Unit 2: Big Data, Surveillance and Responsibility

Question 1

3 broad categories of ethical issues raised by surveillance

Answer 1

• Privacy
• Trust
• Autonomy

Question 2

3 Reasons why Privacy is valuable

Answer 2

• 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.

Question 3

Meaning of autonomy

Answer 3

Freedom from external control.

The capacity to govern one’s own actions.

Question 4

3 reasons for legitimate surveillance

Answer 4

• Avoiding harm
• Authority
• Discrimination

Question 5

To be ligitimate surveillance, authorities must (3)

Answer 5

• 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).

Question 6

Legitimate surveillance: Descrimination

Answer 6

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.

Question 7

3 Responses to Surveillance Capitalism

Answer 7

• Digital minimalism
• Technical solutions
• Social, political and regulatory solutions

Question 8

3 Responses to Surveillance Capitalism

Digital minimalism

Answer 8

Reduce the amount of data we create online, by reducing the time we spend online.

Question 9

3 Responses to Surveillance Capitalism

Technical solutions

Answer 9

Choosing to use or develop social media and other apps that do not track data as part of their business model.

Question 10

3 Responses to Surveillance Capitalism

Social, Political and Regulatory Solutions

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

4 Ethical issues that need to be addressed for non-consensual surveillance to be justified.

Answer 11

• Cause and context of the surveillance
• Authority to carry out the surveillance
• Proportionality and necessity of the serveillance
• Accountability of the surveillant

Question 12

Surveillance: Common justified causes

Answer 12

• 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

Question 13

2 Main activites associated with security (through surveillance)

-

Answer 13

• Detection
• Deterrence

Question 14

Salient aspects to the question of authority

Answer 14

• 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.

Question 15

Surveillance should be proportionate and necessary

Meaning of necessity

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

Surveillance should be proportionate and necessary

Meaning of proportionality

Answer 16

Hard to define.

Proportionality is a relative term: something is proportionate to something else.

In the case of surveillance, the obvious relation is to the justifying cause. An act of surveillance is (or is not) therefore proportionate to the justifying cause.

Question 17

What would make a person liable for surveillance?

Answer 17

• ## If they consent to surveillance (although only a particular act of surveillance). Surveillance still needs to be proportionate.

Question 18

Data analytics approach to surveillance

Answer 18

Finding the terrrorists, spies or organised criminals would involve:
- looking at the patterns of behaviour of known targets and seeking similar patterns of behaviour in a greater mass of data.
- or, looking at the patterns of behaviour of known non-liable people, and seeking deviations from the norm that might indicate a target.

Question 19

Attraction of a data analytics approach to surveillance

Answer 19

• The non-liable are not targeted and their information is not accessed
• There is an objective approach to identifying the liable
• Information is anonymised

Question 20

Ethical problems with a data analytics approach to surveillance

Answer 20

• It requires the collection of data from the general population. This is a violation of privacy.
• It is blunt. It is highly unlikely that data patterns will emerge that will identify all, and only, terrorists. There will be false positives and false negatives.
• Its perceived objectivity. Statistical patterns might incorporate past biases.
• Allows authorities to look for intelligence that can be used to prosecute people where there was no reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.

Question 21

4 Main ethical concerns with CCTV

Answer 21

• Discrimination
• Proportionality
• Consent
• Authority