What is privacy? What does privacy mean in relation to biobanking, in what way do the participants have an interest in privacy, (why) is there a right to privacy, and how should the privacy issue be regulated when it comes to biobank research? A relational view of privacy is argued for in this article, which takes as its basis a general discussion of several concepts of privacy and attempts at grounding privacy rights. In promoting and protecting the rights that participants (...) in biobank research might have to privacy, it is argued that their interests should be related to the specific context of the provision and reception of health care that participation in biobank research is connected with. Rather than just granting participants an exclusive right to or ownership of their health information, which must be waived in order to make biobank research possible, the privacy aspect of health information should be viewed in light of the moral rights and duties that accompany any involvement in a research based system of health services. (shrink)

This essay critically analyzes Luciano Floridi’s ontological theory of informational privacy. Organized into two main parts, Part I examines some key foundational components of Floridi’s privacy theory and it considers some of the ways in which his framework purports to be superior to alternative theories of informational privacy. Part II poses two specific challenges for Floridi’s theory of informational privacy, arguing that an adequate privacy theory should be able to: (i) differentiate informational privacy from other kinds of privacy, including psychological (...) privacy; and (ii) distinguish between descriptive and normative aspects of informational privacy in a way that differentiates a (mere) loss of privacy from a violation of privacy. I argue that Floridi’s privacy theory, in its present form, does not explicitly address either challenge. However, I also argue that his ontological theory provides us with a novel way of analyzing the impact that digital technologies have had for informational privacy. I conclude by suggesting that Floridi’s privacy framework can be interpreted as containing the elements of a “personality theory of privacy,” which would be useful to examine in a separate study. (shrink)

Research on the ethics of algorithms has grown substantially over the past decade. Alongside the exponential development and application of machine learning algorithms, new ethical problems and solutions relating to their ubiquitous use in society have been proposed. This article builds on a review of the ethics of algorithms published in 2016, 2016). The goals are to contribute to the debate on the identification and analysis of the ethical implications of algorithms, to provide an updated analysis of epistemic and normative (...) concerns, and to offer actionable guidance for the governance of the design, development and deployment of algorithms. (shrink)

El derecho a la privacidad está en el centro de muchos de los debates públicos actuales. Sin embargo, a pesar de la extensa literatura filosófica y jurídica sobre el tema, no contamos con una explicación adecuada del sentido y del valor de la privacidad. Esta falta de acuerdo sobre cuestiones conceptuales y normativas ha llevado a algún autor a hablar del ‘caos de la privacidad’. Este artículo se centra en la exploración conceptual de la privacidad. Para ello, en primer lugar, (...) consideraré cómo el derecho a la privacidad fue formulado por primera vez en el célebre artículo de Warren y Brandeis. Segundo, en la medida en que el derecho a la privacidad es sistemáticamente traducido en español como ‘derecho a la intimidad’, resulta crucial analizar con cuidado la confusa relación entre intimidad y privacidad. Con este fin, en las dos últimas secciones del trabajo discutiré algunas explicaciones de cómo trazar la distinción entre ambas nociones y cómo entender su intrincada relación. (shrink)

Revelations of personal matters often have negative consequences for social-media users. These consequences trigger frequent warnings, practical rather than moral in nature, that social-media users should consider carefully what they reveal about themselves since their revelations might cause them various difficulties in the future. I set aside such practical considerations and argue that social-media users have a moral obligation to maintain their own privacy that is rooted in the duty to self-censor. Although Anita L. Allen provides a paternalist justification of (...) the duty that supports my position that social-media users are obligated to self-censor what they reveal about themselves, I justify the obligation through considerations that are more palatable to liberals than is paternalism. I accomplish this by arguing that the failure to self-censor often creates for others undue burdens that individuals are obligated morally not to create. In particular, social-media revelations often create undue burdens for those, such as employers and university personnel, who are obligated morally to respect individuals’ privacy in their decision-making processes. I also demonstrate that this argument is not for a broad duty to self-censor, but, rather, for a narrow duty that applies to particular circumstances such as certain uses of social media. (shrink)

