Computer Ethics

Unblinking eyes: the ethics of automating surveillance

by Kevin Macnish

Published in Ethics and Information Technology

In this paper I critique the ethical implications of automating CCTV surveillance. I consider three modes of CCTV with... more In this paper I critique the ethical implications of automating CCTV surveillance. I consider three modes of CCTV with respect to automation: manual (or non-automated), fully automated, and partially automated. In each of these I examine concerns posed by processing capacity, prejudice towards and profiling of surveilled subjects, and false positives and false negatives. While it might seem as if fully automated surveillance is an improvement over the manual alternative in these areas, I demonstrate that this is not necessarily the case. In preference to the extremes I argue in favour of partial automation in which the system integrates a human CCTV operator with some level of automation. To assess the degree to which such a system should be automated I draw on the further issues of privacy and distance. Here I argue that the privacy of the surveilled subject can benefit from automation, while the distance between the surveilled subject and the CCTV operator introduced by automation can have both positive and negative effects. I conclude that in at least the majority of cases more automation is preferable to less within a partially automated system where this does not impinge on efficacy.

The Machine Question: Ethics, Alterity and Technology

by David Gunkel

Chapter 6 of "Thinking Otherwise: Philosophy, Communication, Technology" (Purdue University Press, 2007)

This chapter, published in "Thinking Otherwise: Philosophy, Communication, Technology" (2007) represents... more This chapter, published in "Thinking Otherwise: Philosophy, Communication, Technology" (2007) represents something like a manifesto for the rights of machines. It considers the machine (AIs, robots, autonomous systems, etc.) as both moral agent and moral patient and argues for the ethical standing and appropriate treatment of artificial entities. The title refers to and expands on the "animal question," which has had considerable influence in moral philosophy during the later half of the 20th century. The machine question takes this moral innovation one step further by demonstrating that the machine, the other of the animal other, remains one of the last socially acceptable moral prejudices and arguing for a thinking of ethics that is able to proceed otherwise.

John Stuart Mill, yttrandefrihet och internet [John Stuart Mill, freedom of speech and the internet]

by William Bülow

Forthcoming in Tidskrift för Politisk Filosofi [Journal for Political Philosophy]

John Stuart Mill has more than anyone famously argued in defense for the freedom of speech. This paper address the... more John Stuart Mill has more than anyone famously argued in defense for the freedom of speech. This paper address the question how Mill would have conceived the social impacts of the internet and for the freedom of speech. It is pointed out that Mills arguments for the freedom of speech presupposes a shared public sphere in which opinions are addressed and critically examined. Put together with a view elaborated by Cass R. Sunstein and others, according to which internet might threaten to diminish the public sphere, it is argued that Mill might have conceived risks with an extended reliance on the internet as a main tool for democracy and freedom of speech.

Student Use of the Internet and Their Attitudes on Computer Ethics, with Regards to Internet Use

by Texas State PA Applied Research Projects

Woodson, Becky, "Student Use of the Internet and Their Attitudes on Computer Ethics, with Regards to Internet Use" (2002). Applied Research Projects, Texas State University-San Marcos. Paper 57.
http://ecommons.txstate.edu/arp/57

Almost overnight, the nation’s college campuses got wired. Students used the Internet to view professors’ Power Point... more Almost overnight, the nation’s college campuses got wired. Students used the Internet to view professors’ Power Point presentations, consult faculty advisors through email, and stay in touch with friends back home via email and Messenger Services. Now, on-campus Internet use has experienced exponential growth. At the University of Southern California, for example, Internet use has quadrupled in just the past year (Armstrong, 2000). What exactly are student doing on the Internet? Is it mostly recreational activities or academic-based?

To accommodate this vast increase in Internet usage, universities struggle to strike a balance that allows reasonable recreational use and more legitimate scholarly pursuits (Armstrong, 2000). The increased versatility that the Internet offers has increased its usage and the likelihood of its misuse (Banerjee et al., 1998). Misuse and methods that regulate such behavior, such as policies, bring about the relatively new and developing subject of computer ethics (Gotterbarn, 1992:p. 75).

