Technology does alter the moral landscape

I used to believe that there was nothing new under the sun. I used to think that the problems we face with ethics and technology are no different than the ethical questions we’ve faced for centuries. I used to think we didn’t need to worry so much about the effects of technology on human interaction. But I’ve changed my mind.

Although there are core ideas that haven’t changed — respect for other people, honesty, integrity — how those ideas play out in our dealings with one another have changed radically. The change, contrary to what many people believe, is more than just a matter of degree.

Whenever someone raises concerns over a new privacy violation, such as video surveillance, defenders of the idea rush to the fore to proclaim that installing video cameras with face recognition capabilities is no different than a police officer being able to see you as you stroll down the street.

Or when someone complains about the mass of information being collected by some e-commerce sites, or even a brick-and-mortar operation, a partisan will spring up to claim that it’s no different than the kindly old shopkeeper who knew what kind of coffee you prefer. The fact that this is now recorded and digitized, they say, is just the same thing in different form. I beg to differ.

To claim that digitized and stored data-gathering is different only in degree from personal observation and recollection ignores the fact that it’s a different animal altogether. I say “animal,” because the difference was explained to me by a privacy advocate in just those terms. He likened it to saying that there is only a difference in degree between a house kitten and a full grown tiger, when in fact they are completely different animals and pose markedly different dangers.

When someone glances at me on the street, it is something I should expect when I go out in public. Many people have written to tell me that, and I agree with them. But when someone stares at me unrelentingly, they are infringing on the outposts of my claim to privacy. If they take my photograph without my permission, they may be within their legal rights, but they have crossed an ethical line. If they then digitize, store, and further exploit that image, they have made an ethical leap that takes us to a whole new realm. This is far different than a casual glance.

And the same thing happens when we move beyond the kindly old storekeeper remembering that I like a certain type of coffee. I’ve lived in a small town, where the shopkeeper knew my name and the make and color of my truck. When I went in for my morning newspaper, he’d remark on the fact that he saw me go by the store early in the morning and we’d chat about why I did. He also could have known just how many candy bars I bought — assuming he cared to notice and remember — and that fact could have become the subject of town gossip.

That is qualitatively different than a giant supermarket chain, owned by a holding company, which is in turn owned by a multinational conglomerate capturing and digitally storing every purchase that I make: the quantity of items bought, the time and date I bought them, and how often I shopped. When the conglomerate mines that data and then sells the results to other businesses, we’re talking about a whole new animal, especially when the results are accompanied by such things as my name, address, social security number, and credit card account numbers — all of which might be in the same data file.

The issue of spam presents even more striking examples. When I raised the issue last year, many readers responded with some comments that pointed out why spam differs in kind, not just degree, from regular junk snail mail.

One difference is in the cost to the producer. Bulk mailers have to pay not only for producing the material they mail, they also have to pay for each piece they mail. Consequently, despite appearances to the contrary, bulk mailers are conscious of who they send material to and the likelihood of some return business. Spammers operate under no such constraints.

Perhaps the greatest difference is in accountability. With junk snail mail you usually know who the sender is, as does the postal service. Those who send objectionable material can be held accountable and penalized under the law. With spam, there is no such accountability. People in foreign countries, virtually untraceable and largely unaccountable, can send the most offensive material and even cause real mischief for the unwary.

I came across a good example of this type of mischief recently when a friend — not particularly computer-savvy — told me obscene photos kept popping up on his screen. This all began after he opened an e-mail that he thought was from an old friend of his, but was really spam with a purposely misleading subject line.

Deleting the pictures only produced more. Finding and deleting the program that had installed itself on his computer and generated the pictures was effective only until we rebooted.

I finally realized that when he clicked on the original message, it took him to the porn Web site, which installed the program and the pictures and also had designated itself as his home page. Every time he started Internet Explorer the whole process began all over again.

This was a ploy designed to not only make money on porn, but to prey on naïve computer users. Had the porn merchants merely sent the pictures by mail to my friend, he could have quickly tossed them into the wastebasket or reported the sender to the postal authorities. With the new Internet-based scam, the pornographers forced him to look at the pictures every time he booted up. In addition, they were banking that his inexperience — like that of the broad mass of newer computer users — would prevent him from removing the offensive program or prevent it from reinstalling itself

For my friend it was a case of embarrassment and annoyance, but imagine if this had happened on a child’s computer or one in a school. What could be the possible effects if this had happened at work and someone was held accountable for the pornography under a mindless and unrelenting “zero tolerance” policy?

This is not just a new form of the old junk mail. This is a new scam with higher stakes and greater consequences. We have to face the fact that technology has upped the ante.

What do you think? Let me know at ethics_matters@infoworld.com or join in our Ethics Matters forum at www.infoworld.com/forums/ethics .