Recent scholarship in philosophy, law, and information systems suggests that respecting privacy entails understanding the implicit privacy norms about what, why, and to whom information is shared within specific relationships. These social contracts are important to understand if firms are to adequately manage the privacy expectations of stakeholders. This paper explores a social contract approach to developing, acknowledging, and protecting privacy norms within specific contexts. While privacy as a social contract—a mutually beneficial agreement within a community about sharing and using (...) information—has been introduced theoretically and empirically, the full impact on firms of an alternative framework to respecting the privacy expectations of stakeholders has not been examined. The goal of this paper is to examine how privacy norms develop through social contract’s narrative, to redescribe privacy violations given the social contract approach, and to critically examine the role of business as a contractor in developing privacy norms. A social contract narrative dealing specifically with issues of privacy is an important next step in exploring a social contract approach to privacy. Here, the narrative is used to explain to analyze the dynamic process of privacy norm generation within particular communities. Based on this narrative, individuals within a given community discriminately share information with a particular set of obligations in mind as to who has access to the information and how it will be used. Rather than giving away privacy, individuals discriminately share information within a particular community and with norms governing the use of their information. Similar to contractual business ethics’ impact on global commerce in explaining how and why norms vary across global contexts, the social contract approach to privacy explains how and why norms vary across communities of actors. Focusing on agreements around privacy expectations shifts the responsibility of firms from adequate notification to the responsibility of firms as contractors to maintain a mutually beneficial and sustainable solution. (shrink)

It has been recommended that parents should monitor their children’s Internet use, including what sites their children visit, what messages they receive, and what they post. In this paper, I claim that parents ought not to follow this advice, because to do so would violate children’s right to privacy over their on-line information exchanges. In defense of this claim, I argue that children have a right to privacy from their parents, because such a right respects their current capacities and fosters (...) their future capacities for autonomy and relationships. (shrink)

In recent years there has been wide-ranging discussion of epistemic virtues. Given the value and importance of acquiring knowledge this discussion has tended to focus upon those traits that are relevant to the acquisition of knowledge. This acquisitionist focus ignores or downplays the importance of epistemic restraint: refraining from seeking knowledge. In contrast, in many periods of history, curiosity was viewed as a vice. By drawing upon critiques of curiositas in Middle Platonism and Early Christian philosophy, we gain useful insights (...) into the value and importance of epistemic restraint. The historical discussion paves the way for a clarification of epistemic restraint, one that distinguishes the morally relevant features of epistemic process, content, purpose, and context. Epistemic restraint is identified as an important virtue where our epistemic pursuits pose risks and burdens, where such pursuits have opportunity costs, where they are pursued for vicious purposes. But it is in the social realm where epistemic restraint has most purchase, epistemic restraint is important both because privacy is important and because being trusted are important. Finally, some suggestions are offered as to why epistemic restraint has not received the contemporary attention that it deserves. (shrink)

Privacy is something we all want. We seek privacy to prevent others from securing information about us that is immediately embarrassing, and so causes us pain but not material loss. We also value privacy for strategic reasons in order to prevent others from imposing material and perhaps psychic costs upon us. I use the expression “securing information” so that it covers everything from the immediate sensory data that a voyeur acquires to the financial data a rival may acquire about our (...) businesses. In the degenerate case of the Peeping Tom's invasion of our privacy, suffering is caused just by the voyeur's having acquired the information, even if nothing is ever done with it beyond the voyeur's recalling it from time to time. In all other cases, privacy prevents others from imposing costs or harms on us in ways that require that they secure information about us. (shrink)

It is not unusual for researchers in ethnography (and sometimes Institutional Review Boards) to assume that research of “public” behavior is morally unproblematic. I examine an historical case of ethnographic research and the sustained moral outrage to the research expressed by the subjects of that research. I suggest that the moral outrage was legitimate and articulate some of the ethical issues underlying that outrage. I argue that morally problematic Ethnographic research of public behavior can derive from research practice that includes (...) a tendency to collapse the distinction between harm and moral wrong, a failure to take account of recent work on ethical issues in privacy; failure to appreciate the deception involved in ethnographers’ failure to reveal their role as researchers to subjects and finally a failure to appropriately weigh the moral significance of issues of invasion of privacy and inflicted insight in both the research process and subsequent publication of research. (shrink)

This article highlights a contemporary privacy problem that falls outside the scope of dominant theoretical approaches. Although these approaches emphasize the connection between privacy and a protected personal (or intimate) sphere, many individuals perceive a threat to privacy in the widespread collection of information even in realms normally considered "public". In identifying and describing the problem of privacy in public, this article is preliminary work in a larger effort to map out future theoretical directions.

