  know 
that drinking water will soon be scarce in many parts of 
the  world,  no  country  has  any  serious  policy  aimed  at 
avoiding waste. At the same time, in several countries, 
we  can  see  more  and  more  techniques  and  plants  for 
the treatment of waste water, which will become the big 
business of the years to come.

Biometrics, on the other hand, which is one of the most 
worrying aspects of contemporary security technology.

Biometrics  appeared 
in  19th  century  France  with 
Alphonse Bertillon, inventor of a system of photographic 
identification and anthropometric measurement which 
together formed his famous ‘speaking portrait’. Shortly 
afterwards,  in  England,  Darwin’s  cousin  Francis  Galton, 
an  admirer  of  Bertillon,  developed  fingerprint  technol-
ogy  (which,  surprisingly  enough,  he  intended  for  use 
on  colonial  natives  who  all  seemed  to  look  the  same 
to  European  eyes).  However,  it  is  obvious  that  these 
techniques do not prevent crime, but only allow repeat 
offenders to be identified. Once again, we see the physio -
cratic security paradigm: it is only possible to intervene 
effectively after the crime has been committed.

Anthropometric  techniques  were  for  a  long  time  the 
exclusive  privilege  of  the  repeat  offenders  they  had 
been designed for. In 1943, the US Congress still refused 
the Citizen Identification Act, which aimed to implement 
identity  cards  with  fingerprints  for  all  citizens.  But  it  is 

85

a law of nature that any measure invented for criminals, 
foreigners  and  Jews  will  sooner  or  later  end  up  being 
applied  to  every  single  individual,  and  the  techniques 
developed  for  repeat  offenders  were  extended  to  the 
entire population during the 20th century. Identification 
photographs, sometimes accompanied by fingerprints, 
thereby became part of identity documents (a compact 
form  of  the  Bertillon  card)  that  progressively  became 
compulsory throughout the world.

The final step, though, was not taken until recently, and 
is still not fully completed. Thanks to the development of 
biometric technology that can rapidly scan fingerprints 
or the structure of the retina or the iris with optic scan-
ners, biometrics is starting to go beyond police stations 
and immigration offices to become part of everyday life. 
In some countries, students have to run their hands over 
a biometric device in order to access canteens, second-
ary  schools  and  even  primary  schools.  The  biometrics 
industry, which is spreading like wildfire, suggests that 
people should be given the opportunity to get used to 
biometrics from the earliest possible age.

France’s  new  biometric  ID  card  (INES),  which  is  in  the 
pipeline, is expected to have an electronic chip contain-
ing  identifying  elements  (fingerprints  and  digital  photo-
graph).  It  seems  that  the  opposition  of  a  commission 
similar  to  yours  will  slow  down  its  implementation,  but 
the  current  is  inexorably  dragging  Western  democracy 
towards recording the DNA of all its citizens, both for secu-
rity and crime prevention and for reasons of public health.

Many different voices have spoken out against the dan-
ger of absolute and unlimited control by a government 
that possesses the biometric and genetic data of its citi-
zens.  With  such  power,  the  extermination  of  the  Jews 
(or  any  other  imaginable  genocide),  which  was  carried 
out on the basis of incomparably less efficient data col-
lection, would have been total and extremely quick. It is 
particularly idiotic to say that this would be impossible 
in a modern democracy, given the inconsistency and the 
extreme moral corruption of our ruling classes.

I  invite  you  to  consider  another  worrying  fact:  current 
security  legislation  in  European  countries  is,  in  some 

areas, much more restrictive than that of fascist states in 
the 20th century. In Italy, where I live, a simple compari-
son shows that most of the provisions of the TULPS, the 
‘consolidated law on public security’ enacted by the fas-
cist regime in 1926, are still in force today. However, anti-
terrorist laws voted in during the ‘Years of Lead’ (end of 
the  1970s–80s)  have  reduced  the  guarantees  given  by 
the law. Since anti-terrorism law is stricter in France than 
in  Italy,  I  imagine  that  a  comparison  with  fascist  laws 
would give the same result.

