Surveillance without 'Baddies': Liability and Consent in Non-Antagonistic Surveillance Ethics

The Covid-19 pandemic raises new questions regarding the moral permissibility of surveillance-in this context there is no human aggressor and, thus, the antagonistic relationship between the surveillant and the surveilled, which is commonly assumed to obtain in much of the literature on surveillance ethics, does not exist. This raises the question of the extent to which existing frameworks for ethical surveillance apply to the surveillance activities aiming at controlling virus transmission. In this chapter, we will address the question of whether and in what form liability should play a role in surveillance ethics in the context of pandemics. Can persons who are not responsible for catching Covid-19 and do not intend to harm or wrong others by transmitting the virus, be liable to being surveilled on account of their posing a threat of virus transmission to others? If so, are they innocent or culpable threats?.