BMGT 496 - Business Ethics - Final Exam
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BMGT496-Week6ResourcesandCitations.pdf
BMGT 496 - Week 6 Citations
(Breuninger, 2017)
(Britz, n.d.)
(Cellan-Jones, 2014)
(Davis, 2018)
(Equifax Breach Exposed More Consumer Data Than First Disclosed, 2018)
(Nakashima & Soltani, 2014)
(Romm, 2018)
(Snow, 2018)
(Stjernfelt & Lauritzen, 2019)
(The cost of data security: Are cybersecurity investments worth it?, n.d.)
(Walker, 2017)
Bibliography Breuninger, K. (2017, December 13). Net neutrality rules are likely doomed, but the debate
isn’t going away. Retrieved April 21, 2021, from CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/13/net-neutrality-rules-look-doomed--will- consumers-pay.html
Britz, J. J. (n.d.). TECHNOLOGY AS A THREAT TO PRIVACY: Ethical Challenges to the Information Profession. Retrieved April 21, 2021, from Simmons University: http://web.simmons.edu/~chen/nit/NIT%2796/96-025-Britz.html
Cellan-Jones, R. (2014, May 15). US v Europe - a cultural gap on the right to be forgotten. Retrieved April 21, 2021, from BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology- 27421969
Davis, J. (2018, April 18). FDA medical device plan zeros in on cybersecurity, public-private partnership. Retrieved April 21, 2021, from Healthcare IT News: https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/fda-medical-device-plan-zeros- cybersecurity-public-private-partnership
Equifax Breach Exposed More Consumer Data Than First Disclosed. (2018, February 13). Retrieved April 21, 2021, from Insurance Journal: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2018/02/13/480357.htm
Nakashima, E., & Soltani, A. (2014, October 7). The ethics of Hacking 101. Retrieved April 21, 2021, from The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/postlive/the-ethics-of-hacking- 101/2014/10/07/39529518-4014-11e4-b0ea- 8141703bbf6f_story.html?utm_term=.e9c36c86d53a
Romm, T. (2018, June 27). California is on the verge of passing a sweeping new online privacy law targeting Facebook, Google and other tech giants. Retrieved April 21, 2021, from The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/06/27/california-is-verge- passing-sweeping-new-online-privacy-law-targeting-facebook-google-other- tech-giants/
Snow, J. (2018, February 26). Bias already exists in search engine results, and it’s only going to get worse. Retrieved April 21, 2021, from MIT Technology Review: https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/02/26/3299/meet-the-woman-who- searches-out-search-engines-bias-against-women-and-minorities/
Stjernfelt, F., & Lauritzen, A. M. (2019). Chapter 11: Facebook’s Handbook of Content Removal. In Your Post has been Removed (pp. 115-137). Basel, Switzerland: Springer, Cham. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25968-6_11
The cost of data security: Are cybersecurity investments worth it? (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2021, from CloudMask: https://www.cloudmask.com/blog/the-cost-of-data- security-are-cybersecurity-investments-worth-it
Walker, M. J. (2017, November). Ethics and advanced medical devices: Do we need a new approach. Retrieved April 21, 2021, from Health Voices: http://healthvoices.org.au/issues/november-2017/ethics-advanced-medical- devices-need-new-approach/
4/20/2021 Net neutrality rules look doomed -- will consumers pay?
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KEY POINTS
Kevin Breuninger @ K E V I N W I L L I A M B
S H A R E
I N T E R N E T
Net neutrality rules are likely doomed, but the debate isn’t going away
P U B L I S H E D W E D , D E C 1 3 2 0 1 7 • 4 : 0 4 P M E S T U P D AT E D W E D , D E C 1 3 2 0 1 7 • 7 : 2 5 P M E S T
Net neutrality advocates say broadband internet providers would charge more for faster speeds without the FCC
protections.
Opponents argue the rules are effectively price controls that stifle investment and limit consumers’ options.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has said he wants to repeal the Obama-era rules.
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What is net neutrality?
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Demonstrators, supporting net neutrality, protest a plan by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to repeal restrictions on internet service providers during a protest outside a
Verizon store on December 7, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois.
Getty Images
The Federal Communications Commission’s vote on “net neutrality” rules, scheduled for Thursday, holds major implications for the future of the internet — but it’s not always clear who will foot the bill.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai says he intends to repeal the rules that keep internet service providers from treating online content unequally. The regulations prohibit ISPs, such as , or , from slowing or censoring traffic to certain websites.
Advocates say net neutrality is a bulwark against ISPs abusing their power by forcing or prioritizing some online content against their competitors. Doing so would create an internet that handicaps smaller businesses and limits customers’ freedom to access whatever websites they want.
“Net neutrality is actually what gives people choices,” said Evan Greer, campaign director for the pro-net neutrality activist group Fight for the Future. “If we get rid of net neutrality protections, it allows the largest, most incumbent web companies to essentially pay protection money to ISPs to solidify their monopoly status and squash competition.”
Crushing that competition, she said, opens the door for fewer companies with more control to charge higher prices. “It essentially amounts to a tax on the entire economy.”
Public opinion, while still largely in favor of the regulations, has narrowed in recent months. Net neutrality enjoyed strong bipartisan public support in June, but recent polling shows just a slim majority of U.S. voters still favor the rules, according to data from Morning Consult and Politico.
The apparent public support for net neutrality, opponents say, is largely a matter of successful branding.
“This is the brilliance of marketing,” said Roslyn Layton, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “The political left tends to win on net neutrality because the framing is better,” she said.
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WATCH: Father of net neutrality weighs in on battle over internet regulations
p y g ,
Layton blames what she considers onerous FCC regulations, not the free market, for creating a costly and unequal internet for consumers.
In a July report on the consumer impact of the rules, Layton and AEI argued that “the Open Internet rules against blocking and throttling, although seemingly consumer-centric, are powerful price controls and legal tools to compel broadband providers to deliver traffic regardless of the marginal cost to networks and frequently at zero price.”
It’s not just the additional costs: A Phoenix Center study concluded that the threat of reclassifying broadband internet service under the FCC’s purview may have reduced investment from the telecommunications sector between $30 billion and $40 billion annually from 2011 to 2015.
Net neutrality supporters, however, aren’t buying it. “I think that’s totally bogus,” Greer said. “If you want to talk about fees getting passed onto consumers, that’s what is going to happen if paid prioritization is allowed.”
Disclosure: Comcast is the owner of NBCUniversal, parent company of CNBC and CNBC.com.
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‘Father of net neutrality’ weighs in on the battle over internet regulations
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4/20/2021 TECHNOLOGY AS A THREAT TO PRIVACY: Ethical Challenges
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TECHNOLOGY AS A THREAT TO PRIVACY: Ethical Challenges to the Information Profession
J. J. BRITZ
Department of Information Science University of Pretoria
0002 Pretoria, South Africa
E-mail: [email protected]
The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of technology on the private lives of people. It is approached from a socio-ethical perspective with specific emphasis on the implication for the information profession. The issues discussed are the concept privacy, he influence of technology on the processing of personal and private information, the relevance of this influence for the information profession, and proposed solutions to these ethical issues for the information profession.
1. INTRODUCTION
We are currently living in the so-called information age which can be described as an era were economic activities are mainly information based (an age of informationalization). This is due to the development and use of technology. The main characteristics of this era can be summarized as a rise in the number of knowledge workers, a world that has become more open - in the sense of communication (global village/Gutenberg galaxy) and internationalization (trans-border flow of data).