Although this is an important aspect of the question of 
security, it is not what I came here to talk about, as I imag-
ine you are familiar enough with these facts already. The 
reflection I want to share with you concerns instead the 
transformation of political relations under the influence 
of security measures. This transformation is so extreme 
that  we  can  ask  ourselves  not  only  if  our  societies  can 
still  be  called  ‘democratic’,  but  even  (and  especially)  if 
they can still be considered political societies.

Christian  Meier  has  shown  how,  in  the  5th  century  BC, 
political concepts were transformed in Greece through 
the  politicisation  (Politisierung)  of  citizenship.  Whereas 
membership  of  the  city  (polis)  had  until  then  been 
linked  above  all  to  various  social  statuses  and  condi-
tions  (nobles,  clergy,  peasants,  merchants,  magnates 
and  those  beholden  to  them,  heads  of  families,  etc.), 
citizenship became in and of itself the criterion of social 
identity.

As Meier wrote: 

‘A  specifically  Greek  political  identity  of  citizenship,  in 
which individuals were expected to act as citizens, was 
institutionalised.  Membership  of  religious,  economic, 
etc. communities became secondary. To the extent that 
citizens  of  a  democracy  devoted  themselves  to  pub-
lic  life,  they  considered  themselves  as  members  of  the 
polis. Polis and politeia, city and citizenship defined each 
other. Citizenship thereby became an activity and a way 
of life, in which the city (polis) formed a domain clearly 
distinct from the home (oikos). Politics thereby became 
a  public  space,  distinct  from  the  private  sphere  which 
was governed by necessity.’

86

According to Meier, this process of politicisation specific 
to Greece was bequeathed to Western politics, in which 
citizenship  —  naturally,  with  changes  and  fluctuations 
— remained the decisive factor.

It is precisely this essential political factor that is being 
slowly but irreversibly eaten away as a result of what it 
would  be  justified  to  call  a  process  of  depoliticisation. 
The  threshold  of  active  and  unconditional  politicisa-
tion has given way to a purely passive condition where 
action and inaction, public and private life are lumped 
together. This process of depoliticising citizenship is so 
obvious that I will not expand on it any further.

The hypothesis I offer you is that security measures played 
a decisive role in this process. The extension to all citizens 
of  identification  techniques  designed  for  criminals  (and 
later  for  Jews)  could  not  fail  to  affect  citizens’  political 
identity.  For  the  first  time  in  human  history,  identity  is 
not determined by social ‘persons’ and their recognition, 
name  and  reputation,  but  by  biological  facts  which  are 
completely unrelated to these, such as the meaningless 
curves of ink left by a thumb on a police record card or the 
order of genes in a double helix of DNA. The most neutral 
and private information is becoming the vehicle of social 
identity, which is thereby losing its public character.

But if my identity is now ultimately determined by bio-
logical facts, which I am unable to choose for myself and 
over which I have no control whatsoever, it becomes dif-
ficult to construct anything resembling a political iden-
tity. What relationship can I establish with my fingerprints 
or my genome? The new identity is an identity without 
the person, where the ethical and political sphere we are 
used  to  becomes  meaningless  and  must  be  rethought 
from beginning to end. While the Greek citizen defined 
himself through the private–public dichotomy between 
the home — the seat of procreative life — and the city 
—  the  place  of  politics  —  modern  citizens  seem  to  be 
moving  towards  indifference  between  public  and  pri-
vate life or, in the words of Hobbes, between the body 
natural and the body politic.

The video surveillance of the streets and squares of our 
towns is the material manifestation of this indifference. 

A  measure  originally  designed  for  prisons  and  banks 
has been gradually extended to public places. It is obvi-
ous, though, that an area under video surveillance is no 
longer  an  agora,  it  no  longer  has  any  public  character, 
or rather that it is in limbo between the public and the 
private, between the prison and the forum.

