[Air-l] Google is watching !

Charles Ess cmess at drury.edu
Tue May 25 08:40:05 PDT 2004


Again, I regret that I cannot go into great detail on this one - but I would
like to address the first point ...

> From: Thomas Koenig <T.Koenig at lboro.ac.uk>
> Reply-To: air-l at aoir.org
> Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 01:55:47 +0100
> To: air-l at aoir.org
> Subject: Re: [Air-l] Google is watching !
> 
> 
> At 01:26 21/05/2004, Charles Ess wrote:
>> Um, all due respect, but that wasn't quite the point - i.e., to draw an
>> analogy between behaviors/choices advocated on the list and robbery, etc.
>> It was rather to simply provide hopefully obvious examples of why going from
>> what is to what ought to be (without further ado) is ethically problematic.
> 
> I know that that was not the point. But nobody here was advocating the kind
> of standpoint your example refutes, namely "that 'what _is_ the case' does
> not automatically define what _ought_ to be the case." That's why I found
> your example misleading. And that's why I think, that an argument that
> starts out with "by the same token", is misleading as well.

Just to reconstruct this:
my comment was in response to my own question about the need to protect
privacy as technological advances make such protection increasingly
difficult -
in response to Christian Nelson's post (20/5/04) that seconded ET's
argument,
ET wrote (5/20/04)
> There is no privacy.
> Changing names of forums or people means nothing. I have seen some
> astonishing efforts made in newsgroups by individuals trying to find the
> ID of other forum members. Getting Barry's ID from the above quote was
> chicken feed.

Perhaps I was overreading here - but both ET's statement and the following
from Thomas Koenig seem to me to function precisely as accounts of what _is_
the case in order to argue what _ought_ to be the case: (5/9/04)
> I would like to repeat my assertion that most internet traffic (email and
> ftp excluded, and IRC with some reservations) is public. People, who
> publish on the usenet or the web are participating in public discourse, as
> do people on this listserv, which does not have a moderator. That is, they
> implicitly waive their right to privacy, when they publish through these
> channels. If we were to treat them as if they would require special
> protection, because they might not be aware that they are potentially
> publishing to an audience of a billion or so, that would violate other
> values, such as autonomy and responsibility for one's communicative
> actions. If people are below a certain age or mentally ill, their
> protection is, of course, paramount, but most internet participants are
> not. Likewise, if privacy in typically very private issues is falsely
> assumed (a listserv of victims of rape, e.g.), different rules apply. But
> to generally treat people on the net as if they would require protection,
> could also be construed as denying them the right to be considered full
> citizens/netizens.
That is, I've taken these to be part of your arguments against ethical
obligations to protect privacy  - i.e., in the general form, "It is very
difficult (if not impossible) to protect privacy online, therefore we ought
not to worry about it."
If I've misread the argument, then I'd be grateful for clarification.
Specifically, if these statements are not being used in support of your
arguments against ethical obligations to protect privacy - what is their
logical function?

cheers,
charles ess





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