ABSTRACT
The built environment has become inundated with surveillance cameras, raising the ethical dilemma of how much this is about safety and how much of it is about control. Architects have accepted the growing culture of surveillance without doing enough to challenge the need for it or to show how there are alternatives to it. When going out into the public, people agree to be seen by others, but architectural settings have always given people some control over where and how that occurs. Ethics suggests that surveillance systems need to offer the same level of control over who is watching whom and what is being done with that information. Architects can also show how spaces can be designed to ensure safety, without the need for cameras altogether.