The purpose of this study was two fold. The first purpose was to determine the task based and non-task based use of the Internet by Southwest Texas State University patrons that frequented the Alkek Library Computer Lab. Secondly, the evaluation of Southwest Texas State University patrons’ attitudes with regard to their perception of unethical uses of the Internet was assessed (attitudes should reflect the use of the Internet on university hardware provided for academic purposes, in a campus computer lab). A study was conducted with survey instruments to acquire data that pertained to university patrons’ use of the Internet. The surveys were administered to university patrons that utilized computer lab services during survey distribution periods. Statistical methods, to include mode, frequency distribution, and percent, were used to analyze the raw data collected from the surveys. The findings from these analyses concluded that the Alkek Library Computer Lab patrons used the Internet for more task based (academic) purposes, although recreational email (non-task based) received very frequent use. The data also showed that survey respondents felt unethical use of the computer lab resources consisted of all non-task based subcategories, with the exception of recreational email. The overall perception of patron use of the computer lab indicated that academic assignments are used more frequently and take priority over non-task based activities

Kant Concept Art

by Mark Singer

Tandem works include: "Seminal Ethics," "More Seminal Ethics Implications," "Addendum - More Seminal Ethics Implications" - also on this site.

The artist is P. Patten (USA).

The Social Disutility Argument against Software Ownership

by David Douglas

Published in 'Science and Engineering Ethics' vol. 17, no. 3 (2011): 485-502. DOI: 10.1007/s11948-010-9224-4 The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com.

Software ownership allows the owner to restrict the distribution of software and to prevent others from reading the... more Software ownership allows the owner to restrict the distribution of software and to prevent others from reading the software’s source code and building upon it. However, free software is released to users under software licenses that give them the right to read the source code, modify it, reuse it, and distribute the software to others. Proponents of free software such as Richard M. Stallman and Eben Moglen argue that the social disutility of software ownership is a sufficient justification for prohibiting it. This social disutility includes the social instability of disregarding laws and agreements covering software use and distribution, inequality of software access, and the inability to help others by sharing software with them. Here I consider these and other social disutility claims against withholding specific software rights from users, in particular, the rights to read the source code, duplicate, distribute, modify, imitate, and reuse portions of the software within new programs. I find that generally while withholding these rights from software users does cause some degree of social disutility, only the rights to duplicate, modify and imitate cannot legitimately be denied to users on this basis. The social disutility of withholding the rights to distribute the software, read its source code and reuse portions of it in new programs is insufficient to prohibit software owners from denying them to users. A compromise between the software owner and user can minimise the social disutility of withholding these particular rights from users. However, the social disutility caused by software patents is sufficient for rejecting such patents as they restrict the methods of reducing social disutility possible with other forms of software ownership.

Thinking Otherwise: Ethics, Technology and Other Subjects

by David Gunkel

Ethics and Information Technology 9(3), July 2007, pp. 165-177

Ethics is ordinarily understood as being concerned with questions of responsibility for and in the face of an other.... more Ethics is ordinarily understood as being concerned with questions of responsibility for and in the face of an other. This other is more often than not conceived of as another human being and, as such, necessarily excludes others – most notably animals and machines. This essay examines the ethics of such exclusivity. It is divided into three parts. The first part investigates the exclusive anthropocentrism of traditional forms of moral thinking and, following the example of recent innovations in animal rights philosophy, questions the mechanisms of such exclusion. Although recent work in animal- and bio-ethics has successfully implemented strategies for the inclusion of the animal as a legitimate subject of moral consideration, its other, the machine, has remained conspicuously excluded. The second part looks at recent attempts to include these machinic others in moral thinking and critiques the assumptions, values, and strategies that have been employed by these various innovations. And the third part proposes a means for thinking otherwise. That is, it introduces an alternative way to consider these other forms of otherness that is not simply reducible to the conceptual order that has structured and limited moral philosophy’s own concern with and for others.