Privacy is a relational and relative concept that has been defined in a variety of ways. In this paper we offer a systematic discussion of potentially different notions of privacy. We conclude that privacy as the freedom or immunity from the judgement of others is an extremely useful concept to develop ways in which to understand privacy claims and associated risks. To this end, we develop a framework of principles that explores the interrelations of interests and values for various stakeholders (...) where privacy concerns have risen or are expected to rise. We argue that conflicts between the interests and values of different stakeholders may result in legitimate claims of privacy/transparency being ignored or underrepresented. Central to this analysis is the notion of a stakeholder. We argue that stakeholders are persons or groups with legitimate interests, of intrinsic value, in the procedural and/or substantive aspects of the privacy/transparency claim and subsequent judgements on that basis. Using the principles of access, representation, and power, which flow from our framework of analysis, we show how they can facilitate the identification of potential privacy/transparency risks using examples from the British National Health Service. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine some ethical implications of a controversial court decision in the United States involving Verizon (an Internet Service Provider or ISP) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In particular, we analyze the impacts this decision has for personal privacy and intellectual property. We begin with a brief description of the controversies and rulings in this case. This is followed by a look at some of the challenges that peer-to-peer (P2P) systems, used to share digital (...) information, pose for our legal and moral systems. We then examine the concept of privacy to better understand how the privacy of Internet users participating in P2P file-sharing practices is threatened under certain interpretations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States. In particular, we examine the implications of this act for a new form of “panoptic surveillance” that can be carried out by organizations such as the RIAA. We next consider the tension between privacy and property-right interests that emerges in the Verizon case, and we examine a model proposed by Jessica Litman for distributing information over the Internet in a way that respects both privacy and property rights. We conclude by arguing that in the Verizon case, we should presume in favor of privacy as the default position, and we defend the view that a presumption should be made in favor of sharing (rather than hoarding) digital information. We also conclude that in the Verizon case, a presumption in favor of property would have undesirable effects and would further legitimize the commodification of digital information – a recent trend that is reinforced by certain interpretations of the DMCA on the part of lawmakers and by aggressive tactics used by the RIAA. (shrink)

The general framework of this thesis is that of ethical Technology Assessment. Whereas the first essay proposes an inclusive approach to technology assessment by delineating an ethical checklist, the following essays focus on two of the checklist points, i.e. “privacy” and “control, influence and power”, in relation to workspace surveillance. The core idea of Essay I is that, due to its strong social impact, new technology and novel use of existing technology should be considered from the perspective of ethics. We (...) suggest that assessments should be conducted on the basis of nine crucial ethical aspects of technology. In Essay II an in-depth analysis of the meaning and value of privacy in the realm of work is undertaken. The meaning and value of privacy is explained as well as why it should be protected. It is argued that two dimensions of privacy should be safeguarded; “informational privacy” and “local privacy” for the reason that workers’ personal autonomy is protected thereby. Essay III is concerned with how workspace surveillance requires that job-applicants claim their privacy interests in employment negotiations to a much larger extent than what was previously the case. In most cases however, a dependency asymmetry between employer and job-candidate makes the latter ill-equipped for doing so. This asymmetry serves as the point of departure for an analysis of the conditions under which consent should be considered a criterion on moral acceptability with regard to employment contracting. The analysis suggests ways of rectifying this imbalance, raising demands on the quality of contractual consent. Essay IV discusses the extent to which it should be morally permissible for current or prospective employees to trade off their privacy in employment negotiations. The analysis starts out from, and questions, a libertarian case for voluntary self-enslavement. It is concluded that not even an orthodox libertarian can justify trade offs of a social good like liberty. Neither should employees be allowed to abstain informational privacy for the reason that such a trade-off could harm their future selves. In Essay V a dimensional analysis is proposed as a means to identify actually or potentially privacy invasive surveillance practices. It discusses ways in which different types of surveillance intrude upon employees’ privacy in order to guide the evaluation of such practice. Even though negative implications cannot be avoided altogether, by means of the proposed analysis, minimally intrusive means of monitoring can be identified. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against views that equate privacy with control over self-presentation and explore some of the implications of my criticism for the online world. In section 1, I analyze the relationship between control over self-presentation and privacy and argue that, while they are both tightly connected, they are not one and the same thing. Distinguishing between control over self-presentation and privacy has important practical implications for the online world. In section 2, I investigate self-presentation online and argue (...) that, while there might be an illusion that one can self-present on one’s own terms online, that mirage often reveals itself as unrealistic because of external and internal constraints. I further argue that what is most noteworthy about self-presentation online, in contrast to self-presentation offline, is the pressure to be on display at all times. In section 3, I argue that to combat some of the negative trends we are witnessing online we need, on the one hand, to cultivate a culture of privacy, in contrast to a culture of exposure. On the other hand, we need to readjust how we understand self-presentation online. I argue that in some cases we should understand it in similar terms to how we understand advertisement or fiction. By changing our conventions online, we would be taking away some of people’s control over self-presentation by not taking their online personae at face value. (shrink)

