The Research Centre for Security Ethics is part of the Department of Ethics and Culture at the IZEW (the International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities). Since 2006, researchers at the Centre for Security Ethics have been analyzing fundamental issues of ethics and security, addressing ethical perspectives on the implementation and deployment of new security technologies and questions of research ethics regarding security.

Here, the developments and uses of security technologies are put into an overarching framework of a culture that strongly endorses 'security'. In this context, security becomes a social good that can (and must) actively be pursued and produced and therefore falls into the scope of ethical analysis.

The Research Centre for Security Ethics is the only academic institution in Germany specifically and explicitly concerned with an ethical perspective on security. It hosts an interdisciplinary team with academic backgrounds from, i.e. philosophy, political science, sociology, theology and law.

Some examples of the research questions are as follows:

• What form of security and what level of security is desirable within our society and for us as individuals?
• How is this security to be developed and produced?
• What is a reasonable price to pay for it – in terms of money, freedom, justice or privacy?
• Are there individuals or groups of people who are expected to pay a higher price than others, for example in terms of their freedom or privacy? How can these problems of equality and justice be suitably addressed and resolved?