[Air-l] Google is watching !

[Charles Ess]

> From: Thomas Koenig <T.Koenig at lboro.ac.uk>
> Reply-To: air-l at aoir.org
> Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 22:41:18 +0100
> To: air-l at aoir.org
> Subject: Re: [Air-l] Google is watching !
> 
> At 17:36 20/05/2004, Charles Ess wrote:
> 
>> Two important points to be made here.
>> 1.  It is a basic point of ethical reflection that "what _is_ the case" does
>> not automatically define what _ought_ to be the case.
>> People rob, rape, and commit genocide.  They are capable of doing so - and
>> contemporary technology makes the last increasingly easy to do.  But these
>> facts hardly justify our saying "and so we _ought_ to rob, rape, and commit
>> genocide."
> 
> 
> Has somebody advocated robbery or worse on the listserv? I don't recall
> that. People also eat, drink, and have (consensual) sex.
> 
>> By the same token, then,
> 
> ... should we outlaw eating, drinking, and making out?
> Obviously not. Rape and genocide are obviously morally reprehensible acts.
> To equate these acts implicitly with treating publicly available material
> as public seems a bit far-fetched to me. I personally find it perfectly
> legitimate to conduct so-called "concealed" research, but that does not
> mean, I would advocate genocide.
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.
> 
>> to say that we can eliminate any realistic
>> expectation of privacy through contemporary technologies, beginning with a
>> Google or other search engine search, does not automatically imply that we
>> ought to do so - and/or, that we are relieved of any responsibility to
>> protect an increasingly illusory and threatened sense of privacy.
>> Indeed, one response to the increasing erosion of privacy is to find
>> better means to defend and protect it - whether these involve improved
>> technologies and/or various forms of ethical, social, and legal responses.
> 
> The private in itself is not morally superior to the public. There are
> situations, when one should demand privacy and others, when "going public"
> is the "right" approach. Democracy, for one, thrives on *public*
> deliberations, to relegate political discussions on the net to the realm of
> the private could also be seen as pretty patronizing towards "ordinary"
> citizens.
No quarrel with this - nor am I easily seeing where it was claimed that the
private is morally superior to the public.  All that was claimed, I think,
is that _if_ rights to privacy can be established for good reason(s) - then
those rights need to be respected, all other things being equal (including
exceptions for various forms of deceptive research, etc.).
> 
> I myself cannot see, how the Internet "erodes" privacy, at least not in the
> ways it was discussed here (Google searches, "concealed" ethnography).
> Nobody is forced to publish anything on the net. What could, e.g., be a
> privacy concern is the analysis of IP logs to check on surfing behavior,
> but that was not a point in the discussion here.
Um, I think this overlooks a central point - and another one.
1. A central point is what people's expectations are - whether justified or
not.  It seems clear that people frequently expect privacy, both in (a)
contexts in which such expectations  are, from an informed perspective,
unrealistic and (b) contexts which even if originally comparatively private,
become in various ways more public  (e.g., USENET postings that were later
published, etc.)
It seems to me defensible to say that the ways in which the Internet makes
access to information - including forms of information initially considered
private/personal with good reason (e.g., in a private chatroom, closed
listserv, etc.) - easier (e.g., through text string searches, a kind of
lurking much more difficult to replicate offline, etc.), it _does_ erode
privacy.  More precisely: the technologies affiliated with the Internet and
computer-mediated communication provide affordances which render privacy
more and more fragile.
2. The "nobody is forced" argument is only partially correct.
Nobody is forced to buy an automobile in the United States.  But unless one
lives in one of the few metropolitan areas such as Manhattan, etc. - there
is no real choice but to buy an automobile if one wants to participate in
social networks, etc.
By the same token, as the Internet interpenetrates our lives in the
so-called developed world more and more - as well as in developing countries
- there is increasingly little "choice" as to whether or not one makes use
of the technology.
> 
>> 2. [...]
> 
>> In this context, any suggestion on my part that the increasing erosion of
>> privacy might require us to rethink whether, and if so, how far, researchers
>> and others are obliged to try to protect privacy was met with an immediate
>> and emphatic insistence that privacy _must_ be protected - through stronger
>> laws, including increasing sanctions, for those who violated privacy rights,
>> if need be.
> 
> Nobody here on the list has advocated violating any laws, but I certainly
> would object against more restrictive laws regarding the use of www/usenet
> content and I most definitely would want not relegate the design of these
> laws from the larger citizenry to the research community.
Again, my point was not that anyone _had_ suggested violating extant law.
For that, I am absolutely sympathetic with your resistance against even more
laws - especially laws written by those less empathetic to the interests of
the research community.
Part of the point of this anecdote was to say that in fact, the
technological erosion of privacy does not automatically lead to the
conclusion that efforts to protect such privacy are moot.
In addition, the anecdote also makes another point: if researchers want to
remain as free as they currently are - they are better off, from a strictly
utilitarian standpoint, _not_ pissing off people by violating their privacy
(perceived, justified, or otherwise).  As numerous posts on this thread have
made clear, whatever may go on in the minds of researchers as far as
justifying research methods that may cross important ethical lines regarding
privacy - when people get unhappy for what they perceive as violations of
that privacy, the results are not good for researchers.
In particular, those results could conceivably include loud calls for
greater regulation by precisely the folk you would be least happy to have
calling your ethical shots.
Neither of us want that, I believe.

>> In my mind, this requires us to go back to the expectations of the persons
>> we're dealing with as a starting point for developing our sense of ethical
>> obligation.  This approach is further discussed in the AoIR guidelines, if
>> anyone is interested in looking further into it.
> 
> Most people who posted on this list have probably read that document. I
> personally just happen to disagree with the "privacy-for-privacy's sake"
> bias it contains.
> 
I would be genuinely grateful if you could make clear
(a) where I/we argued/asserted that privacy must be protected solely for
privacy's sake (I have some suspicions, but I'd much rather know what you
have in mind) and then
(b) how this represents a "bias" in at least the prevailing sense, i.e., an
irrational or otherwise ill-supported, arbitrary preference.
Or perhaps you mean "bias" in some other sense?

Cordially,

Charles Ess
Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies
Drury University
900 N. Benton Ave.                          Voice: 417-873-7230
Springfield, MO  65802  USA            FAX: 417-873-7435

Home page:  http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html
Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/

Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23