This paradigm shift brings new ethical and juridical problems which are mainly related to issues such as the right of access to information, the right of privacy which is threatened by the emphasis on the free flow of information, and the protection of the economic interest of the owners of intellectual property.
In this paper the ethical questions related to the right to privacy of the individual which is threatened by the use of technology will be discussed. Specific attention will be given to the challenges these ethical problems pose to the information professional. A number of practical guidelines, based on ethical norms will be laid down.
2. ETHICS
The ethical actions of a person can be described in general terms as those actions which are performed within the criterium of what is regarded as good. It relates thus to the question of what is good or bad in terms of human actions. According to Spinello (1995, p. 14) the purpose
of ethics is to help us behave honorably and attain those basic goods that make us more fully human.
3. THE CONCEPT OF PRIVACY
3.1. Definition of Privacy
Privacy can be defined as an individual condition of life characterized by exclusion from publicity (Neetling et al., 1996, p. 36). The concept follows from the right to be left alone (Stair, 1992, p. 635; Shank, 1986, p. 12)1 . Shank (1986, p. 13) states that such a perception of privacy set the course for passing of privacy laws in the United States for the ninety years that followed. As such privacy could be regarded as a natural right which provides the foundation for the legal right. The right to privacy is therefore protected under private law.
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The legal right to privacy is constitutionally protected in most democratic societies. This constitutional right is expressed in a variety of legislative forms. Examples include the Privacy Act (1974) in the USA, the proposed Open Democracy Act in South Africa (1996) and the Data Protection Act in England. During 1994 Australia also accepted a Privacy Charter containing 18 privacy principles which describe the right of a citizen concerning personal privacy as effected by handling of information by the state (Collier, 1994, p. 44-45). The Organization for Economic and Coordination and Development (OECD) also accepted in 1980 the Guidelines for the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flow of Personal Data (Collier, 1994, p. 41).
Privacy is an important right because it is a necessary condition for other rights such as freedom and personal autonomy. There is thus a relationship between privacy, freedom and human dignity. Respecting a person's privacy is to acknowledge such a person's right to freedom and to recognize that individual as an autonomous human being.
The duty to respect a person's privacy is furthermore a prima facie duty. In other words, it is not an absolute duty that does not allow for exceptions. Two examples can be given. Firstly, the police may violate a criminal's privacy by spying or by seizing personal documents (McGarry, 1993, p. 178)2 . A government also has the right to gather private and personal information from its citizens with the aim of ensuring order and harmony in society (Ware, 1993:205). The right to privacy (as an expression of individual freedom) is thus confined by social responsibility.
3.2. Different Categories of Private Information
Based on the juridical definition of privacy, two important aspects which are of specific relevance for the information profession must be emphasized. The first is the fact that privacy as a concept is closely related to information - in terms of the definition of Neethling (1996, p. 35) privacy refers to the entirety of facts and information which is applicable to a person in a state of isolation. The fact that privacy is expressed by means of information, implies that it is possible to distinguish different categories of privacy namely, private communications, information which relates to the privacy of a person's body, other personal information, and information with regard to a person's possessions. Each of these categories will be briefly dealt with.
� Private communications. This category of privacy concerns all forms of personal communication which a person wishes to keep private. The information exchanged during a reference interview between the user and the information professional can be seen as an example.
� Privacy of the body (Westin, 1967, p. 351). This normally refers to medical information and enjoys separate legal protection (Neethling, 1991, p. 35-36). According to this legislation a person has the right to be informed about the nature of an illness as well as the implications thereof. Such a person further has the right to privacy about the nature of the illness and can not be forced to make it known to others. The only exception is when the health, and possibly the lives of others may be endangered by the specific illness - such as the case may be where a person is HIV positive and the chance exists that other people may contract the virus.3 This category of information is of specific importance for an information professional working in a medical library.
� Personal information. Personal information refers to those categories of information which refer to only that specific person, for example bibliographic (name, address) and financial information. This type of information is of relevance to all categories of information professionals.
� Information about one's possessions. This information is closely related to property right. According to this a person does have control over the information which relates to personal possessions in certain instances. For example, a person may keep private the information about
the place where a wallet is kept.
3.3. The Expressed Will to Privacy
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The following important aspect of privacy is the desire for privacy (by means of an expressed will) since this desire is important for the delimitation of privacy. In short, the desire for privacy implies that privacy will only be at issue in cases where there is a clear expression of a desire for privacy. For example, a personal conversation between two persons will be regarded as private as long as there is an expressed will to keep it private. The moment that this will is relinquished the information is no longer regarded as private. The same applies to the other categories of personal and private information. If a person makes a private telephone number (as a form of personal information) known to a company, it is no longer regarded as private information. According to the law it can then even be seen as business information which may legally be traded in. This expressed will to privacy acts therefore as a very important guideline for the information professional regarding the delimitation of privacy.
3.4. The Relationship Between Privacy and Confidentiality (Secrecy)
It is also important to distinguish between privacy and confidentiality/secrecy. The confidential treatment of information is not only applicable to the above-mentioned four categories of private and personal information - it may refer to any category of information, such as, inter alia, trade secrets.
4. THE INFLUENCE OF TECHNOLOGY ON THE PROCESSING OF PERSONAL AND PRIVATE INFORMATION
4.1. Definition of Information Technology
Before the influence of the use of technology in the processing of personal and private information can be dealt with, it is important to briefly pay attention to the concept technology. For the purpose of this paper the definition of Van Brakel (1989, p. 240) will be used, namely: the gathering, organizing, storage and distribution of information in various formats by means of computer and telecommunications techniques based on micro- electronics.4
4.2. The Ethical Implications for the Use of Technology in the Processing of Information
Although technology has a major impact on the gathering, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information its main ethical impact relates to accessibility/inaccessibility and the manipulation of information. It creates the possibility of wider as well as simultaneous access to information. By implication, it becomes easier to access a person's private information by more people. On the other hand, a person can be excluded from necessary information in electronic format by means of a variety of security measures such as passwords.
The technological manipulation of information refers, among others, to the integration of information (merging of documents), the repackaging thereof (translations and the integration of textual and graphical formats) and the possible altering of information (changing of photographic images) by electronic means.
The use of technology in the processing of information can therefore not be seen as ethically neutral. Christians (199, p. 7) refers to the use of technology as a value laden process. Kluge (1994, p. 337) even comments that technology has changed the ontological status of a document with accompanying ethical implications. By this he specifically refers to the manipulation of information by means of technology.
Brown (1990, p. 3) however on the other hand, indicates correctly that the ethical problems that are caused by the use of technology do not imply - as he puts it - "...that we should rethink our moral values".
The impact of the use of technology on the privacy of people manifests itself in a variety of areas. These areas include, inter alia the following:
� The electronic monitoring of people in the workplace. This relates to personal information as discussed earlier. This is done by so-called electronic eyes. The justification by companies for the use of such technology is to increase productivity. Stair (1992, p. 655), however, in the discussion of this practice, clearly points out the ethical problem pertaining to the use of these technologies. According to him
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peoples' privacy in the workplace are threatened by these devices. It can also lead to a feeling of fear and of all ways being watched - the so-called panopticon phenomenon.