Governments must keep agricultural systems free of pests that threaten agricultural production and international trade. Biosecurity surveillance already makes use of a wide range of technologies, such as insect traps and lures, geographic information systems, and diagnostic biochemical tests. The rise of cheap and usable surveillance technologies such as remotely piloted aircraft systems presents value conflicts not addressed in international biosurveillance guidelines. The costs of keeping agriculture pest-free include privacy violations and reduced autonomy for farmers. We argue that physical and (...) digital privacy in the age of ubiquitous aerial and ground surveillance is a natural right to allow people to function freely on their land. Surveillance methods must be co-created and justified through using ethically defensible processes such as discourse theory, value-centred design and responsible innovation to forge a cooperative social contract between diverse stakeholders. We propose an ethical framework for biosurveillance activities that balances the collective benefits for food security with individual privacy: establish the boundaries of a biosurveillance social contract; justify surveillance operations for the farmers, researchers, industry, the public and regulators; give decision makers a reasonable measure of control over their personal and agricultural data; and choose surveillance methodologies that give the appropriate information. The benefits of incorporating an ethical framework for responsible biosurveillance innovation include increased participation and accumulated trust over time. Long term trust and cooperation will support food security, producing higher quality data overall and mitigating against anticipated information gaps that may emerge due to disrespecting landholder rights. (shrink)

The concept of privacy by design is becoming increasingly popular among regulators of information and communications technologies. This paper aims at analysing and discussing the ethical implications of this concept for personal health monitoring. I assume a privacy theory of restricted access and limited control. On the basis of this theory, I suggest a version of the concept of privacy by design that constitutes a middle road between what I call broad privacy by design and narrow privacy by design. The (...) key feature of this approach is that it attempts to balance automated privacy protection and autonomously chosen privacy protection in a way that is context-sensitive. In personal health monitoring, this approach implies that in some contexts like medication assistance and monitoring of specific health parameters one single automatic option is legitimate, while in some other contexts, for example monitoring in which relatives are receivers of health-relevant information rather than health care professionals, a multi-choice approach stressing autonomy is warranted. (shrink)

Voyeurism seems creepy. This paper considers whether these feelings are well-founded. It identifies a variety of ethically troubling features, including harmful consequences, deceit, and the violation of various religious, legal, and conventional norms. Voyeurism is something of a moral misdemeanor that seems worrisome when associated with these other failings. However, because voyeurism remains troubling even in the absence of harm or deceit, we must pay special attention to the ways complex social conventions can be used to show disrespect for others. (...) The discussion centers on the famous case of Lady Godiva and Peeping Tom, but much of the analysis applies to voyeurism more generally. (shrink)