Transcending the meat: immersive technologies and computer mediated bodies

by John Sullins

Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 12(2000) pp. 13-22

In this paper we will call into question the philosophical grounding for the belief that our mind can in principle be... more In this paper we will call into question the philosophical grounding for the belief that our mind can in principle be removed from, or transcend, our bodies. We will show that modern immersive technology, such as virtual and web technologies, tacitly attempt to implement this philosophy. We will find that there is a growing community called the Transhumanists who are a loosely knit group of highly educated hi-tech professionals and scientists who explicitly accept the transcendent mind hypothesis. Through the work and influence of these professionals values that are antagonistic to the body enter, explicitly or tacitly, into computer technology. It is our claim that the transcendent mind hypothesis is in error and that immersive technologies have to take seriously issues regarding the embodied nature of their users and that this embodiment can not be transcended in any meaningful way.

Rights and computer ethics

by John Sullins

Ch 7. in "The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics." Edited by Luciano Floridi University of Hertfordshire

Rights and computer ethics is one of the primary concerns of our time.  This moment in history is one of great... more Rights and computer ethics is one of the primary concerns of our time.  This moment in history is one of great technological change and is fundamentally challenging and complicating our claims to rights such as free speech and privacy.  Given that  ICTs are global technologies, and that they can be designed to enhance or limit free speech and privacy, then this demands that we come to some sort of global consensus on these issues.  Since privacy and free speech can be at odds as when someone posts to a blog or other social media your private concerns, one or the other right will have to be curtailed to some extent.  These decisions will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, which means there will be an explosion of opportunities in local and international law and policy activity around these issues. 
Additionally, our personal data is a gold mine when aggregated with everyone else’s and turned into an easily searchable database for advertisers, politicians, insurance providers, etc.  In the next few decades we will have to develop a global policy on information privacy, this chapter presents a strong philosophical argument in favor of information privacy, what remains to be seen is whether or not arguments like this will influence the legislatures around the world. 
Protecting free speech is another global concern.  Protecting the rights of dissidents and political revolutionaries that we may agree with also comes at the cost of tolerating speech we find offensive.  The chapter argues that the key to understanding how to properly regulate communications is to adopt the Principle of Harm and to realize that mere offence is not harm.  Thus we can tolerate healthy debate but carefully regulate hate speech; we can enjoy healthy and necessary converse about human sexuality while working to limit pornography that causes harm to, children, viewers, and society at large.
We have seen that ICTs are moving in the direction of creating a worldwide surveillance society.  The fear of global terrorism and the illicit drug trade has caused governments to patronize corporations that can provide more and better surveillance.  The glut of information that these systems produce is being managed by more artificially intelligent systems, or ambient intelligence, that, for instance, analyze the behavior and facial expressions and other biometrics of every member in a crowd and flag certain individuals as potential, shoplifters, dangerous individuals, or terrorists and then create a log of that persons activities that can be monitored by human agents later.  This same sort of information can also be collected on each and every one of us to be used by advertisers and marketers to track our shopping and buying behavior both online and off.  These legitimate governmental and private interests are taking us into a world that is something like a strange mix of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, (Huxley, 2006), and a well-run theme park.  This emerging world is strikingly prevalent in online worlds like Second Life, World of Warcraft, and others where the government on these games is a commercial entity and those running it may be fabulous programmers and designers but unskilled in political philosophy, ethical theory and policy creating the climate for abuse(see Ludlow and Wallace, 2007, and Ludlow 1996).
Following Lawrence Lessig, the chapter argues that the designers and code writers for ICTs are the real power behind securing the rights we want (Lessig, 2006).  Law and policy will always be behind these technologies because technology changes so quickly.  If we are going to have these rights we care about in the future it is going to be because of the work done by technologists and technological watchdog groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  It is vital that those studying to be technologists are trained in computer ethics, as they are the only hope that we have in securing ethical ICTs.  Without this training we can expect ICTs to take us into a strange new world were none of us will feel comfortable and where living a good life will be difficult if not impossible.