� The interception and reading of E-mail messages. This poses an ethical problem which relates to the private communication of an individual. It is technically possible to intercept E-mail messages, and the reading thereof is normally justified by companies because they firstly see the technology infrastructure (E-mail) as a resource belonging to the company and not the individual, and secondly messages are intercepted to check on people to see whether they use the facility for private reasons or to do their job.5
� The merging of databases which contains personal information. This is also known as databanking (Frocht & Thomas, 1994, p. 24). By this is meant the integration of personal information from a variety of databases into one central database. The problem here does not in the first place arise from the integration of the information as such. The main problems include the fact that the individual is not aware of personal information being integrated into a central database, that the individual does not know the purpose/s for which the integration is effected, or by whom or for whose benefit the new database is constructed and whether the information is accurate.6 In order to counter these problems relating to privacy and the merging of databases the American Congress passed the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act in the 1980s (Benjamin, 1991, p. 11).
� Closely related to the merging of files is the increasing use of buying cards ("frequent-shopper cards") by retail stores. Inside such a card a computer chip is buried that records every item purchased along with a variety of personal information of the buyer (Branscomb, 1995, p. 19). This information obtained from the card enables marketing companies to do targeted marketing to specific individuals because the buying habits as well as other personal information of people are known.
� Another major threat to privacy is the raise of so called hackers and crackers which break into computer systems (Benjamin, 1991, p. 7). This coincides with the shift in ethical values and the emergence of the cyberpunk culture with the motto of "information wants to be free".
� The development of software that makes the decoding of digital information (which can be private information) virtually impossible also poses serious legal as well as ethical questions because it can protect criminals. A good example is the development of software called Pretty Good Privacy by P Zimmerman in 1991. According to an article in the IT Review (1996, p. 22) he has developed the most complex algorithm ever invented which makes the decoding of digital information virtually impossible.
4.3. The Individual and Socio-economical Effect
The use of technology for the processing of personal and other forms of private information has far reaching effects on society. The following effects can be distinguished:
� On the individual level: The effect on the individual can be summarized as a loss of dignity and spontaneity, as well as a threat to freedom and the right to privacy. In her research on the impact of technology on the privacy of the individual, Rosenberg (1994, p. 228) concluded that: "Technology continuous to be viewed as a threat to privacy rather than a possible solution". A survey that was conducted in 1990 by Equifax (one of the three biggest credit bureau companies in the USA) on the use of technology and the threat to the privacy of people, found that 79% of the respondents indicated that they were weary of the use of technology for the processing of their personal information (Frocht & Thomas, 1994, p. 24).
� On the economic and social levels the biggest effect is the growth of large information businesses like credit bureau and telecommunication companies that specialize in the processing and trade of person- related information. This brings about a redefinition of the role of society (big businesses) in the personal and private lives of the individual (the use of personal information as a commodity). It also becomes clear
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that the legislation (for example on E-mail) on the protection of the privacy of the individual is falling behind due to the rapidly changing world of technology.
5. THE RELEVANCE FOR THE INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
The above-mentioned has implications for the information professional on at least three levels. Firstly, the information professional works with all four categories of personal and private information. Secondly, increasing use is made of technology in the processing thereof. Lastly, a new profession is emerging in the infopreneur whose main line of business may be the buying and selling of person-related and other private information.
5.1. The Main Ethical Issues
In the handling and processing of these different categories of private and personal information the information professional is confronted with the following ethical issues:
� Deciding which categories of personal and private information the information professional is entitled to gather. This question is of utmost importance to infopreneurs.
� The confidential treatment of such information. This issue refers specifically to information gained from the reference interview. According to Froehlich (1994), Smith (1994) and Shaver et al. (1985), the main ethical problems in this regard (with specific reference to online searching) are as follows: can personal details, obtained from the reference interview, be used for purposes other than for that which it was specifically gathered, is it ethically correct to re-use a search strategy formulated for one user for anther user?, is it appropriate to discuss the nature of a specific query with other people?
� The accuracy of information. This issue is of specific importance in cases where an information professional is working with personal information that can have a direct influence on the life of a person. An example is the processing of medical information.
� The purposes for which various categories of information may be used. The question here is whether an information professional may use any of these four categories of private information for any other reasons than the original reason given for the gathering thereof. Relating to this is the question whether the person must be notified about the way in which personal information is going to be used.
� The rights of a person in terms of the use and distribution of one's personal and private information. This ethical problem relates to the above-mentioned questions and boils down to the question of consent of the user in terms of the use of personal information. Related questions are as follows: does a user have the right to verify any personal and private information that is being held by an information professional, and if so, what are such person's rights regarding the correcting (in cases of the incorrectness thereof) of this information, and, does the person have the right to know who is using that personal and private information and for what purposes?
5.2. Applicable Ethical Norms
Applicable ethical norms which can act as guidelines as well as instruments of measurement must be formulated to address these ethical issues. The following norms can be distinguished: truth, freedom and human rights. They will be discussed briefly.
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� Truth. Truth as an ethical norm has a dual ethical application. Firstly, it serves as norm for the factual correctness of information. As a norm it thus guides the information professional regarding the accurate and factually correct handling of private information. In the second place truth is an expression of ethical virtues such as openness, honesty and trustworthiness.
� Freedom. According to this norm a person has the freedom to make choices in terms of freedom of privacy and freedom from intrusion. As norm, however, it may not become absolutized. Therefore the choice to privacy from intrusion may not restrict the freedom of others.
� Human rights. This norm is closely related to freedom, but can be regarded as a more concretely applicable norm. Applied to privacy it means the juridical acknowledgment and protection of a persons' right to privacy. As an individual human right it also protects the individual from unlawful interference from society (amongst others the state) in the private life of an individual.7
5.3. Ethical Guidelines for the Information Professional
Based on these norms, practical guidelines for the information professional can be formulated. Before the formulation of these guidelines, two fundamental aspects must be taken into consideration, namely the recognition of a persons' autonomy and freedom as well as the fact that the legal guidelines on privacy do not offer a complete framework for the ethical actions of the information professional with regard to the handling of personal and private information.
The concepts of autonomy and freedom has already been dealt with. With regard to the juridical guidelines the following comments can be made. Firstly, once a person's private or personal information has been made known publicly (disclaim of the implied intention) such information is no longer, according to the law, viewed as private. This implies that the information can legally be dealt with as trade information. There is therefore (from a juridical perspective) no ethical sensitivity for the autonomy and freedom of the individual with regard to his right to privacy. The second remark relates to the content of legislation itself. As indicated, the immense growth in and development of information technology give rise to the fact that the legislators fall behind in the tabling of appropriate legislation on the protection of personal privacy. This is especially true in the South African situation where there is, for example no legislation on the protection of privacy to provide for information handled via E-mail.
Bearing in mind these two aspects the following practical guidelines can be given: (The appropriate norms are also given)
� As an acknowledgment of the autonomy and freedom of the individual the information professional must act on the assumption that the client regards as confidential all personal and private information that is handled by the information professional. This implies that the information professional acknowledges the right of the client to control to a certain extent any personal and private information8 - based on the norm of freedom.
� The client must, on a regular basis have access to all private and personal information that is held and used by the information professional. The reason for this is to provide the client the opportunity to verify the accuracy of the information. It is then the responsibility of the information professional to see to it that the necessary corrections are made and again verified by the client (Fouty, 1993, p. 290) - based on the norms of freedom and human rights.
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� The merging of personal and other private information of an individual into a different database than the one for which it was originally collected must be done with the necessary caution (Schattuck, 1995, p. 310). This is specifically applicable in situations where the client is not aware of such merging or the implications thereof. The appropriate action would not only be to inform the client about such a merging and the implications thereof, but also to give the client the right of access to the information on the central database, and the opportunity to change the information where it is incorrect, and the right to know who is using the information as well as the purpose of such use - based on the norms of human rights, freedom and truth.
