ABSTRACT
The ethical dimension of issues associated with war and its gravitational orbit of concepts and ideas have become among the most pressing issues currently being discussed. As a philosopher with a keen interest in the ethics of war and of foreign policy in general, it seemed an obvious question to ask, namely what state officials and citizens are morally permitted to do and to authorize, when acquiring the information they need in order to conduct a just war, a just foreign policy. The British secret intelligence service used to have a video on their website explaining by way of a story how they collect intelligence abroad. The story involved someone who was a citizen of a middle Eastern country and who offered to provide information on Islamic state to resident MI6 agent. The algorithms that (it is alleged) intelligence agencies use to identify suspected terrorists, or which law enforcement agencies in general use to analyze the enormous quantities of data.