Far Future Issues
A final thought worth pondering is whether or not future generations will even see our interest in securing rights and computer ethics as a legitimate one.  It would seem that younger generations do not care that much about privacy rights given their complete lack of propriety on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.  People are quite willing to give away the most intimate facts about themselves to millions of potential viewers.  In fact Facebook is a wonderful place for would be identity thieves to collect all kinds of useful tidbits like, for instance, your Mother’s maiden name, that can be used to bypass security in online banking etc. (ZDNet July 2007).  While it is indeed true that many young people are sharing way too much information about themselves online.  It is probably due to naivety and most will greatly alter their habits once they find out what can happen to them, and as more and more of the have this experience we may find that they mature into stalwart defenders of privacy.
Some final thoughts about a future a little further out are also worth pondering.  If we extrapolate a little on the technology already available, such as the internet, smart phones like the iPhone, automatic data collecting, personal robotics etc. we might see evolving a device like the Lifebox, as it is imagined by the science fiction author, mathematician and computer scientist, Rudy Rucker (Rucker, 2008).  This device automatically collects all the information surrounding its user as they life their life, everything they do, say, look at, smell, hear, etc.  This would result in a few….Terabytes which is not really all that much memory space considering how quickly our ability to store this information is progressing, you could recall and even relive any experience you ever had.  This would be a fabulous device but it is easy to imagine the transparency in privacy right to the digital soul of every person that had one but our wish for perfect memory and longevity may just outweigh any vestigial interest in privacy we may have at that time. 
As things like Lifeboxes and other artificial agents evolve they will not only challenge our privacy rights they may evolve to want these rights for themselves.  As strange as this technology sounds it is actually not that far fetched.  The beginnings of it were discussed at the start of this chapter.  If our agency is formed from informational constructs as some have argued (Floridi and Sanders, 2004; Floridi, 2003; Rucker, 2006; Sullins 2008, Turing, 1950), then certain information constructs may evolve significant artificial agency up to a level of competence similar to our own.  In this case they will be deserving of moral consideration for the same reason, we, animals, ecosystems, and corporations are already (Floridi and Sanders, 2004, Floridi, 2003, Sullins 2007, 2006 a, 2006 b).  Perhaps, with the advent of machine morality (Anderson and Anderson, 2007, Wallach and Allen, 2008) and the ethics of artificial agents (see chapter 13 and 14 of this volume) the future of computer ethics just may evolve to fulfill our desire for free speech and privacy.

Privacy vs. Sharing in Online Mentoring A Case Study (WYGU)

by Diana Constantinescu

Presented at the Bucharest Conference in Applied Ethics 2011 - "Ethical Aspects in New and Emerging Technologies"

When You Grow Up (WYGU.com) is an online social network dedicated to mentoring and professional orientation. It is... more When You Grow Up (WYGU.com) is an online social network dedicated to mentoring and professional orientation. It is free, international, and full of useful career resources. Within the last year it gathered more than 5,000 users from 141 countries.

Its main feature is that it offers access to professionals who already work for years in their professional field, so they can offer practical advice and stories. In order to get into a mentoring relationship, one needs to find a professional who has relevant experience and who wishes to share it. And here comes the ethical issue: how much does one need to share in order to benefit from a healthy mentoring relationship, without interfering unnecessarily with one’s privacy?

There is a fine line between privacy and mutual constructive sharing. In this presentation I will show some preliminary results of a survey answered by most active WYGU mentors and mentees on the degree of privacy/sharing they deem appropriate. I shall afterwards mark the most important points raised by the survey, and also compare online and offline mentoring from the privacy standpoint. Finally, I shall try to find an appropriate ethical answer to this dilemma, although this is intended rather as an open challenge to the conference participants, than as a final solution.


Diana Constantinescu
Community Manager, WYGU.com
PhD candidate, University College London

Face Recognition and Privacy enhancing techniques

by Alberto Cammozzo

In The Social Impact of Social Computing, edited by Andy Bissett, Terry Ward Bynum, Ann Light, Angela Lauener, and Simon Rogerson, pp.101--109, Sheffield University, 2011

This paper aims to clarify “face recognition” privacy issues emerging in social networks and public places. Reviewing... more This paper aims to clarify “face recognition” privacy issues emerging in social networks and public places. Reviewing current uses, a taxonomy of face recognition technologies is suggested to discern what aspects of face recognition impact the most on privacy, what are the main issues, and what privacy enhancing techniques are currently available to address them. Findings underline the need for a privacy-by-design approach where social computing follows evolving social norms without puncturing social context integrity.