� The information professional must notify the client explicitly of the intended purposes9 of the use of all personal and private information. This implies the client's permission. Different avenues exist for seeking such permission. Spinello (1995:122) prefers the method of implicit informed consent. According to this principle, companies (information professionals) that have collected information about a person must diligently inform that person about the various uses of the information. Clients must then be given an opportunity to consent to these uses or to withhold their consent. The burden is on the client to respond, and a lack of response implies consent. However, the client must be granted the opportunity to withdraw consent (Amidon, 1992:67) - based on the norms of freedom and human rights.
� No unnecessary private information must be gathered. This is not only for logistic reasons but also to prevent the unnecessary violation or exposure of a person's privacy - based on the norm of freedom.
� Personal and other private information that is no longer necessary for the function for which it was collected must be destroyed (Branscomb, 1995, p. 71) - based on the norms of freedom and human rights.
� When the rendering of a specific service or product to a person is refused on the grounds of personal information (e.g. creditworthiness), the reason for this denial must be made known to the person10 - based on the norms of truth and human rights.
� A person's information must be handled with the necessary confidentiality. This implies security and control of access to the information, of the right to use it, as well as the right to change or add any information (Fouty, 1993:290) - based on the norms of freedom, truth and human rights.
� A private policy must be formulated consisting of the following elements: the categories of information that must be regarded as private and personal, the levels of confidentiality (e.g. who has access and use of which information), a clear explanation of the purposes of the use of the information, and the description of the procedures to ensure the accuracy of this information - based on the norms of freedom, truth and human rights.
6. CONCLUSION
It can thus be concluded that the use of technology in the processing of information, poses important questions with regard to a person's right to privacy. This right is directly linked to the right to freedom and human autonomy.
These problems relate mainly to the accessibility of information and the manipulation thereof. This is of specific relevance to the information professional who deals with private and personal information. Practical guidelines in the handling of these problems can be formulated according to the norms of freedom, truth and human rights.
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Baker, L. (1992). Needed: An ethical code for library administrators. Journal of Library Administration, 16 (4): 1-17.
Benjamin, L.M. (1991). Privacy, computers and personal information: Towards equality and equity in an information age. Communications and the Law, 13 (2): 3-16.
Branscomb, A.W. (1994). Who Owns Information?: From Privacy to Private Access. New York: Basic Books. A division of Harper Collins Publishers.
Christians, C.G. (1991). Information ethics in a complicated age. In Ethics and the Librarian. Proceedings of the Allerton Park Institute, 29-31 October 1989, University of Illinois, Graduate School of Library, edited by F.W. Lancaster. Vol. 31. Also In Cochrane, J. (1991). Hell hound on my trail. Ethics and librarianship. New Zealand Libraries, 46 (11):2 6-31.
Collier, G. (1994). Information privacy. Just how private are the details of individuals in a company's database? Information Management and Computer Security, 3 (1): 41-45.
Focht, K.T. & Thomas, D.S. (1994). Information compilation and disbursement: moral, legal and ethical considerations. Information Management and Computer Security, 2 (2): 23-28.
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I spy. Personal rights in the information age. (1996). Information Technology.
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McGarry, K. (1993). The Changing Context of Information. An Introductory Analysis. 2nd ed. London: Library Association Publishing.
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Shank, R. (1986, Summer). Privacy: History, legal, social, and ethical aspects. Library Trends, pp. 7-15.
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Shaver, D.B. et al. (1985, Fall). Ethics for online intermediaries. Special Libraries, Fall: 238-245.
Smith, M.M. (1994). Online information ethics: Online searching and the searching self. Proceedings of the 15th National Online Meeting, May 1994, edited by M.E. Williams. Medford, NY: Learned Information. pp. 399-405.
Spinello, R.A. (1995). Ethical Aspects of Information Technology. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc.
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Van Brakel, P.A. (1989). Inligtingstegnologie: Verkenning van navorsingstemas. Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif vir Biblioteek- en Inligtingkunde, 57 (3).
Ware, W.H. (1993). The new faces of privacy. The Information Society, 9 (3): 195-211.
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4/20/2021 US v Europe - a cultural gap on the right to be forgotten - BBC News
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US v Europe - a cultural gap on the right to be forgotten Rory Cellan-Jones
Technology correspondent
@BBCRoryCJ
15 May 2014 Comments
The reverberations from this week's landmark European Court of Justice ruling on the right to be forgotten continue to be felt.
Legions of lawyers are still trying to work out what it will mean for the search engines, and for millions of EU citizens who may want to force them to remove links to their past online lives. And the cultural divide between Europe and the US appears wider than ever, with two very different views of how we should live our lives online.
On the one hand there is what you might call the web utopian view, held by the US internet giants and some in Europe who look to Silicon Valley for inspiration. This sees the ECJ ruling as unworkable, illiberal and just out of touch.
The Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who divides his time between London and the US, explains to me why something like it could never happen across the Atlantic because of the constitutional guarantee of free speech: "This is not a
ALAMY
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debate the United States is even capable of entering into. You'd have to repeal the First Amendment - and that's like a religious artefact - so that's never going to happen."
He tells me this is not necessarily a new cultural gap but one that is being made evident for the first time. "In the past if you were in Germany you were never worried that some encyclopedia website based in the United States was going to name you as a murderer after you got out of jail because that was inconceivable. Today that can happen, so the cultural gap that was always there about the regulation of speech is becoming more visible."
But in Europe many politicians and regulators and some - though by no means all - privacy campaigners have welcomed the ruling. Mr Wales' point about local laws - which used to mean old convictions simply disappeared from the record after a certain time - is one of the reasons for that support.
Europeans who have been told that the internet is basically ungovernable - and if it does have guiding principles then they come from the land of the free - are expressing some satisfaction that court has refused to believe that.
Max Mosley, who has fought privacy battles with tabloid newspapers and Google over pictures of a sadomasochistic orgy, expresses particular satisfaction that the European Court decided the search firm was subject to local laws. When I talked to him as he emerged from a radio studio he was also exercised about the rehabilitation of offenders: "A principle accepted in most civilised countries. The internet shouldn't regurgitate things for ever."
And he refuses to accept the idea that the online world just cannot be regulated. "The internet is so new that the law hasn't caught up with it but eventually it'll be
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regulated like every other aspect of society and that's quite right."
So a battle between two views of freedom - the US belief that free speech trumps everything, and the European view that individuals should have some control over what the world knows about them. But there is something else in play here, a growing unease about the power wielded by what are nearly always US web giants over our lives.
Mario Costeja Gonzalez, the man who prompted this week's EU ruling against Google
Google, Facebook, Twitter and other firms that store and use vast banks of data about Europeans have all sought to deny responsibility for how people use and share that information. They also maintain that they are not media firms - which in Europe face strict regulation - but mere technology platforms enabling better communication. In Google's case that stance has come to bite it.
Media firms like the Spanish newspaper site at the heart of this test case, haven't been told to remove content. It is the "data controllers" - the search engines - which are in the court's sights.
Now there are obvious questions about the practicality of getting Google to decide which of billions of links to millions of European names should or should not be removed. The temptation for the company will be to automatically agree to all requests, rather than to set up a vast quasi-judicial bureaucracy to decide what is justified and what is not, and that could have a chilling effect on free expression.
