Unit 2: Big Data, Surveillance and Responsibility Flashcards
3 broad categories of ethical issues raised by surveillance
- Privacy
- Trust
- Autonomy
3 Reasons why Privacy is valuable
- Privacy allows us to experiment with new ideas or actions without fear of them being publicly known.
- Privacy allows us to have freedom or autonomy, the capacity to think, speak and act as we like without being subject to control by others. If we value freedom and autonomy, we are likely to value privacy.
- Intimacy with others means that we select who we allow into our private lives. Without privacy, many doubt that we can have true intimacy.
Meaning of autonomy
Freedom from external control.
The capacity to govern one’s own actions.
3 reasons for legitimate surveillance
- Avoiding harm
- Authority
- Discrimination
To be ligitimate surveillance, authorities must (3)
- Not act for their own sake, but for the sake of public good.
- Have power conferred on them by an appropriate source.
- Be held accountable (so that they can be removed if they do not fulfil their responsibilities).
Legitimate surveillance: Descrimination
Legitimate surveillance should be able to discriminate between those who should be monitored and those that should not.
It should always limit the number of people who are “incidentally” monitored.
3 Responses to Surveillance Capitalism
- Digital minimalism
- Technical solutions
- Social, political and regulatory solutions
3 Responses to Surveillance Capitalism
Digital minimalism
Reduce the amount of data we create online, by reducing the time we spend online.
3 Responses to Surveillance Capitalism
Technical solutions
Choosing to use or develop social media and other apps that do not track data as part of their business model.
3 Responses to Surveillance Capitalism
Social, Political and Regulatory Solutions
Pursuing regulatory change to ensure that less data is gathered about us, or to ban the business model of surveillance capitalism.
This response includes radical approaches to altering our current economic and political system.
4 Ethical issues that need to be addressed for non-consensual surveillance to be justified.
- Cause and context of the surveillance
- Authority to carry out the surveillance
- Proportionality and necessity of the serveillance
- Accountability of the surveillant
Surveillance: Common justified causes
- Security (detection & deterrence)
- Investigation for the purposes of seeking information (e.g. monitoring footfall / census)
- Means of control
- Health and care
- “For the good of society”
- It can lead to efficiencies and efficacy
2 Main activites associated with security (through surveillance)
-
- Detection
- Deterrence
Salient aspects to the question of authority
- A notion of trust in the individual empowered. That they will act in the interests of the public, or of those monitored, rather than their own.
- The individual should be trustworthy.
- Authority tends to be conferred.
- Athority should be held accountable. Accountability will be to the body that conferred the authority, but also to the public and the law.
Surveillance should be proportionate and necessary
Meaning of necessity
Taken to mean that there is no alternative means to achieving a particular end, or that the alternative means available are worse than the means proposed.