The entanglement of trust and knowledge on the Web

by Judith Simon

Simon, J. (2010), The Entanglement of Trust and Knowledge on the Web, Ethics and Information Technology, 12, 343-355.

In this paper I use philosophical accounts on the relationship between trust and knowledge in science to apprehend... more In this paper I use philosophical accounts on the relationship between trust and knowledge in science to apprehend this relationship on the Web. I argue that trust and knowledge are fundamentally entangled in our epistemic practices. Yet despite this fundamental entanglement, we do not trust blindly. Instead we make use of knowledge to rationally place or withdraw trust. We use knowledge about the sources of epistemic content as well as general background knowledge to assess epistemic claims. Hence, although we may have a default to trust, we remain and should remain epistemically vigilant; we look out and need to look out for signs of insincerity and dishonesty in our attempts to know. A fundamental requirement for such vigilance is transparency: in order to critically assess epistemic agents, content and processes, we need to be able to access and address them. On the Web, this request for transparency becomes particularly pressing if (a) trust is placed in unknown human epistemic agents and (b) if it is placed in non-human agents, such as algorithms. I give examples of the entanglement between knowledge and trust on the Web and draw conclusions about the forms of transparency needed in such systems to support epistemically vigilant behaviour, which empowers users to become responsible and accountable knowers.

The Ethics of Safety-Critical Systems

by Jonathan Bowen

Bibliometric Mapping of Computer and Information Ethics

by Richard Heersmink

Co-authored with van den Hoven, J., van Eck, N.J & van den Berg, J. Published in Ethics and Information Technology 13(3), 241-249. doi: 10.1007/s10676-011-9273-7.

This paper presents the first bibliometric mapping analysis of the field of computer and information ethics... more This paper presents the first bibliometric mapping analysis of the field of computer and information ethics (C&IE). It provides a map of the relations between 400 key terms in the field. This term map can be used to get an overview of concepts and topics in the field and to identify relations between information and communication technology concepts on the one hand and ethical concepts on the other hand. To produce the term map, a data set of over thousand articles published in leading journals and conference proceedings in the C&IE field was constructed. With the help of various computer algorithms, key terms were identified in the titles and abstracts of the articles and co-occurrence frequencies of these key terms were calculated. Based on the co-occurrence frequencies, the term map was constructed. This was done using a computer program called VOSviewer. The term map provides a visual representation of the C&IE field and, more specifically, of the organization of the field around three main concepts, namely privacy, ethics, and the Internet.

Dynamics of control

by Matteo Turilli

Jeff Sanders & Matteo Turilli (2007). First Joint IEEE/IFIP Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Software Engineering (TASE '07):440-449.

This paper proposes a notion, the ?ambit? of an action, that allows the degree of distribution of an action in a... more This paper proposes a notion, the ?ambit? of an action, that allows the degree of distribution of an action in a multiagent system to be quantified without regard to its functionality. It demonstrates the use of that notion in the design, analysis and implementation of dynamically-reconfigurable multi-agent systems. It distinguishes between the extensional (or system) view and intensional (or agent-based) view of such a system and shows how, using the notion of ambit, the step-wise derivation paradigm of Formal Methods can be used to derive the latter from the former. In closing it addresses the manner in which these ideas inform studies in the ethics of systems of artificial agents.

Ethical Protocols Design

by Matteo Turilli

Matteo Turilli (2007). Ethics and Information Technology 9 (1).

The paper offers a solution to the problem of specifying computational systems that behave in accordance with a given... more The paper offers a solution to the problem of specifying computational systems that behave in accordance with a given set of ethical principles. The proposed solution is based on the concepts of ethical requirements and ethical protocols. A new conceptual tool, called the Control Closure of an operation, is defined and used to translate ethical principles into ethical requirements and protocols. The concept of Generalised Informational Privacy (GIP) is used as a paradigmatic example of an ethical principle. GIP is defined in such a way as to (i) discriminate specific cases in which an individual’s GIP can be infringed without accessing the individual’s data; (ii) separate unauthorised accesses to data that do not respect the right to GIP from access that do; and (iii) distinguish different degrees of GIP. Finally a camera phone is used to illustrate the proposed solution.