But European web users, who have been told for so long that companies based in Silicon Valley cannot be told what to do in the UK or France or Germany, may feel
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a smidgen of satisfaction about the howls of outrage coming from across the Atlantic.
4/20/2021 FDA medical device plan zeros in on cybersecurity, public-private partnership | Healthcare IT News
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Medical Devices
FDA medical device plan zeros in on cybersecurity, public-private partnership The agency released a five-point plan outlining regulatory changes to bolster medical device safety, including requiring manufacturers ensure devices can be updated and patched.
By Jessica Davis April 18, 2018 04:23 PM
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The Food and Drug Administration released its plan to improve medical device safety, which
includes a reorganization of its medical device center and a Congressional plan to launch a
public-private partnership focused on cybersecurity.
The five-point plan released Tuesday outlines a plan to consolidate offices within its device
center, which oversees pre- and post-market activities.
As part of the plan, the FDA will require manufacturers to ensure medical devices are capable of
being updated and receiving security patches. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, also said
the agency is contemplating forcing manufacturers to publicly disclose known cybersecurity
issues.
[Also: California medical device manufacturer reports breach of 30,000 consumers]
The FDA also is exploring regulatory options to expedite labeling changes and other features,
including timely implementation of post-market changes. The current system on making those
changes is voluntary, even when safety issues arise.
“Although medical devices provide great benefits to patients, they also present risks,” Gottlieb
said in a statement. “And we are focusing equal attention on advancing new frameworks for
identifying risks and protecting consumers.”
“Our aim is to ensure not only that devices meet the gold standard for getting to market, but also
that they continue to meet this standard as we get more data about devices and learn more
about their benefit-risk profile in real-world clinical settings,” he added.
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The agency also is looking into a requirement of additional training or education of providers to
ensure the safety and effectiveness of complex devices. Gottlieb said the FDA also is looking
into ways to support developers pursuing safer devices, including a faster review of those
devices with vastly improved safety features.
While the FDA has a breakthrough device program, those devices currently can be reviewed
under that program.
Gottlieb also outlined plans for a public-private partnership, CyberMed Safety (expert) Analysis
Board, which complements its existing device vulnerability coordination and response efforts.
The group, made up of a wide range of experts from clinicians to biomedical engineers, also will
support device manufacturers and FDA on safety issues, such as high-risk vulnerabilities and
adjudicating disputes.
Funding for CYMSAB will be included in the agency’s requested $70 million for Fiscal Year 2019
for its digital health technology advancements.
Twitter: @JessieFDavis
Email the writer: [email protected]
Topics: Compliance & Legal, Government & Policy, Medical Devices, Privacy & Security, Quality and Safety
More regional news
4/20/2021 Equifax Breach Exposed More Consumer Data Than First Disclosed
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Equifax Breach Exposed More Consumer Data Than First Disclosed February 13, 2018
Article 3 Comments
The Equifax data breach exposed more of consumers’ personal information than the company first disclosed last year, according to documents given to lawmakers.
The credit reporting company announced in September that the personal information of 145.5 million consumers had been compromised in a data breach. It originally said that the information accessed included names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and — in some cases — driver’s license numbers and credit card numbers. It also said some consumers’ credit card numbers were among the information exposed, as well as the personal information from thousands of dispute documents.
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However, Atlanta-based Equifax Inc. recently disclosed in a document submitted to the Senate Banking Committee, that a forensic investigation found criminals accessed other information from company records. According to the document, provided to The Associated Press by Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s office, that included tax identification numbers, email addresses and phone numbers. Finer details, such as the expiration dates for credit cards or issuing states for driver’s licenses, were also included in the list.
The additional insight into the massive breach was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Equifax’s disclosure, which it has not made directly to consumers, underscores the depth of detail the company keeps on individuals that it may have put at risk. And it adds to the string of missteps the company has made in recovering from the security debacle.
Equifax spokeswoman Meredith Griffanti said that “in no way did we intend to mislead consumers.” The company last year disclosed only the information that affected the greatest number of consumers and wanted to “act with the greatest clarity” in terms of the information provided the committee, she said.
Griffanti also said that while the list provided to the committee includes all the potential data points that may have been accessed by criminals, those elements impacted a minimal portion of consumers. And some data _ like passport numbers _ were not stolen. The company reiterated that the total number of consumers affected is unchanged.
“When you are making that kind of announcement, where do you draw the line? If you saw the list we provided the banking finance committee it was pretty exhaustive,” Griffanti said. “We wanted to show them that no stone was left unturned.”
But to consumers whose information was exposed, it may feel like yet another slap in the face.
Equifax waited months to disclose the hack. After it did, anxious consumers experienced jammed phone lines and uninformed company representatives. An Equifax website set up to help people determine their exposure was described as sketchy by security experts and provided inconsistent and unhelpful information to many. The company blamed the online customer help page’s problems on a vendor’s software code after it appeared that it had been hacked as well.
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Equifax has tried to make changes, replacing its CEO, as well as spending millions to research and rectify the breach. In January, it launched a service that allows consumers to lock and unlock their credit report. But a test of the site by The New York Times found it unusable in many ways. The company said this experience was an exception and it has made some key changes to the service since it first launched.
The company continues to deal with multiple regulatory investigations into the matter as well as hundreds consumer lawsuits. Warren, D-Mass., released a report on the hack Wednesday that described it as “one of the largest and most significant data security lapses in history.”
Related:
Treasury to Look Into Consumer Financial Bureau’s Handling of Equifax Breach Equifax, Wells Fargo May Still Face Class Actions Despite Wall Street Arbitration Win FTC, Congress, States Investigating Equifax Over Data Breach Is Equifax’s Cyber Insurance Enough to Cover Breach? Equifax Breach Exposed Credit Data of 143 Million U.S. Consumers
Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The Washington Post
Washington Post Live
The ethics of Hacking 101
By Ellen Nakashima and
Ashkan Soltani
October 7, 2014
At the University of Tulsa, professor Sujeet Shenoi is teaching students how to hack into oil pipelines and
electric power plants.
At Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, professor David Brumley is instructing students on how to write
software to break into computer networks.
And George Hotz, a largely self-taught hacker who became a millionaire in part by finding flaws in Apple and
other computer systems, is now back in school, where he’s one of the stars on Carnegie Mellon’s competitive
hacking team.
Cybersecurity: A Special Report
Shenoi, Brumley and Hotz are players in a controversial area of technology: the teaching and practice of what
is loosely called “cyberoffense.” In a world in which businesses, the military and governments rely on
computer systems that are potentially vulnerable, having the ability to break into those systems provides a
strategic advantage.
Unsurprisingly, ethics is a big issue in this field. Both professors say they build an ethics component into their
curriculum; Shenoi won’t even accept students who don’t promise to work, if hired, for the National Security
Agency, the Energy Department or another U.S. government agency.
But some experts say the academic community is not taking ethics seriously enough, and professors are not
accepting responsibility for the potentially dangerous skills they are teaching.
The very nature of hacking means that a lot of its skills and standards evolve outside academia. (Hotz, known
in tech circles by the handle “geohot,” says he learned most of what he knows on the Internet “and from
playing with things.”) This leads advocates of teaching cyberoffense to say that the “good guys” have to keep
up — which in turn raises more questions about whether such education is morally right.
“There’s a very large stigma around saying we do anything offense-related,” said Tyler Nighswander, 23, a
computer science graduate student at Carnegie Mellon. “It’s certainly understandable that you don’t want to
say your school teaches offense — ‘Oh, you mean you teach kids how to break into computers and steal
stuff?’ ”
Some academics note that it may be too late to stop the worldwide expansion of offensive cyber tools and
techniques.