This transformation is a complex phenomenon with mul-
tiple  causes,  among  which  modern  power’s  slide  into 
biopolitics and concern for life plays an important role. It 
is  no  doubt  due  to  the  emergence  of  life  as  the  central 
point of politics that physical identity is gaining the upper 
hand over political identity. However, we should not for-
get  that  social  identity  was  first  ironed  onto  corporeal 
identity  with  the  intention  of  identifying  repeat  offend-
ers and dangerous individuals. It is therefore hardly sur-
prising  if  we,  as  citizens,  accept  suspicion,  profiling  and 
checks as a perfectly normal way for our state to treat us. 
The tacit assumption, which I am taking the risk of mak-
ing explicit here, is that every citizen — as a living being 
— is a potential terrorist. But what sort of state, what sort 
of society, is governed by such an axiom? Can it still be 
defined as democratic, or even as a political society?

You  no  doubt  know  that  Michel  Foucault  established 
a  basic  classification  of  modern  states  in  his  lectures 
at the Collège de France and in his book Discipline and 
punish. Foucault explained how the states of the ancien 
régime, defined by territory and sovereignty and whose 
motto  was  ‘take  life  and  let  live’,  were  gradually  trans-
formed  into  states  of  population  and  discipline  whose 
motto was, on the contrary, ‘give life and let die’, because 
they look after the life of their subjects in order to turn 
them into docile and disciplined bodies.

It is clear that the states we live in today are not states 
of  discipline.  Gilles  Deleuze  proposed  the  term  ‘state 
of  control’,  because  its  aim  is  not  order  and  discipline, 
but management and control. The definition is certainly 
accurate,  since  management  and  control  do  not  nec-
essarily  coincide  with  order  and  discipline.  The  Italian 
police officer who, after the Genoa riots of July 2001, said 
that the government did not want the police to maintain 
order, but to manage disorder, did not know how right 
he was.

87

American legal thinking, which has tried to examine the 
constitutional  changes  brought  about  by  the  Patriot 
Act  and  the  legislation  that  followed  September  2001, 
prefers to talk about the ‘security state’. But what does 
security  mean  in  this  case?  It  is  interesting  to  look  at 
how, during the French Revolution, the notion of secu-
rity (or, in the words of the time, safety) was tied in with 
the  notion  of  police.  The  laws  of  16 March 1791  and 
11 August 1792  introduced  into  French  legislation  the 
notion of ‘safety police’ or ‘security police’, which would 
continue to exist well into modernity. If we look at the 
debates just before these laws were passed, we see that 
police and safety define each other, but that none of the 
speakers (including Gensonné, Hérault de Séchelles and 
Brissot) were capable of providing a definition either of 
‘police’ or of ‘safety’.

The  debate  concerned  above  all  the  place  of  the  police 
in  relation  to  justice  and  the  judiciary.  Gensonné  stated 
that  they  were  ‘two  completely  different  and  separate 
powers’,  and  yet,  while  the  role  of  the  judiciary  is  clear, 
it is impossible to define the role of the police in relation 
to justice. The representatives’ speeches, when analysed, 
show that the role of the police is undefinable and must 
remain  so,  because  if  policing  were  to  be  entirely  sub-
sumed by justice, the police could no longer exist. This is 
the famous ‘discretion’ that still characterises the activity 
of police officers, who, when faced with a specific situation 
that threatens public order, act as sole arbiters. However, 
police officers do not make a decision thereby, as a judge 
would, nor do they prepare a decision for the judge, as is 
often said without any justification. Any decision implies 
causes, whereas the role of the police is to act in function 
of the effects, something which is undecidable.

This undecidable is no longer called ‘reasons of state’, as 
in the 17th century, but ‘security reasons’. The ‘security 
state’  is  therefore  a  police  state,  but  unfortunately  the 
definition of ‘police’ is almost a black hole in the doctrine 
of public law. All we can say is that in the 18th century, 
when  Delamare’s  Traité de la police  appeared  in  France 

and von Justi’s Gesamte Polizeiwissenschaft in Germany, 
the term ‘police’ was brought back to its etymology (from 
politeia)  and  was  increasingly  characterised  as  the  true 
essence of politics, the word ‘politics’ being restricted to 
foreign affairs. Von Justi defined Politik as a state’s rela-
tion  to  other  states  and  Polizei  as  a  state’s  relation  to 
itself. I invite you to think about this definition: ‘the way 
in which a state relates to itself is through its police’.

