IntroductionWith today's technological surveillance capabilities, our actions are observable, recordable, and traceable. Surveillance is more intrusive than in the past. For many years, countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom have actively monitored their citizens through the use of surveillance technologies. This state surveillance has increased year after year, thereby infringing on the citizen's fundamental constitutional right to privacy. This has led to ethical issues surrounding the use or misuse of technology. One such ethical issue is: Should a government have the right to use technology to surveil its citizens without their knowledge or approval? It is for this reason that this article will examine what the terms ethics, ethical question and state surveillance refer to. Next, an exploration of the ethics of government surveillance from the perspective of a variety of ethical systems such as: ethical formalism, act utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism, and the subjective relativism model. From this examination of state surveillance through the ethical system...