“There is an escalating arms race in cyberspace as governments, companies and malicious actors are all going
on the offensive, most of it under a shroud of secrecy and absent any meaningful political oversight,” said Ron
Deibert, director of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.
Seeking ‘vulnerabilities’
No more than a handful of professors have the knowledge and resources to teach cyberattack skills at the level
of Brumley or Shenoi, whose students are heavily recruited for government and industry positions.
At Tulsa, Shenoi, 54, obtains permission from energy companies for his students to attempt to hack into
them, infiltrating the systems that run gas pipelines or power grids and gaining access to critical U.S.
infrastructure. They also do penetration testing for other companies, finding “vulnerabilities,” or flaws, that
enemy hackers could exploit.
“We have a class where we teach people how to write things like Stuxnet,” Shenoi said, referring to a
computer worm, reportedly developed by U.S. and Israeli scientists, that was found in 2010 and damaged
about 1,000 centrifuges in an Iranian uranium-enrichment plant, delaying the country’s nuclear program.
Stuxnet, whose deployment is often considered the first true use of a cyberweapon, was built around an
unprecedented four “zero-day exploits” — that is, attack tools based on previously unknown software flaws.
Shenoi began teaching courses on offensive computer techniques in 1999, he said, and by 2008, Tulsa was
offering an entire program. Now, he said, there are “four courses in reverse engineering, two in cyber
operations, two in offensive SCADA [supervisory control and data acquisition], and one on malware analysis
and creation.”
Shenoi said that the potential power of offensive cyber techniques is so great that he accepts only students
who intend to work for the government and who have records that would qualify them for government
security clearances. He interviews all the applicants as well as their parents. He sends 15 to 20 students a
year, he said, to work at the NSA or the CIA.
“In order for me to teach these real-world attack skills, these students have to be trusted,” he said. “They
cannot go to work for the private sector.
“There’s no reason to teach private-sector people how to use Stinger missiles,” he continued. Similarly, he
said, you don’t teach them to use cyber weapons.
Brumley, 39, has taught offensive cyber skills since 2009. A self-described “patriot,” he says he discusses
ethics in his classes at Carnegie Mellon — an introductory computer security course as well as more advanced
vulnerability analysis, in which students learn techniques for breaking through computer defenses. Some of
Brumley’s students work for the government, but most go to start-ups, big companies such as Google or
defense contractors.
To develop their skills, Brumley encourages his students to compete in hacking contests. In August, a
recreational team he advises called PPP, made up of about 20 current and former Carnegie Mellon students,
won the ultimate U.S. showcase of hacking skills at the DefCon hacking conference in Las Vegas — a “capture-
the-flag” competition in which 20 teams tried to break into one another’s computers.
PPP’s top gun is Hotz, who gained fame in 2007 for “jailbreaking” the previously impenetrable iPhone. He left
Carnegie Mellon as a 23-year-old sophomore to work on his own, and is now back as a junior at 25. Hotz is so
skilled that he has won some contests solo — as in July, when he beat nine teams to win $30,000 at the
SecuInside competition in Seoul. He earned $200,000 in April for finding bugs in Google’s Chromebook
computer and the Firefox browser. Brumley calls him “a machine.” Hotz boasts that he is “maybe the best
hacker in the world.”
A question of profit
Obviously, these students are developing valuable skills. Shenoi says his students never make money off the
vulnerabilities they discover or exploits they develop. They give the information for free to the companies
whose systems they are testing, or to the government. Intelligence agency officials fly every so often to Tulsa
to be briefed on the flaws the students have found.
Brumley agrees that it is dangerous to share vulnerabilities or exploits with anyone but the software vendor or
the U.S. government.
“If you’re selling exploits in a free market,” he said, “then you’re potentially selling them to the adversary.”
Nighswander, a former student of Brumley’s, said that he has never sold a vulnerability to a software vendor,
but that he thinks it’s ethical to do so, saying, “When you think that finding a vulnerability can take weeks and
months, you can understand that the person wants to get compensated.”
Hotz declined to say whether he has sold an exploit (although he was caught last year on a surreptitiously
recorded conversation appearing to broker a $350,000 deal to sell exploits to jailbreak the iPhone to a
Chinese company).
“I have never worked with any country aside from the U.S.,” he said. He says he doesn’t dwell on issues of
morality, saying, “I’m not big on ethics.”
Brian Pak, 25, who created the PPP hacking team while studying under Brumley and now works for a start-up
he cofounded, said that sometimes,
noodling around on his own, he finds bugs in software and discloses them to the software vendor. He said he
has never sold information about flaws, although some vendors offer “bounties” of up to several thousand
dollars. He holds onto some vulnerabilities for use in research — a practice common among security
researchers, he said.
“I also don’t think it’s unethical to provide vulnerabilities or exploits to the U.S. government,” Pak said. “I
trust the U.S. government. The government protects me. As long as it’s not used against our own people, I see
less of an issue.”
But some experts disapprove of providing previously unknown or “zero day” vulnerabilities to the
government — whether for free or for profit. They worry that, rather than disclosing these zero days to
vendors, the government is stockpiling them for use against adversaries. Doing so would leave the software
vendors ignorant of dangerous flaws in their products, making the Internet less secure, they say. They also
charge that the government is using these tools with far too little public debate, for example, in the
controversial area of domestic law enforcement.
Christopher Soghoian, chief technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the government should
have a policy of promptly disclosing any bugs it discovers so that software companies such as Microsoft can
fix them before they cause damage. Not doing so can undermine network security, he said.
But Brumley said such a blanket policy would be unwise.
“The obvious example is Stuxnet,” which destroyed Iranian centrifuges, he said. That, he said, was “an
opportunity to use an exploit for good.”
“Twenty years earlier, that would be the thing that we flew in bombers and bombed factories for, and people
would die,” he said.
Dual-use tools
Selling exploits and vulnerabilities is not illegal, per se, but selling them with the intent that they’ll be used to
hack someone else’s computer is a crime. Software is a classic “dual use” product. It can be used to do
something as innocuous as unlock an iPhone to allow consumers to switch providers or as destructive as
causing an adversary’s nuclear centrifuges to spin out of control.
Some academics say the teaching of hacking techniques should remain limited.
“I’m personally against the widespread or wholesale teaching of offensive cyber,” said Arthur Conklin,
associate professor of information and logistics technology at the University of Houston. For one thing, he
said, vetting students for trustworthiness, as Shenoi does, would be impractical on a mass scale.
Giovanni Vigna, a computer science professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, warned that
not teaching offensive skills is “not a very smart option because the bad guys are going to develop them
anyway.” He added, “The key is to make the students understand what are the lines that cannot be crossed.”
So he integrates into his courses on offensive cyber “a very substantial chapter on ethical issues.”
Some experts argue that the government should regulate the sale and use of offensive cyber technology — but
others, including Shenoi, say regulation will only drive the market for such products deeper underground. At
this point, the U.S. government is in the process of placing export controls on some hacking and surveillance
tools. It already has forbidden the sale of such technologies to countries with particularly egregious human
rights records, such as Sudan and Iran.
Meanwhile, interest in offensive cyber skills is growing. Experts estimate that several thousand personnel in
private industry work at finding bugs and building exploits. More companies are training employees in
offensive skills, and more people are competing in hacking competitions.
In this context, Soghoian of the ACLU fears that universities are teaching students high-end skills without a
solid ethical foundation.
