Even though the idea that privacy is some kind of control is often presented as the standard view on privacy, there are powerful objections against it. The aim of this paper is to defend the control account of privacy against some particularly pressing challenges by proposing a new way to understand the relevant kind of control. The main thesis is that privacy should be analyzed in terms of source control, a notion that is adopted from discussions about moral responsibility.

In this paper, we argue that there is at least a pro tanto reason to favor the control account of the right to privacy over the access account of the right to privacy. This conclusion is of interest due to its relevance for contemporary discussions related to surveillance policies. We discuss several ways in which the two accounts of the right to privacy can be improved significantly by making minor adjustments to their respective definitions. We then test the improved versions (...) of the two accounts on a test case, to see which account best explains the violation that occurs in the case. The test turns out in favor of the control account. (shrink)

Although popular, control accounts of privacy suffer from various counterexamples. In this article, it is argued that two such counterexamples—while individually resolvable—can be combined to yield a dilemma for control accounts of privacy. Furthermore, it is argued that it is implausible that control accounts of privacy can defend against this dilemma. Thus, it is concluded that we ought not define privacy in terms of control. Lastly, it is argued that since the concept of privacy is the object of the right (...) to privacy if the former cannot be defined in terms of control, neither can the latter. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend what we call the ‘Hybrid View’ of privacy. According to this view, an individual has privacy if, and only if, no one else forms an epistemically warranted belief about the individual’s personal matters, nor perceives them. We contrast the Hybrid View with what seems to be the most common view of what it means to access someone’s personal matters, namely the Belief-Based View. We offer a range of examples that demonstrate why the Hybrid View is (...) more plausible than the Belief-Based View. Finally, we show how the Hybrid View generates a more plausible fit between the concept of privacy, and the concept of a (morally objectionable) violation of privacy. (shrink)

Mass surveillance is a more real threat now than at any time in history. Digital communications and automated systems allow for the collection and processing of private information at a scale never seen before. Many argue that mass surveillance entails a significant loss of privacy. Others dispute that there is a loss of privacy if the information is only encountered by automated systems.This paper argues that automated mass surveillance does not involve a significant loss of privacy. Through providing a definition (...) of informational privacy as a matter of actual access of private information by one who can understand the meaning of that information, it follows that automated systems which lack understanding cannot of themselves diminish privacy. This is not to say that mass surveillance is unproblematic, though - it is deeply problematic. It is just that privacy is not the most significant of these problems. (shrink)

This article analyses proportionality as a potential element of a theory of morally justified surveillance, and sets out a teleological account. It draws on conceptions in criminal justice ethics and just war theory, defines teleological proportionality in the context of surveillance, and sketches some of the central values likely to go into the consideration. It then explores some of the ways in which deontologists might want to modify the account and illustrates the difficulties of doing so. Having set out the (...) account, however, it considers whether the proportionality condition is necessary to a theory of morally justified surveillance. The article concludes that we need and should apply only a necessity condition, but notes that proportionality considerations may retain some use in in practice, as a form of coarse‐grained filter applied before assessing necessity when deliberating the permissibility of potential forms of surveillance. (shrink)

A standard account of privacy says that it is essentially a kind of control over personal information. Many privacy scholars have argued against this claim by relying on so-called threatened loss cases. In these cases, personal information about an agent is easily available to another person, but not accessed. Critics contend that control accounts have the implausible implication that the privacy of the relevant agent is diminished in threatened loss cases. Recently, threatened loss cases have become important because Edward Snowden’s (...) revelation of how the NSA and GCHQ collected Internet and mobile phone data presents us with a gigantic, real-life threatened loss case. In this paper, I will defend the control account of privacy against the argument that is based on threatened loss cases. I will do so by developing a new version of the control account that implies that the agents’ privacy is not diminished in threatened loss cases. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer an indirect argument for the Access Theory of privacy. First, I develop a new version of the rival Control Theory that is immune to all the classic objections against it. Second, I show that this new version of the Control Theory collapses into the Access Theory. I call the new version the ‘Negative Control Account’. Roughly speaking, the classic Control Theory holds that you have privacy if, and only if, you can control whether other people (...) know personal information about you. Critics of the Control Theory often give counterexamples, where privacy is either not diminished even though the claimant has lost control, or where privacy is diminished even though the claimant is in control. I argue that none of these alleged counterexamples work against the Negative Control Account. However, this is not a victory for the control theorist, because the Negative Control Account collapses into the Access Theory. The paper thus adds to the recent trend in the literature of favoring the Access Theory over the Control Theory. (shrink)