I will argue that one class of issues in computer ethics oftenassociated with privacy and a putative right to privacy isbest-analyzed in terms that make no substantive reference toprivacy at all. These issues concern the way that networkedinformation technology creates new ways in which conventionalrights to personal security can be threatened. However onechooses to analyze rights, rights to secure person and propertywill be among the most basic, the least controversial, and themost universally recognized. A risk-based approach to theseissues provides a (...) clearer statement of what is ethicallyimportant, as well as what is ethically problematic. Once theissues of security have been articulated clearly, it becomespossible to make out genuine issues of privacy in contrast tothem. (shrink)

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems identify and track objects, animals and, in principle, people. The ability to gather information obtained by tracking consumer goods, government documents, monetary transactions and human beings raises a number of interesting and important privacy issues. Moreover, RFID systems pose an ensemble of other ethical challenges related to appropriate uses and users of such systems. This paper reviews a number of RFID applications with the intention of identifying the technology’s benefits and possible misuses. We offer an (...) overview and discussion of the most important ethical issues concerning RFID, and describes and examine some methods of protecting privacy. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the political value of the right to privacy. The classical accounts of privacy do not differentiate between privacy as the right of a citizen against other citizens vs. the right to privacy as the right against the state or the government. I shall argue that this distinction should be made, since the new context of the privacy debate has surpassed the historical frames in which the intelligence methods used by governments were comparable to those available (...) to individuals. I also present cases in which political privacy serves as an instrument of protecting important collective agendas exceeding the context of personal privacy. I argue that due to its function, political privacy should be considered a necessary element of democratic governance with the rule of law, imposing legal bounds on governments’ discretionary actions. (shrink)

Recently, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu argued that an action that does not violate a moral right to privacy cannot violate that right if it is extended over time. Specifically, they argue that a moral right to privacy does not protect against gawking or stalking. In this reply the reverse position is defended. Specifically, it is argued that their arguments fails on according to their own definition of the right to privacy. Furthermore, it is argued and illustrated by examples that (...) this conceptual conclusion holds for many other conceptions of the right to privacy. Moreover, it is argued that Persson and Savluescu fail to recognize the privacy-related harm extended to individuals through gawking or stalking. Lastly, the article ends by sketching how the role of privacy in public and consent relates to the given examples. (shrink)

In this article I provide an overview of philosophical conceptions of privacy and suggest 3 models to assist with the ethical analysis of privacy invasion by the news media. The models are framed by respect for persons, the comparison of harms and benefits, and the transfer of power. After describing the models, I demonstrate how they can be applied to news reporting that invades the privacy of public figures.

With the advent of social networking websites, privacy concerns have reached a new high. One particularly problematic concern entails employers requesting login credentials to popular social media platforms. While many people may consider this request unethical, they may not agree on the reasons it is unethical. One reason may be to blame the behavior on egoism. Egoism, however, comes in multiple flavors, not all of which would agree that violating privacy is acceptable. In this paper, we articulate how one egoist (...) perspective provides a defense of privacy in the face of unjust information access requests. Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, offers an egoist approach to ethics that values individual privacy on rational, self-interested grounds. By applying Objectivist principles to a business context, we observe that businesspeople should not violate other people’s privacy for short-term gains. Furthermore, we observe that privacy can be protected without distinct right to privacy. Rather, Objectivism’s conception of rational self-interest suggests that long-term flourishing is the proper end of individuals and businesses, predicated on, among other things, respecting privacy and enforcing individual rights. (shrink)

Living labs represent an important step in the development of research solutions based on the inclusive design paradigm. To ensure participants' rights and the adoption of an ethical approach to technological research, this paper presents some tools and strategies that comply with the needs and rights of those less advantaged groups to ensure that their rights and demands are taken into account. There is a gap in the construction and development of norms for a living lab. This article summarizes the (...) efforts made to achieve the goals of ethical awareness, enumerates the issues related to the ethical problems that may arise during participatory design and living labs environments, describes working routines, and outlines recommendations for achieving this objective. This paper attempts to focus on those aspects of research development that directly or indirectly come into contact with issues of ethics, privacy, and security related to participants in the context of any research conducted using a living lab approach. It also includes thoughts about the importance of information and communication technologies on the public domain and their implications for privacy. The importance of ethical awareness is even more evident in the case of enterprises where elderly and disabled users are present. For that reason, there are several legal tools that can be applied in a living lab setting, tools that are pertinent even though they may not have been conceived specifically to regulate this environment, may be used in a precarious way and might be temporary as well, just to proceed with the setting up of the living lab. However, the specificity and idiosyncrasy of this research environment demands further efforts to establish procedures that will facilitate both the proper set-up and smooth running of the living lab. (shrink)