“The academic computer security community has not yet realized the role they are playing in cyberwar,” he
said.
Shenoi said that, above all, he wants to impress upon his students the responsibilities that come with their
technological prowess.
“They have great power to do harm. They have power to intimidate. They have power to accrue money
illegally,” he said. “What I tell them is, ‘You may be learning some potentially deadly skills. But use them
gently and wisely, and use them for the good of society.’ ”
Related:
Key to keeping cyberspace safe? International accord.
With mobile devices, many firms are playing Russian roulette with cybersecurity
What top government and business officials are saying about cybersecurity
5 Comments
Ellen Nakashima Ellen Nakashima is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter covering intelligence and national security matters for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 1995 and is based in Washington, D.C. Follow
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Democracy Dies in Darkness
California is on the verge of passing a sweeping new online privacy law targeting Facebook, Google and other tech giants By
June 27, 2018 at 4:07 p.m. EDT
California is hurtling toward the adoption of a new online privacy law that would govern how tech giants like Amazon,
Facebook, Google and Uber collect and monetize consumers' personal data – a set of changes that could ripple
throughout the country.
The Golden State legislature is due to vote Thursday on the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, which would
require tech companies to disclose the categories of data they collect about consumers as well as the third-party
entities, like advertisers, with whom they share that information. Web users would also gain the ability to opt out of
having their data sold, and companies wouldn’t be allowed to charge users a fee or provide them less service if they
made that choice.
And the proposal comes with some teeth: California’s attorney general would be empowered to fine companies that fail
to secure consumers' sensitive details against cyber threats.
If it passes, California’s proposed privacy rules would apply to only its citizens. But it still could force companies like
Facebook and Google to change some of their practices across the country, given the difficulty in maintaining two sets
of privacy protections – one in California, the most populous state in the country, and a second for everyone else. Many
tech giants in Silicon Valley took precisely that approach in May, adapting their data-collection practices worldwide
when Europe began implementing its own strict privacy rules.
California’s new regulations also could add to the pressure on other regulators, including federal lawmakers in
Congress, to follow suit and adopt fresh data-collection protections, responding to web users who have grown furious
with a series of recent privacy mishaps, particularly at Facebook.
"These corporations make billions of dollars selling people's privacy without people having any visibility into what
they're doing," said Alastair Mactaggart, a real-estate developer and driving force behind California’s new privacy
push.
State policymakers have moved at an unprecedented pace to introduce tweak and advance the bill all in a matter of
Tony Romm
State policymakers have moved at an unprecedented pace to introduce, tweak and advance the bill -- all in a matter of
days -- as they seek to avoid a November ballot initiative spearheaded by Mactaggart that would impose even tougher
privacy rules on the tech industry. It would have allowed local consumers, for example, to sue companies in almost any
case where their privacy or security had been compromised.
The ballot initiative had garnered more than 600,000 signatures, almost double what it needed to qualify for
consideration in the upcoming election. But Mactaggart announced this week he would withdraw his measure if
lawmakers passed a compromise bill by California’s June 28 deadline for finalizing ballot propositions, setting up a
last-minute blitz in the state’s Assembly and Senate after years of slow progress on privacy reform.
Major technology companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Twitter had strongly opposed the ballot measure,
chiefly through their lobbying group, the Internet Association. Tech giants like Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Uber,
and Internet providers like AT&T and Verizon, also donated $200,000 each to a California coalition assembled in
March to defeat it, according to local campaign finance records, though Facebook has maintained it is not actively
fighting the ballot initiative.
Two of those companies, Facebook and Uber, have been the subjects of recent federal investigations into their privacy
and data security practices. AT&T and Verizon, meanwhile, lobbied last year to defeat federal rules governing the way
they handle customers' web-browsing information.
But some tech companies have come to stomach the compromise bill now advancing in the legislature, believing that
even if it does become law they can train their political firepower on trying to change it before it takes effect on Jan. 1,
2020. Robert Callahan, the vice president of state government affairs at the Internet Association, said the group
opposes “many problematic provisions” in the bill and the “unprecedented lack of debate or full legislative process.”
But he stressed that the “Internet industry will not obstruct or block [the measure] from moving forward, because it
prevents the even worse ballot initiative from becoming law in California.”
In the past, California’s regulations have spurred other states – and even the federal government – to adopt laws in
areas as wide ranging as email spam and climate change. This time, privacy experts hope Congress steps in to do the
same in response to major privacy mishaps, including Facebook’s entanglement with Cambridge Analytica, a political
consultancy that improperly accessed personal data on roughly 87 million of the site’s users.
"We haven't done much since [Mark] Zuckerberg's hearing," Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat who represents a slice of
Silicon Valley in Congress, said this week about the Facebook executive's appearance on Capitol Hill in April, which
was prompted by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. "The people are looking to Congress and saying, we need you to
act."
For some, like Facebook, the California bill might not actually result in major revisions to its business practices. The
social giant maintains it doesn’t sell data, though it does allow advertisers to tailor their campaigns on the site to
narrow categories of users, which isn’t prohibited by California’s proposed law.
“People should be in control of their information online and companies should be held to high standards in explaining
what data they have and how they use it, especially when they sell data,” Will Castleberry, the vice president of state
and local public policy at Facebook said in a statement. He said Facebook supports the bill, “while not perfect,” and
would work with “policymakers on an approach that protects consumers and promotes responsible innovation.”
If California’s bill does not pass, however, Mactaggart has promised to forge ahead with his ballot initiative – setting
up another high-stakes showdown come November. He also warned companies against trying to weaken those privacy
t ti i th f t “If th t t ll ’ll d thi i I’ll d thi i ” h id
protections in the future. “If they totally screw us, we’ll do this again; I’ll do this again,” he said.
Comments are not available on this story.
Have a question about our commenting policies? Review our community rules or contact the commenting team.
4/20/2021 Bias already exists in search engine results, and it’s only going to get worse | MIT Technology Review
https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/02/26/3299/meet-the-woman-who-searches-out-search-engines-bias-against-women-and-minorities/ 1/5
4/20/2021 Bias already exists in search engine results, and it’s only going to get worse | MIT Technology Review
https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/02/26/3299/meet-the-woman-who-searches-out-search-engines-bias-against-women-and-minorities/ 2/5
4/20/2021 Bias already exists in search engine results, and it’s only going to get worse | MIT Technology Review
https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/02/26/3299/meet-the-woman-who-searches-out-search-engines-bias-against-women-and-minorities/ 3/5
NYU BOOK PRESS
The internet might seem like a level playing field, but it isn’t. Safiya Umoja Noble came face to face
with that fact one day when she used Google’s search engine to look for subjects her nieces might
find interesting. She entered the term “black girls” and came back with pages dominated by
pornography.
Noble, a USC Annenberg communications professor, was horrified but not surprised. For years
she has been arguing that the values of the web reflect its builders—mostly white, Western men—
and do not represent minorities and women. Her latest book, Algorithms of Oppression, details
research she started after that fateful Google search, and it explores the hidden structures that
shape how we get information through the internet.
The book, out this month, argues that search engine algorithms aren’t as neutral as Google would
like you to think. Algorithms promote some results above others, and even a seemingly neutral
piece of code can reflect society’s biases. What’s more, without any insight into how the algorithms
work or what the broader context is, searches can unfairly shape the discussion of a topic like black
girls.
Noble spoke to MIT Technology Review about the problems inherent with the current system, how
Google could do better, and how artificial intelligence might make things worse.