We  can  therefore  put  forward  the  hypothesis  that,  by 
calling on ‘security’, the modern state has left the politi-
cal  domain  behind  to  enter  a  no  man’s  land,  the  geo-
graphy  and  borders  of  which  we  can  barely  discern 
and which we lack the concepts to analyse. However, it 
appears clear to me that this state, whose name derives 
etymologically from the absence of concern (securus = 
sine cura) can in fact only make us more concerned about 
the threat it poses to democracy, since it makes political 
life impossible and, at least in our tradition, democracy 
and political life are synonyms.

It is equally clear that, faced with such a state, we must 
completely rethink the traditional strategies of political 
conflict. The paradigm of security implies that any con-
flict, and any more or less violent attempt to overthrow 
the  state,  is  only  an  opportunity  for  it  to  serve  its  own 
interests in governing the effects. This is shown by the 
dialectic  which  binds  terrorism  and  the  state  response 
together  in  an  almost  infinite  self-serving  spiral.  The 
modern  political  tradition  imagined  radical  political 
changes  in  the  form  of  revolutions,  acting  as  the  con-
stituent power of a new constitutional order. I think it is 
time to abandon this paradigm and imagine something 
along the lines of a purely destituent power, which could 
not be sucked in by the dogma of security at any price. 
And if I were to imagine an example of such destituent 
power here and now, it would be for all the members of 
the EGE to resign in protest at the dominant security pol-
icies in Europe. This is pure fiction, but I believe it would 
be the only adequate means of showing the incompat-
ibility between democracy and the security state.

88

EGE round table on the ethics of 
security and surveillance technologies

Dr Patryk Pawlak

(EU Institute for Security Studies)

Patryk  Pawlak  is  a  senior  analyst  at  the  EU  Institute  for 
Security  Studies  in  Paris.  At  the  institute,  he  deals  with 
internal  security  policies  of  the  EU,  in  particular  border 
protection, counterterrorism and cybersecurity. Prior to 
joining the EUISS, he was a visiting scholar at numerous 
research institutions, including the Center for Transatlan-
tic Relations (Washington, DC), the Center for Peace and 
Security Studies at Georgetown University (Washington, 
DC) and the Centre for European Policy Studies (Brussels). 

Since  September  2006,  Patryk  has  also  been  a  fellow 
in  the  European  foreign  policy  studies  programme 
founded jointly by Compagnia di San Paolo, Volkswagen 
Stiftung  and  Riksbankens  Jubileumsfond.  His  current 
research  focuses  on  linkages  between  internal  security 
and foreign policy. He has published in numerous peer-
reviewed journals and contributed to several collabora-
tive projects. Dr Pawlak holds a PhD in political science 
from the European University Institute in Florence.

89

Dr Patryk Pawlak

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

Annex I

List of participants

EGE round table on the ethics of 
security and surveillance technologies

97

Round table on ethics of security and surveillance technologies, 18 September 2013, Brussels

Speakers

Prof.

De Beaufort

Inez

Hendrik

Ben

Giorgio

Patryk 

Erasmus Rotterdam University — The Netherlands

G4S — Belgium

Statewatch — United Kingdom

University of Verona — Italy

EU Institute for Security Studies — France

Emmanuel

EGE Member

Keersmaekers

Hayes 

Agamben

Pawlak

Participants

Agius

Allard

Amato 

Andrieu

Andre

Salvatore 

Michel 

Ascensao 

Jose Ramos

Balogh

Beeckmans 
de West-Meerbeek

Timea

André

Beerden

Biname

Binder 

Bird

Black

Bojinova

Čas

Renée

Georges

Patrice

Adrienne 

Elizabeth

Silvia

Johann

Comité Ethique de l’Hôpital Psychiatrique du Beau Vallon — Belgium

Comitato Nazionale per la Bioetica — Italy

European Commission — DG Research and Innovation — Eureka 
Secretariat

Comece — Commission of the Bishop’s Conferences of the European 
Community — Belgium

European Commission — DG Research and Innovation

Belgian Nuclear Research Centre — Belgium

European Commission — DG Interpretation

Parlement Federal Belge — Belgium

French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM)

European Commission — DG Interpretation

European Commission — DG Interpretation

European Commission — DG Research and Innovation

Institute of Technology Assessment — Austrian Academy of Sciences 
— Austria

Catenhusen

Wolf-Michael

German Ethics Council

Cath

Cath

Cerrens

Cunningham 

Prof.

