Surveillance technologies (ST) such as video surveillance, GPS tags and movement sensors are increasingly being used in residential care for vulnerable people, even though they raise various concerns. What does morally good care with surveillance technologies entail? 

Alistair Niemeijer is a PhD researcher at the VU University Medical Center Amsterdam (the Netherlands). He tries to answer this question in his PhD thesis ‘Surveilling Autonomy, Securing Care – exploring good care with surveillance technology in residential care for vulnerable people’. He does so by exploring actual practices of surveillance technologies using several empirical methods, instead of departing from specific theories of good care.

His thesis consequently shows that both the ideology and actual use of ST by caregivers and clients are highly ambivalent, showing the need for sound normative evaluation at a much earlier (design) stage.

In this short video, Alistair Niemeijer explains his research in a nutshell.