Spying Through a Glass Darkly: The Ethics of Espionage and Counter-Intelligence

Prof. Cécile Fabre (University of Oxford)

Are intelligence officers morally permitted to bribe, deceive, blackmail, and manipulate as a way to uncover state secrets? Is cyberespionage morally permissible? Are governments morally permitted to resort to the mass surveillance of their and foreign populations as a means to unearth possible threats against national security? Can treason ever be morally permissible? Can it ever be legitimate to resort to economic espionage in the name of national security?

The ethics of espionage has received surprisingly little attention by legal and political theorists. In her ambitious new book Cécile Fabre remedies this lacuna by offering an insightful treatment of these and other important questions related to the morality of espionage and counterintelligence.

On 22 November 2022, The Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy and Law will host a workshop dedicated to this important book.

Speakers: Professor Lars Christie (Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences), Professor Steven Ratner (Michigan), Professor Michael Goodman (Kings College London) and Professor Sir David Omand (Kings College London).

Speaker's Bio

Professor Cécile Fabre is a political philosopher, and currently Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. She is also Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and affiliated with the Faculty of Philosophy, the Department of Politics and International Relations, and Nuffield College, Oxford. Fabre's research interests are in theories of distributive justice; the philosophy of democracy; just war theory; the ethics of foreign policy, with particular focus on the ethics of economic statecraft and the ethics of espionage.