This study investigates the ethical use of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies (BD + AI)—using an empirical approach. The paper categorises the current literature and presents a multi-case study of 'on-the-ground' ethical issues that uses qualitative tools to analyse findings from ten targeted case-studies from a range of domains. The analysis coalesces identified singular ethical issues, (from the literature), into clusters to offer a comparison with the proposed classification in the literature. The results show that despite the variety (...) of different social domains, fields, and applications of AI, there is overlap and correlation between the organisations’ ethical concerns. This more detailed understanding of ethics in AI + BD is required to ensure that the multitude of suggested ways of addressing them can be targeted and succeed in mitigating the pertinent ethical issues that are often discussed in the literature. (shrink)

This paper discusses the idea that the concept of privacy should be understood in terms of control. Three different attempts to spell out this idea will be critically discussed. The conclusion will be that the Source Control View on privacy is the most promising version of the idea that privacy is to be understood in terms of control.

Recently, Jakob Thraine Mainz and Rasmus Uhrenfeldt defended a control-based conception of a moral right to privacy —focusing on conceptualizing necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for a privacy right violation. This reply comments on a number of mistakes they make, which have long reverberated through the debate on the conceptions of privacy and the right to privacy and therefore deserve to be corrected. Moreover, the reply provides a sketch of a general response for defending the limited access conception of the (...) right to privacy against control-based intuitions. (shrink)

In this article, we critically scrutinize the principle of proportionality when used in the context of security and government surveillance. We argue that McMahan’s distinction from just warfare between narrow proportionality and wide proportionality can generally apply to the context of surveillance. We argue that narrow proportionality applies more or less directly to cases in which the surveilled is liable and that the wide proportionality principle applies to cases characterized by ‘collateral intrusion’. We argue, however, that a more demanding criterion (...) than the lesser-evil justification that wide proportionality frequently entails is necessary in cases characterized by intentional intrusion upon non-liable individuals. The distinction between foreseeing and intending intrusion into the lives of individuals who are not liable has not previously been specifically addressed in discussions concerning surveillance ethics. This specification is thus increasingly important due to the general growing tendency for adherence to the precautionary principle and policies aimed at anticipating criminal acts before they are committed. Preventive surveillance of non-liable actors is considered an important instrument for obtaining this aim and thus calls for moral scrutiny in terms of permissibility and proportionality. We suggest the concept ‘wide proportionality +’ which applies to cases of intentional intrusion of non-liable individuals. (shrink)

The recent decades have seen established liberal democracies expand their surveillance capacities on a massive scale. This article explores what is problematic about government surveillance by democracies. It proceeds by distinguishing three potential sources of concern: the concern that governments diminish citizens’ privacy by collecting their data, the concern that they diminish their privacy by accessing their data, and the concern that the collected data may be used for objectionable purposes. Discussing the meaning and value of privacy, the article argues (...) that only the latter two constitute compelling independent concerns. It then focuses particularly on the third concern, exploring the risk of government surveillance being used to enforce illegitimate laws. It discusses three legitimacy-related reasons why we should be worried about the expansion of surveillance capacities in established democracies: Even established democracies might decay. There is a risk that surveillance capacities that are used for democratically legitimated purposes today will be used for poorly legitimated purposes in the future. Surveillance may be used to enforce laws that lack legitimacy due to the disproportionate punishment attached to their violation. The democratic procedures in established democracies fail to conform to the requirements formulated by mainstream theories of democratic legitimacy. Surveillance is thus used to enforce laws whose legitimacy is in doubt. (shrink)

The concept of surveillance has recently been complemented by the concept of sousveillance. Neither term, however, has been rigorously defined, and it is particularly unclear how to understand and delimit sousveillance. This article sketches a generic definition of surveillance and proceeds to explore various ways in which we might define sousveillance, including power differentials, surreptitiousness, control, reciprocity, and moral valence. It argues that for each of these ways of defining it, sousveillance either fails to be distinct from surveillance or to (...) provide a generally useful concept. As such, the article concludes that academics should avoid the neologism, and simply clarify what sense of surveillance is at stake when necessary. (shrink)