Together with large biobanks of human samples, medical registries with aggregated data from many clinical centers are vital parts of an infrastructure for maintaining high standards of quality with regard to medical diagnosis and treatment. The rapid development in personalized medicine and pharmaco-genomics only underscores the future need for these infrastructures. However, registries and biobanks have been criticized as constituting great risks to individual privacy. In this article, I suggest that quality with regard to diagnosis and treatment is an inherent, (...) morally normative requirement of health care, and argue that quality concerns in this sense may be balanced with privacy concerns. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore several privacy issues as they arise with respect to the divine/human relationship. First, in section 1, I discuss the notion of privacy in a general way. Section 2 is devoted to the claim that privacy involves control over information about oneself. In section 3, I summarize the arguments offered recently by Margaret Falls-Corbitt and F. Michael McLain for the conclusion that God respects the privacy of human persons by refraining from knowing certain things about them. (...) Finally, in section 4, I shall criticize Falls-Corbitt and McLain’s arguments and make some concluding remarks about God and privacy. (shrink)

The question that I address in this paper is whether there is a right to privacy. It is not the question whether in the United States there is a legal right to privacy or, more particularly, a constitutional right to privacy. There are any number of ordinary legal rights and specific constitutional rights that might be so described, and the U.S. Supreme Court has referred also to a generic “right to privacy” that is implicit in the U.S. Constitution. Nor is (...) the question that I address whether persons have a moral claim to privacy that others ought to respect. I assume that in many circumstances, respecting a person's claim to privacy is productive of the good and, if so, that the claim ought to be respected. Rather, my question is whether persons have a right to privacy not dependent on positive law, such that it ought ordinarily to be respected without regard to the consequences, good or bad, simply because it is right. (shrink)

For more than thirty years an extensive and significant philosophical debate about the notion of privacy has been going on. Therefore it seems puzzling that most current authors on information technology and privacy assume that all individuals intuitively know why privacy is important. This assumption allows privacy to be seen as a liberal “nice to have” value: something that can easily be discarded in the face of other really important matters like national security, the doing of justice and the effective (...) administration of the state and the corporation. In this paper I want to argue that there is something fundamental in the notion of privacy and that due to the profoundness of the notion it merits extraordinary measures of protection and overt support. I will also argue that the notion of transparency (as advocated by Wasserstrom) is a useless concept without privacy and that accountability and transparency can only be meaningful if encapsulated in the context of privacy. From philosophical and legal literature I will discuss and argue the value of privacy as the essential context and foundation of human autonomy in social relationships. In the conclusion of the paper I will discuss implications of this notion of privacy for the information society in general, and for the discipline of information systems in particular. (shrink)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1995.

The science fiction series of the '70's, Star Trek, began all its telecastings with the announcement "Space: The Final Frontier." Star Trek chronicled the voyage of a crew navigating their way through space. For the travelers, space seemed like the last unknown entity that needed to be investigated. As they journeyed, they learned of the boundless nature of space. Each episode portrayed a group of folks encountering new situations, attempting to solve another problem, or strategizing how to overcome an obstacle.While (...) few people will ever have a chance to travel in a spaceship to discover the universe, most have trekked through cyberspace. Cyberspace is the coined term for the computer world. Little would the Star Trek's producer, Gene Roddenberry, know what expansive limits the computer age would usher in. With the advent of the computer age, we recognize that we have not even begun to identify the powerful magnitude of the computer. At each juncture or moment of discovery a new question is raised, impact is assessed and plans are strategically mapped out. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Introduction: Promise and Perils The History of Privacy as a Moral Concept Genetic Exceptionalism The Moral Basis of Medical Privacy Rights Genetic Paternalism Conclusion.

