There have been some tremendous developments in the field of technology and digitalisation of society. This trend has been pushing human boundaries of what humans are capable of, but also has some moral implications regarding the areas of privacy, autonomy and safety.
Technologies like persuasive technology, IoT, robotics, virtual & augmented reality, digital platforms and biometrics are having an increasing impact in our daily lives. Robotics and IoT mainly in our physical world, namely in our homes where more and more devices are connected to each other. The other 4 technologies have more impact on the sociocultural part of society. Shopping, transactions, listening to music and making new friends are activities that are increasingly taking place in an online environment (Royakkers et al, 2018).
These technologies are still relatively new, so the laws regarding these technologies are not as advanced as they are in other more physically oriented areas of law. One example is surveillance, there are many rules regarding cameras in the streets or at homes of people, on the area of privacy etc. Another sort of ‘digital surveillance’ is that Facebook and Google collect data on the physical whereabouts of its users, and their goal is not to improve the safety of society, but to learn more about their users and monetize this data. There is little to no governance in this area, because the users give platforms like Google and Facebook permission to collect and use this data.
The government should start using contextual integrity (Nissenbaum, 2011) in the making of laws in the digital area. Contextual can be explained by another example: Back in the days people would send their mail by physical letters and they would be brought from a to b by the mailman, if the mailman would start reading all these letters, it would be a scandal and it would be seen as an unprofessional act of the mailman. Nowadays Facebook analyses messages without anyone caring that they are actually doing almost the same as the mailman in this example. This example shows that privacy is not a universal value, but it differs in a different context. Situations that have the same flow of information, but take place in different contexts (online and offline) should be analysed using contextual integrity, to help build better laws for the online public space we’re getting ourselves into.
Sources:
Becker, M. J. (2015). Ethiek van de digitale media. Boo
Nissenbaum, H. (2011). A contextual approach to privacy online. Daedalus, 140(4), 32-48
Royakkers, L., Timmer, J., Kool, L., & van Est, R. (2018). Societal and ethical issues of digitization. Ethics and Information Technology, 20(2), 127-142.