Much stalking consists in behavior which would normally be permissible; indeed, many stalking behaviors are protected liberties. How, then, does the stalker wrong the victim? I consider and reject different answers as failing to identify the essential wrong of stalking: stalking perpetuates gender oppression; it threatens or coerces, disrespects autonomy, or violates privacy. I argue that the stalker forces a personal relationship on the target and that our interest in being able to refuse such relationships is strong enough to ground (...) a right. It is a benefit if my account changes the standards of which intimacy-seeking behaviors we consider permissible. (shrink)

The Internet of Things (IoT) is, in part, an information handling system that can remove humans from the information handling process. The particular problem explored is how we are to understand privacy when considering informational systems that handle personal information in ways that impact people’s lives when there is no human operator in direct contact with that personal information. I argue that these new technologies need to take concepts like privacy into account, but also, that we ought also to take (...) these technologies into account to reconsider and perhaps reconceptualise privacy. This paper argues that while an inhuman system like the IoT does not necessarily violate the interpersonal privacy of people, if the IoT is used as part of a state surveillance program, a political notion of privacy may be violated. (shrink)

Automated decision making for sentencing is the use of a software algorithm to analyse a convicted offender’s case and deliver a sentence. This chapter reviews the moral arguments for and against employing automated decision making for sentencing and finds that its use is in principle morally permissible. Specifically, it argues that well-designed automated decision making for sentencing will better approximate the just sentence than human sentencers. Moreover, it dismisses common concerns about transparency, privacy and bias as unpersuasive or inapplicable. The (...) chapter also notes that moral disagreement about theories of just sentencing are plausibly resolved by applying the principle of maximising expected moral choiceworthiness, and that automated decision making is better suited to the resulting ensemble model. Finally, the chapter considers the challenge posed by penal populism. The dispiriting conclusion is that although it is in theory morally desirable to use automated decision-making for criminal sentencing, it may well be the case that we ought not to try. (shrink)

Climate change is one of the most important issues we are currently facing. There are many ways in which states can fight climate change. Some of them involve interfering with citizens’ personal lives. The question of whether such interference is justified is under-explored in philosophy. This paper focuses on a specific aspect of people’s personal lives, namely their informational privacy. It discusses the question of whether, given certain empirical assumptions, it is proportional of the state to risk its citizens’ privacy (...) or to risk infringing its citizens’ right to privacy to fight climate change. The main claim this paper argues for is that if fighting climate change and protecting our privacy conflict, we have good reason to fight climate change rather than protect our privacy. (shrink)

Over the past decade, police departments in many countries have experimented with and increasingly adopted the use of police body-worn cameras. This article aims to examine the moral issues raised by the use of PBWCs, and to provide an overall assessment of the conditions under which the use of PBWCs is morally permissible. It first reviews the current evidence for the effects of using PBWCs. On the basis of this review the article sets out a teleological argument for the use (...) of PBWCs. The final two sections of the article review two deontological objections to the use of PBWCs: the idea that use of PBWCs is based on or expresses disrespectful mistrust, and the idea that the use of PBWCs violates a right to privacy. The article argues that neither of these objections is persuasive, and concludes that we should conditionally accept and support the use of PBWCs. (shrink)

Debates about terrorism and technology often focus on the potential uses of technology by non-state terrorist actors and by states as forms of counterterrorism. Yet, little has been written about how technology shapes how we think about terrorism. In this chapter I argue that technology, and the language we use to talk about technology, constrains and shapes our understanding of the nature, scope, and impact of terrorism, particularly in relation to state terrorism. After exploring the ways in which technology shapes (...) moral thinking, I use two case studies to demonstrate how technology simultaneously hides and enables terroristic forms of state violence: police control technologies and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones. In both these cases, I argue that features of these technologies, combined with a narrative of precision and efficiency, serves to mask the terroristic nature of the violence that these practices inflict and reinforces the moral exclusion of those against whom these technologies are deployed. In conclusion, I propose that identifying acts of terrorism requires a focus on the impact of technologies of violence (whether they are “high tech” or not) on those most affected, regardless of whether users of these technologies conceive of their actions as terroristic. (shrink)

