[Air-L] Ethics of using hacked data.

[Alex Halavais]

Fred:

Just a note of clarification. The question isn't whether the research
being proposed is like that of Nazis. It's whether data obtained in
unethical ways can be used to an ethical end, or (to draw on my Law &
Order knowledge), it represents the fruit of a poisonous tree. I think
you could say that in kind, human experimentation on high-altitude or
vivisections are a different animal than illegal computer intrusion
and theft of data (though criminal penalties in the US would likely be
pretty similar). Nonetheless, the basic question is pretty parallel, I
think:

http://bioethics.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/30171/Steinberg.HumanResearch.pdf

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/naziexp.html

- Alex

(Ronin in training.)


On Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 9:56 PM, Fred Fuchs <fred at firesabre.com> wrote:
> On 10/7/2015 10:06 PM, Charles Ess wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>> what a great question, and what helpful responses!
>
>
>> In the Stine Lomborg example: her taking the more demanding ethical step
>> of
>> asking for informed consent has the advantage of not only  going further
>> to
>> ensure basic rights protections - and this, I'm pretty sure, on both
>> deontological and feminist grounds; in addition, had this been an
>> international project, the stronger ethical approach here would have
>> simultaneously met the comparatively weaker demands of a consequentialist
>> approach.
>
>
> For discussion, to what extent would requiring informed consent affect
> sampling? Are there effective ways to deal with this?
>
>> Lastly, I'm wondering if anyone has developed analogies from biomedical
>> ethics, i.e., of using medical data drawn from clearly illegal and
>> unethical work (most notoriously, Nazi and Japanese experiments, but
>> certainly also the infamous Tuskeegee Institute work - when they can be
>> legitimately called that)?
>
>
> The analogy using the Nazi case isn't a good one. The Nazi were not doing
> anything close to good science even by the standards of the day.
>
> The discussion here presupposes that those using data obtained through
> hacking would be doing good science.
>
> So, ultimately, this is not a proper or useful comparison.
>
> Fred
>
> --
> Fred Fuchs - Founder, CEO, & Producer
> FireSabre Consulting LLC
> Content Services for Virtual Worlds
>
>
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-- 

// Alexander Halavais, Sociologist, Semiologist, and Saboteur Extraordinaire
// Associate Professor of Social Technologies, Arizona State University
// http://alex.halavais.net/bio     @halavais