In this paper we present the perceptions of those engagedin a digital research project. We explored participants’ ethical knowledge,understanding and feelings about the whole process. We also tried toimplement a plan in order to see if certain proactive actions will benefitthe understanding of ethical issues among those stakeholders.The investigation presented here explored the need for ethical awarenessamong stakeholders in technology research projects.1 The Project tried to overcome the existing accessibility barriers faced by people unfamiliarwith ICT, people with disabilities and older (...) people when interactingwith Public Digital Terminals, such as ATMs and Ticket VendingMachines. As part of the research an investigation was conducted aboutthe ethical issues that rose on the use of digital technologies and, moreimportantly, about stakeholders ethical issues awareness.In this report the results from the field research carried out on ethicalissues are presented. At the beginning of the project a need for researchinto ethical awareness among project stakeholders was identified. As partof the project´s legal and ethical awareness and compliance, a limitedresearch was carried out on ethical issues. The research carried out encompassedtesting the validity and adequacy of the information providedon a purpose-made guide that also included more ethical awareness questionsto explore.During the testing sessions carried out in the pilot the questionnairewas presented to volunteers. Another questionnaire was presented todevelopers, and to the APSIS4 all project personnel. The expresion ofethical concerns was also encouraged from both the staff working in theproject and volunteers participating in the trials.Results showed that the information provided on the documentationwas adequate and, likewise, that both volunteers and consortium personnelwere aware of volunteers’ rights and personnel obligations. (shrink)

This article argues that people have legitimate interests in privacy that deserve legal protection on democratic principles. It describes the right to privacy as a bundle of rights of solitude, intimacy and confidentiality and shows that, so described, people have legitimate interests in privacy. These interests are both personal and political, and provide the grounds for two different justifications of privacy rights. Though both are based on democratic concerns for the freedom and equality of individuals, these two justifications for privacy (...) can be distinguished because the one is principally concerned with protecting the personal freedom and equality of individuals, while the other is principally concerned with their political equivalents. Feminists have often been ambivalent about legal protection for privacy, because privacy rights have, so often, protected the coercion and exploitation of women, and made it difficult to politicise personal forms of injustice. However, interpreting the content and justification of privacy rights in light of the differences between democratic and undemocratic forms of politics can enable us to meet these concerns, and to distinguish a democratic justification of privacy rights from the alternatives. (shrink)

This paper critically engages with new self-tracking technologies. In particular, it focuses on a conceptual tension between the idea that disclosing personal information increases one’s autonomy and the idea that informational privacy is a condition for autonomous personhood. I argue that while self-tracking may sometimes prove to be an adequate method to shed light on particular aspects of oneself and can be used to strengthen one’s autonomy, self-tracking technologies often cancel out these benefits by exposing too much about oneself to (...) an unspecified audience, thus undermining the informational privacy boundaries necessary for living an autonomous life. (shrink)

The article analyses the distinction between the private and the public sphere from a conceptual and from a normative point of view. On the conceptual level, it is argued that the common dichotomous view is incomplete, giving rise to conceptual confusions which can be overcome by a careful distinction between the intimate and the private sphere. While the boundary between the private and the public is a conventional matter, the sphere of intimacy, including thoughts as well as a certain type (...) of actions, is empirically delimited. On the normative level, a number of arguments for or against the extension or restriction of the private sphere as well as for or against the intervention of the state in its citizens’ spheres of intimacy is discussed from a liberal point of view. (shrink)

Many ICT services require that users explicitly consent to conditions of use and policies for the protection of personal information. This consent may become ‘routinised’. We define the concept of routinisation and investigate to what extent routinisation occurs as well as the factors influencing routinisation in a survey study of internet use. We show that routinisation is common and that it is influenced by factors including gender, age, educational level and average daily internet use. We further explore the reasons users (...) provide for not reading conditions and policies and show that they can be grouped in meaningful ways that may delineate different types of routinsation. (shrink)