Dabrock 

Mr

Dr

Mr

Dafydd

Daquino

D’Aura

Prof.

De Castro

Dratwa

Druml

Du Toit

Corinne

Esnestine

Ludovic

Frank

Peter

Ab Lago

Giuseppe 
Giovanni

Stephane

Leonardo

Jim

Freelance Researcher — The Netherlands

Student — London — The Netherlands

European Commission — DG Interpretation

European Commission — DG Connect

EGE Member

EU Correspondent — Belgium

European Commission — Research Executive Agency 

Thales’s Ethics and Corporate Responsibility Department — France

Philippine Health Research Ethics Board (PHREB) 

European Commission — BEPA

Christiane

Austrian Bioethics Commission

Daniel 

National Health Research Ethics Council — South Africa

Dubois-Flynn

Geneviève

Canadian Institutes of Health Research

Effa

Evsen

Fernando

Geerts

Gefenas

Gerhardt

Gorski 

Grosman

Pierre

Jessica 

Tasmine

Sofie

Pan African Congress for Ethics and Bioethics (COPAB)

European Commission — DG Interpretation

European Commission — DG Interpretation

Globethics.net — Ethics Institute of South Africa —Belgium

Eugenijus 

Lithuanian Bioethics Committee

Ralph

Andrzej

Jeremy 

European Commission — DG Interpretation

EGE Member

Université de Namur — Belgium

98

Mr

Dr

Prof.

Dr

Prof.

Prof.

Prof.

Dr

Dr

Dr

Prof.

Ms

Dr

Dr 

Ms

Ms

Dr

Dr

Dr

Ms

Ms

Mr

Dr

Dr

Dr

Prof.

Dr

Prof.

Ms

Ms

Dr

Prof.

Mr

Prof.

Dr

 
 
 
 
 
 
Round table on ethics of security and surveillance technologies, 18 September 2013, Brussels

Participants

Guerriero

Iara Coelho Zito  Comissão Nacional de Ética em Pesquisa (CONEP) — Brazil

Dr

Dr

Prof.

Dr

Ms

Ms

Hafez

Halila 

Hatzinger

Hay

Hendry

Prof.

Ida

Ms

Dr

Kaempfe

Karatzas

Prof.

Kinderlerer

Dr

Mr

Mr

Dr 

Dr

Dr

Kortsidaki

Kotz

Kritikos

Kuhn

Kulic

Laroche 

Prof.

Laszlo

Mohamed Hafi

Supreme Committee for Medical Specialities — Egypt

Ritva 

Katrin

Emily

Kathryn 

Ryuichi

Sabine

Isidoros

Julian

Agni

Colin

Mihalis

Michael

Slavko

Gilles

Szonyi

EGE Member

Protestant Church in Germany — Belgium

Lorenz International Lawyers—Belgium

Brahma Kumaris — Belgium

Kyoto University — Doshisha University — Japan

European Commission — DG Interpretation

European Commission — DG Research and Innovation

EGE Member

European Commission — DG Research and Innovation

European Commission — DG Interpretation

EIPA

Commission of the Bishop’s Conferences of the EU — Belgium

Institute on World Problems — Croatia

European Commission — DG Research and Innovation

Health Science Council, Scientific and Research Ethics Commission 
— Hungary

Mrs

Dr

Mrs

Mrs

Prof.

Prof.

Dr 

Ms

Prof.

Prof.

Dr

Dr

Prof.

Prof.

Dr

Prof.

