Peter A Allard School of Law

Faculty Colloquium with Professor Benjamin Goold - Being Watched: The Aftermath of Covert Policing

Event Description

The ongoing Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) is largely a response to a stream of national media scandals that exposed the illegal and unethical behaviour of undercover police officers in two secretive units in the UK. The testimony of those who were the targets of undercover operations has further exposed the human costs stemming from the personalised and highly invasive surveillance undertaken by anonymous state agents. In this presentation, I draw on a paper recently published (with Professors Bethan Loftus and Martina Feilzer) in the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice and reflect on the existing research on covert policing with a view to better understanding the harms that these secretive operations can generate. Attending to the inherent and inescapable intimacy of covert policing offers a much-needed opportunity to explore the effects of a unique state practice that can radically alter the lives of individual surveillance subjects, and which tests our conventional understandings of the legitimacy and limits of force, coercion and police power.

Speaker

Benjamin Goold

Benjamin Goold is a Professor at the Allard School of Law. His major research interests include privacy rights, the use of surveillance technologies by the police and intelligence communities, and the governance of international borders. He is the author of numerous works on privacy, surveillance, and security, including CCTV and Policing (Oxford University Press) and Security and Human Rights (Hart Publishing; edited with Liora Lazarus). Most recently, he has been working with two Allard School of Law colleagues – Professors Efrat Arbel and Catherine Dauvergne – on a SSHRC-funded project examining how legislative and policy changes introduced as a result of the 2011 Beyond the Border Agreement have affected the governance of the Canada-US border, and in particular their impact on the rights and civil liberties of border crossers.


  • Allard School of Law
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  • All Students
  • Faculty
  • Graduate Students
  • JD
  • Staff
  • Research Talks
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