Critics of Big Tech often describe ‘surveillance capitalism’ in grim terms, blaming it for all kinds of political and social ills. This article counters this pessimistic narrative, offering a more favorable take on companies like Google, YouTube, and Twitter/X. It argues that the downsides of surveillance capitalism are overstated, while the benefits are largely overlooked. Specifically, the article examines six critical areas: i) targeted advertising, ii) the influence of surveillance capitalism on politics, iii) its impact on mental health, iv) its (...) connection with government surveillance, v) its effects on the rule of law and social trust, and vi) privacy concerns. For each area, it will be argued that concerns about surveillance capitalism are unfounded or exaggerated. The article also explores some benefits of the services provided by these technology companies and concludes with a discussion of the practical implications. Throughout, the article draws on empirical evidence relating to the societal and political impact of digital technologies. (shrink)

In earlier work, I have expressed scepticism about privacy-based criticisms of bulk collection for counter-terrorism ( Sorell 2018 ). But even if these criticisms are accepted, is bulk collection nonetheless legitimate on balance – because of its operational utility for the security services, and the overriding importance of the purposes that the security services serve? David Anderson’s report of the Bulk Powers review in the United Kingdom suggests as much, provided bulk collection complies with strong legal safeguards ( Anderson 2016 (...) ). I think it is hard to mount a uniformly compelling operational utility argument, because purposes other than counter-terrorism are pursued by the security services with the help of bulk collection. For example, the Intelligence Services Act 1994, section 1(2) says that apart from the interests of national security and the prevention and detection of serious crime, the Secret Intelligence Service may act “in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom.”The phrase “interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom” is opento a disturbingly wide range of interpretations, and it is doubtful that these interests justify bulk collection even when relevant “economic interests” are confined to those “also relevant to the interests of national security”, as required by the Investigatory Powers Act (2016) section 204 (3a). (shrink)

Recent decades have seen an unprecedented proliferation of surveillance programs by government agencies. This development has been driven both by technological progress, which has made large scale surveillance operations relatively cheap and easy, and by the threat of terrorism, organized crime and pandemics, which supplies a ready justification for surveillance. For a long time, mass surveillance programs have been associated with autocratic regimes, most notoriously with the German Democratic Republic and the Stasi, its secret police. A more recent case in (...) point is the efforts of the People’s Republic of China to set up a comprehensive surveillance system that assigns citizens a score reflecting their social and political conformity. But the current rise of state mass surveillance is mostly attributable to the new readiness of liberal democracies to monitor their populations. The vast surveillance system uncovered by whistleblower Edward Snowden is maintained and supported by a group of established liberal democracies, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and many others. While surveillance programs of authoritarian regimes, installed to monitor and quash political dissidents, are uncontroversially unjust, surveillance operations carried out by liberal democracies possess at least some prima facie legitimacy. They are set up with the stated objective of protecting citizens against terrorism, organized crime and pandemics, which few would deny is the duty of any state. Still, the expansion of large-scale surveillance by democratic governments has widely been perceived as objectionable or at least problematic on account of its harmful effects on both individuals and liberal society at large. (shrink)

This article examines whether social media users can validly consent to their own use of social media. It argues that, whether or not social media use is analogous to public health interventions, there is an obligation to provide users with information about risks and benefits, and absent that provision, there is no valid consent. Many or most users, in any event, do not have the capacity to consent, according to the criteria for capacity articulated in the ‘four abilities’ model: the (...) ability to express a choice, the ability to understand the facts pertinent to the decision in question, the ability of a subject to believe that the information applies to them, and the ability to reason—in the sense of being able to consider and weigh (with reference to the patient’s own concerns, circumstances, and values) the main possible outcomes of the decision to opt for the intervention and the decision to opt not to undergo it. Even if an individual social media user is capacitous according to these criteria, many will fail to be judged capacitous if (as it is argued should be the case), a further criterion, identified by Jennifer Hawkins must be satisfied, namely that the individual can look after their own interests at least as well as most other people can. It follows from this consideration that not only can regulation of social media (in the form of a ban) be justified under Mill’s harm principle, but that non-regulation cannot be justified. (shrink)