Dr

Dr

Lê 

Kim-Hoàng

European Commission — BEPA

Liberatore

Angela

European Commission — DG Research and Innovation

Martinho da Silva 

Paula

EGE Member

Mustajab

Nielsen

Nys 

Omanovic

Oltean

Pagallo

Palazzani 

Peneva

Peyre

Pfleiderer

Puigdomenech

Palupi 
Sukiyantini 

Linda

Herman

Edin

Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia

EGE Member

EGE Member

Privacy International — United Kingdom

Adriana-Sorina 

European Commission — BEPA

Ugo 

Laura

Pavlina 

University of Torino — Italy

EGE Member

European Commission — DG Research and Innovation

Marie-Sophie

European Commission — DG Research and Innovation

Georg

Pere

Federal Ethics Committee on Biotechnology — Switzerland

EGE Member

Rath

Johannes

University of Vienna, Department of Evolutionary Biology — Austria

Renzong

Qiu

Centre for Bioethics, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences/Peking Union 
Medical College

Roelof Vijay

Pieterson

Brahma Kumaris, World Spiritual University — The Netherlands

Ruffo de Calabre

Marie-des-neiges  Université Paris-Sorbonne — Université de Namur — Belgium

Prof.

Ruiz de Chavez 

Dr

Dr

Dr

Rupcic

Salvi

Saxena

Colonel

Schneider

Prof.

Prof.

Prof.

Dr

Smith 

Tallacchini

Thiel 

Tsigaridas

Manuel

Danijela

Maurizio

Abha

Thomas

David 

Comisión Nacional de Bioética — Mexico

LLM Bioethics — European University of Rome — Italy

European Commission — DG Research and Innovation — JRC

World Health Organisation

German Confederation of Managers, DFK — Germany

Irish Council for Bioethics

Mariachiara 

European Commission — DG Research and Innovation — JRC

Marie-Jo 

Elektra

EGE Member

European Commissions — DG ENT

99

 
 
 
Round table on ethics of security and surveillance technologies, 18 September 2013, Brussels

Participants

Ulfhielm

Valcu

Van Assche

Van Oort

Van Woensel 

Vassallo

Ms

Dr

Dr

Dr

Dr

Mr

Prof.

Virt

Dr

Dr

Prof.

Prof.

Voniatis

Wolfslehner 

Yudin

Zormpas

Sara

George 

Kristof 

Sander

Lieve 

Henrik

Günter

SaaB Belgium

Romanian Orthodox Church to the European Institutions — Belgium

Council of Europe

TNO — The Netherlands

European Parliament — Brussels

SaaB Belgium

EGE Member

Michalis

The Cyprus National Bioethics Committee

Doris 

Boris

Austrian Bioethics Commission

Russian National Committee on Bioethics (RCB)

Konstantinos

Theologian Sociologist — Belgium

100

 
 
 
Annex II

EGE Secretariat

EGE round table on the ethics of 
security and surveillance technologies

101

EGE Secretariat

Address 
European Commission 
Berl 8/362 
1049 Brussels 
BELGIUM 
Fax +32 22994565   
Email: BEPA-ETHICS-GROUP@ec.europa.eu

Jim DRATWA 
European Commission 
Adviser, Bureau of European Policy Advisers 
Secretary-General of the IDB 
Head of the EGE Secretariat 

Berl 8/358, 1049 Brussels – BELGIUM
Tel. +32 22958253  
E-mail: jim.dratwa@ec.europa.eu

Kim Hoang LE 
European Commission 
EGE Secretariat 

Berl 8/362, 1049 Brussels – BELGIUM
Tel. +32 22999228 
E-mail: kim-hoang.le@ec.europa.eu

Adriana Sorina OLTEAN 
European Commission 
EGE Secretariat 

Berl 8/362, 1049 Brussels – BELGIUM
Tel. +32 22993016 
E-mail: adriana-sorina.oltean@ec.europa.eu

Internet: 
http://ec.europa.eu/european_group_ethics/index_en.htm

102

Mail address

European Commission

Secretariat of the European Group on Ethics in Science  
and New Technologies

Berlaymont Building
BERL 8/362
Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 200
1049 Bruxelles/Brussel
BELGIQUE/BELGÏE

Office

European Commission
Berlaymont Building
Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 200
1049 Bruxelles/Brussel
BELGIQUE/BELGÏE

Website

http://ec.europa.eu/european_group_ethics/index_en.htm

103

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doi:10.2796/22080