Who's Watching? Surveillance, Big Data and Applied Ethics in the Digital Age: Volume 26

The paper considers the phenomenon of Big Data through the work of Hannah Arendt on technology and on thinking. By exploring the nuance to Arendt’s critique of technology, and its relation to the social and political spheres of human activity, the paper presents a case for considering the richness of Arendt’s thought for approaching moral questions of Big Data. The paper argues that the nuances of Arendt’s writing contribute a sceptical, yet also hopeful lens to the moral potential of Big Data. The scepticism is due to the potential of big data to reduce humans to a calculable, and thus manipulatable entity. Such warnings are rife throughout Arendt’s oeuvre. The hope is found in the unique way that Arendt conceives of thinking, as having a conversation with oneself, unencumbered by ideological, or fixed accounts of how things are, in a manner which challenges preconceived notions of the self and world. If thinking can be aided by Big Data, then there is hope for Big Data to contribute to the project of natality that characterises Arendt’s understanding of social progress. Ultimately, the paper contends that Arendt’s definition of what constitutes thinking is the mediator to make sense of the morally ambivalence surrounding Big Data. By focussing on Arendt’s account of the moral value of thinking, the paper provides an evaluative framework for interrogating uses of Big Data.

Big Data draws both praise and criticism, seen as both villain and hero. The release of megabytes of data by Wikileaks is accorded praise as information transparency by some, whilst others find the massive collection of information by Amazon or Google, often freely given, immoral and to be feared. The paper examines three cases embracing the velocity, volume and variety aspects of Big Data – digital platforms, driverless cars and the Banking Royal Commission – and uses René Girard’s theories of mimesis and scapegoating to show that the identification of a scapegoat, or villain, is a common feature in them and that concerns over Big Data are linked to fear of ‘the other’, thus helping to show how Big Data can be both loved and hated and how both practitioners and theorists might comprehend public reaction to big data and its ethical dimensions.

China’s social credit system features a central database, the assignment of social credit scores for individuals and businesses, and the meting out of rewards and punishments, including a form of public shaming. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to develop the system in an effort to promote virtue and trustworthiness. While the idea that a government can ‘legislate morality’ is often scorned, it is not one that we dispute. Our focus is on how the social credit system promotes virtue, how the CCP’s thinking compares with that of certain relevant philosophers, and whether the system is in violation of human rights. As we readily acknowledge, there is a sense in which practically all of us face an informal kind of social credit system; as individuals in society, we expect to be subject to a kind of feedback loop in which good behaviour is rewarded and poor behaviour is punished. Yet China’s social credit system is a remarkably centralised kind of effort, and it enables the CCP to play an extraordinarily dominant role in both controlling and contributing to the feedback loop that people and businesses in China face. In harmony with a chorus of human rights groups, we argue that China’s social credit system is indeed in serious danger of violating certain human rights, particularly certain rights relating to freedom of opinion and expression. Moreover, we contend that this human rights critique of the system is reasonably robust because the kind of human rights involved are liberty rights as opposed to rights to goods and services. As we explain, liberty rights tend not to impose a material burden on others, which helps to give them an especially strong claim for recognition as human rights.

This paper will provide an overview of the contemporary surveillance environment in the age of Big Data and an insight into the complexities and overlap between security, bodily and informational surveillance as well as the subsequent impacts on privacy and democracy. These impacts include the ethical dilemmas facing librarians and information scientists as they endeavour to uphold principles of equality of access to information, and the support of intellectual freedom in private in an increasingly politicised informational environment. If we accept that privacy is integral to the notion of learning, free thought and intellectual exploration and a crucial element in the separation of the state and the individual in democratic society, then the emergence of the data age and the all-encompassing surveillance and exposure of once private acts will undoubtedly lead to the reimagining of the social and political elements of society.

Abuse and misuse of Substitute Decision-Making (SDMg) authority impacts the lives of children and adults with decision-making disabilities. The concerns raised in this paper amplify previous attention addressed by advocacy agencies and law reformists such as the Law Commission of Ontario. I analyse problems associated with Plenary Guardianship from both the lived experience of the non-guardian perspective and from the authority bestowed to the Guardian pursuant to the Guardianship and Administration Act 1990 of Western Australia legitimating the unintended capacity to abuse one’s substitute decision-making authority. Substitute decision-making arrangements enable decisions to be made on behalf of a person with a decision-making disability; usually made when such arrangements are necessary and subject to safeguards. Detrimentally, the substitute decision-maker (SDM) can assert broader powers beyond sensible measures that include thwarting investigations undertaken by family members; removing family members from the life of the person for whom an order is made; inappropriately applying a paternalistic or ‘best interest’ approach to decision-making where other approaches are required; failing to consider the individual’s wishes or making decisions contrary to those wishes; having insufficient contact with the individual; and, sharing insufficient or incorrect information. Moreover, they may subject the individual for whom an SDM order is made to experimental medical treatment in tandem with imposing or condoning severe and harmful restrictive-practices. Consequently, the second issue addressed in this paper concerns normalising both chemical and physical restrictive-practices that are both morally abhorrent and clinically highly questionable. Furthermore, often undertaken by service providers and their contracted psychiatrists and treating teams, endorsed under authority of a collaborating Guardian or SDM.

This paper develops a comprehensive multidimensional legitimacy model that provides a generic framework for exploring legitimacy in institutions – including the legitimacy of rules, codes, collective activities and organisations themselves. Through the use of 10 dimensions, covering concerns with fairness, efficacy, integrity, expectations, inclusive decision-making and more, the model aims to capture the full suite of distinct features that may be morally relevant in any given case. Each dimension is a continuum and can provide reasons for moral challenge, toleration or pro-active support. The model can be used to diagnose ethical risk areas, to compare reform initiatives and to inform empirical studies of descriptive legitimacy and the social licence to operate. It may also be used as an applied ethics methodology to evaluate overall institutional moral legitimacy; the paper discusses the contextual judgments required for this, including the way that some legitimacy factors can operate as defeaters, such that a serious failure on a pivotal dimension cannot be overcome by support from other dimensions.