Ethics and the practice of software design

by Matteo Turilli

Matteo Turilli (2008). In P. Brey, A. Briggle & K. Waelbers (eds.), Current Issues in Computing and Philosophy. IOS Press.

The paper offers an analysis of the problem of integrating ethical principles into the practice of software design.... more The paper offers an analysis of the problem of integrating ethical principles into the practice of software design. The approach is grounded on a review of the relevant literature from Computer Ethics and Professional Ethics. The paper is divided into four sections. The first section reviews some key questions that arise when the ethical impact of computational artefacts is analysed. The inner informational nature of such questions is used to argue in favour of the need for a specific branch of ethics called Information Ethics. Such ethics deal with a specific class of ethical problems and Informational Privacy is introduced as a paradigmatic example. The second section analyses the ethical nature of computational artefacts. This section highlights the fact that this nature is impossible to comprehend without first considering designers, users, and patients alongside the artefacts they create, use and are affected by. Some key ethical concepts are discussed, such as freedom, agency, control, autonomy and accountability. The third section illustrates how autonomous computational artefacts are rapidly changing the way in which computation is used an perceived. The description of the ethical challenges posed to software engineers by this shift in perspective closes the section. The fourth and last section of the paper is dedicated to a discussion of Professional Ethics for software engineers. After establishing the limits of the professional codes of practice, it is argued that ethical considerations are best embedded directly into software design practise. In this context, the Value Sensitive Design approach is considered and insight into how this is being integrated into current research in ethical design methodologies is given.

The ethics of information transparency

by Matteo Turilli

Matteo Turilli & Luciano Floridi (2009). Ethics and Information Technology 11 (2).

The paper investigates the ethics of information transparency (henceforth transparency). It argues that transparency... more The paper investigates the ethics of information transparency (henceforth transparency). It argues that transparency is not an ethical principle in itself but a pro-ethical condition for enabling or impairing other ethical practices or principles. A new definition of transparency is offered in order to take into account the dynamics of information production and the differences between data and information. It is then argued that the proposed definition provides a better understanding of what sort of information should be disclosed and what sort of information should be used in order to implement and make effective the ethical practices and principles to which an organisation is committed. The concepts of “heterogeneous organisation” and “autonomous computational artefact” are further defined in order to clarify the ethical implications of the technology used in implementing information transparency. It is argued that explicit ethical designs, which describe how ethical principles are embedded into the practice of software design, would represent valuable information that could be disclosed by organisations in order to support their ethical standing.

The Case of Online Trust

by Matteo Turilli

Turilli, M., Vaccaro, A. Taddeo, M. (2010). Technology and Policy, 23(3-4), 333-345.

This paper contributes to the debate on online trust addressing the problem of whether an online environment satisfies... more This paper contributes to the debate on online trust addressing the problem of whether an online environment satisfies the necessary conditions for the emergence of trust. The paper defends the thesis that online environments can foster trust, and it does so in three steps. Firstly, the arguments proposed by the detractors of online trust are presented and analysed. Secondly, it is argued that trust can emerge in uncertain and risky environments and that it is possible to trust online identities when they are diachronic and sufficient data are available to assess their reputation. Finally, a definition of trust as a second-order property of first-order relation is endorsed in order to present a new definition of online trust. According to such a definition, online trust is an occurrence of trust that specifically qualifies the relation of communication ongoing among individuals in digital environments. On the basis of this analysis, the paper concludes by arguing that online trust promotes the emergence of social behaviours rewarding honest and transparent communications.

Responsabilidad, confianza y modelos humanos

by J. Francisco Álvarez

Isegoría, No 29 (2003):51-68 

Personal responsibility could be understood as a value that individuals try to satisfice instead to optimize. Usual... more Personal responsibility could be understood as a value that individuals try to satisfice instead to optimize. Usual dilemmas between rational choice and other processes linked both to our emotions and agency, are not actual dilemmas. We analyse personal responsibility and trust as two devices that contribute to build on a complementary view of rationality that overcome narrow notions. From Aristotle to Adam Smith there are philosophical insights that go round this topic. Our bounded rationality is an interwoven process that help us to elucidate three apparent dichotomies in moral studies very well exposed by Amartya Sen.