[Air-l] Google is watching ! response to Charles Ess

Maximilian Forte mcforte at kacike.org
Tue May 25 15:10:27 PDT 2004


Sorry Charles Ess, if you forget to address my responses to your comments
below when you return in several weeks, I'll understand.

> 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."

I am still waiting for clarification as to how a researcher can protect the
privacy of something that is made public. Don't get annoyed: I just cannot
see how this is a logical proposition or one that can be put into actual
practice.

> 2.  Your questions would also have more force and interest if they were
> addressed to our Norwegian colleagues as serious questions, ones that that
> did not prima facie reject their guidelines as "comical" - but rather
sought
> clarification as to how they dealt with such difficulties in their
research
> practice, given these guidelines.
> We thus might get some really interesting answers to such questions - but
I
> doubt that anyone will be interested in responding to general questions
that
> function as reductio arguments showing their national ethical guidelines
(in
> this case, the result of nearly a decade's work) to be "comical."

Something long in the making (and I am not sure a decade is that long when
speaking of ethical principles in human affairs), does not make it any more
valid or any less "comical" (I reserve the right to see the humour in
everything). Of course, I don't know who these Norwegian colleagues are, so
I cannot address my questions to them. Also, they did not post the message,
Charles Ess did, and I assumed, quite reasonably, that if you post those
guidelines and endorse them, you should at least be able to explain them.

Note: I asked for clarification and got none. I also used a concrete
example: filming a parade. How much more concrete should I have been?
Instead it's...well, speak to the Norwegians.

And this now becomes mandatory here --  :-D

Cheers,

Max Forte.






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