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Publication

Safety, security and ethics

Book Contribution - Chapter

What are safety and security? Why should we value safety and security? These questions may sound redundant at first sight. Are safety and security not to be considered as elementary conditions for aminimally functioning human being? Exactly because of this apparent self-evidence, policy and lawmakers, as well as researchers of the legal dimensions or technical or economic aspects of safety andsecurity might benefit from a more precise understanding of the concepts and the normative starting points behind them. This is especially so where specific measures or policies for ensuring or protecting safety and security must be balanced against other values or principles. In this chapter, the notions of security and safety will be clarified as normative concepts from a primarily ethical analytical perspective. Current discussions on the definitions and conceptual distinctions with regards to the notion of security and the related notion of safety are discussed. Then, the focus shifts to security and safety as values. Finally, the possibility of moral conflicts between safety and security on the one hand and individual rights and interests on the other are critically discussed.
Book: Security and Law. Legal and Ethical Aspects of Public Security, CyberSecurity and Critical Infrastructure Security.
Pages: 11 - 26
Number of pages: 27
ISBN:978-1-78068-890-9
Publication year:2019