4/20/2021 Bias already exists in search engine results, and it’s only going to get worse | MIT Technology Review
https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/02/26/3299/meet-the-woman-who-searches-out-search-engines-bias-against-women-and-minorities/ 4/5
COURTESY OF SAFIYA UMOJA NOBLE
What do people get wrong about how search engines work?
If we’re looking for the closest Starbucks, a specific quote, or something very narrow that is easily
understood, it works fine. But when we start getting into more complicated concepts around
identity, around knowledge, this is where search engines start to fail us. This wouldn’t be so much of
a problem except that the public really relies upon search engines to give them what they think will
be the truth, or something vetted, or something that’s credible. This is where, I think, we have the
greatest misunderstanding in the public about what search engines are.
To address bias, Google normally suppresses certain results. Is there a better approach?
4/20/2021 Bias already exists in search engine results, and it’s only going to get worse | MIT Technology Review
https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/02/26/3299/meet-the-woman-who-searches-out-search-engines-bias-against-women-and-minorities/ 5/5
We could think about pulling back on such an ambitious project of organizing all the world’s
knowledge, or we could reframe and say, “This is a technology that is imperfect. It is manipulatable.
We’re going to show you how it’s being manipulated. We’re going to make those kinds of
dimensions of our product more transparent so that you know the deeply subjective nature of the
output.” Instead, the position for many companies—not just Google—is that [they are] providing
something that you can trust, and that you can count on, and this is where it becomes quite difficult.
How might machine learning perpetuate some of the racism and sexism you write about?
I've been arguing that artificial intelligence, or automated decision-making systems, will become a
human rights issue this century. I strongly believe that, because machine-learning algorithms and
projects are using data that is already biased, incomplete, flawed, and [we are] teaching machines
how to make decisions based on that information. We know [that’s] going to lead to a variety of
disparate outcomes. Let me just add that AI will be harder and harder to intervene upon because it
will become less clear what data has been used to inform the making of that AI, or the making of
those systems. There are many different kinds of data sets, for example, that are not standardized,
that are coalescing to make decisions.
Since you first searched for “black girls” in 2010, have you seen things get better or worse?
Since I started writing about and speaking publicly about black girls in particular being associated
with pornography, things have changed. Now the pornography and hypersexualized content is not
on the first page, so I think that was a quiet improvement that didn’t come about with a lot of fanfare.
But other communities, like Latina and Asian girls, are still highly sexualized in search results.
115© The Author(s) 2020 F. Stjernfelt, A. M. Lauritzen, Your Post has been Removed, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25968-6_11
Due to the recent crises, Facebook is restructuring to restore the company’s reputation, which is, according to Zuckerberg, a three-year process. On April 24, 2018, Facebook published its updated internal guidelines for enforcement of the com- pany’s community standards.1 It was the first time the public gained direct, “official” insight into this comprehensive hid- den policing inside the company. The only glimpses behind the curtain provided before then came from confidential documents leaked to Gawker magazine in 2012, to S/Z in 2016—and in 2017, when The Guardian published “The Facebook Files”. They included comprehensive removal guidelines featuring a mixture of parameters, decision trees and rules of thumb—illustrated by many concrete examples of content to be removed, most likely taken from real ousted material of the time.2 As a contrast to this, the 2018 document is much more sparse, orderly and void of examples, and it is tempting to think that this is a combed-down version aimed for publication. Still, the document gives unique insight into the detailed principles for the company’s content removal— albeit not the enforcement procedure itself. One can only
1 Facebook “Community Standards”. Last visit 08-04-18: https://www. facebook.com/communitystandards/; the quotes in this chapter are taken from here. See also Lee, N. “Facebook publishes its community standards playbook” Engadget. 04-24-18. 2 Cf. Gillespie (2018) p. 111f.
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guess as to whether this surprising move away from secrecy can be attributed to the increasing media storm throughout 2017, culminating in the Cambridge Analytica revelation of March 2018 and the congressional hearings in April of the same year. The document contains six chapters: (1) “Violence and Criminal Behavior”, (2) “Safety”, (3) “Objectionable Content”, (4) “Integrity and Authenticity”, (5) “Respecting Intellectual Property” and (6) “Content Related Requests”.
The first chapter features reasonable restrictions regarding criminal acts such as threats and incitement to violence. The second, “Safety”, is more problematic. Here, for instance, child pornography and images of naked children are treated as if they were but varieties of the same thing, i.e., no posting of photos featuring “nude, sexualized, or sexual activity with minors”. This means that images of diaper-changing and pedo- philia fall into the same category. The stance towards “self- injury” is also problematic, because Facebook believes itself capable of preventing suicide by banning content which “promotes, encourages, coordinates, or provides instructions for suicide, self-injury or eating disorders.” For one, this excludes serious discussion of the ongoing political issue of voluntary euthanasia—and in the same vein, one can ask whether it would not also exclude many fashionable diets. The sections “Bullying” and “Harassment” and the right to privacy are less problematic. There is, however, an issue with the following wording: “Our bullying policies do not apply to public figures because we want to allow discourse, which often includes critical discussion of people who are featured in the news or who have a large public audience. Discussion of public figures nonetheless must comply with our Community Standards, and we will remove content about public figures that violates other policies, including “hate speech” or credible threats”. This can easily be used as a cop- out to shield public figures from criticism many would find completely legitimate.
The fourth item is “Spam”, “Misrepresentation”, “False News” and “Memorialization”. It is funny how a basic guide- line within the “Spam” category says: “Do not artificially
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increase distribution for financial gain.” It is hard not to read this as an exact characterization of Facebook’s very own busi- ness model, but obviously the company cannot have users invading the company’s own commercial turf. Indeed, spam is by far the largest category of content removed.
“Misrepresentation” refers to Facebook’s policy stating that all users must use their own real name. In democratic countries, the reasoning behind this policy is understandable; the very name “Facebook” is based on the requirement of presenting a somewhat authentic picture of the user’s face. But it may be acutely dangerous for users in non-democratic countries. However, even in democratic countries, certain people such as anonymous media sources, whistle blowers or others might have very legitimate reasons not to appear with their own name and photo. In 2017, a major case put Facebook and the LGBT community at loggerheads. Many Drag Queens who appeared on the platform under their adopted transgender names had their accounts blocked (it would later turn out that they had all been flagged by one and the same energetic complainant) with reference to the requirement to appear under their own real name. The problem is not periph- eral. In the first months of 2018, Facebook had to close as many as 583 million fake accounts, while still estimating that 3–4% of the remaining billions of users are fake.3 Creating and selling fake user accounts has become a large indepen- dent industry which can be used to influence everything from consumer reviews of restaurants, books, travel, etc., to more serious and malicious things such as political propaganda disguised as personal views originating from real users. When you read a good review of a restaurant online, it is potentially written by the owner, with a fake user as intermediary. As tech writer Jaron Lanier pointed out, there are numerous celebrities, businesses, politicians and others whose presence on the Internet is boosted by large numbers of fake users who
3 That is, around 100 million fake users; “Facebook shut 583 million fake accounts” Phys Org. 05-15-18. Last visited 06-25-18: https://phys.org/ news/2018-05-facebook-million-fake-accounts.html.
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“follow” or “like” their activities.4 He believes that the large amount of fake users represents a fundamental problem for tech giants because so much other false communication— fake ads, “fake news”, political propaganda—is disseminated though these non-existent people. These are dead souls that can also be traded. As of early 2018, the price of 25,000 fake followers on Twitter was around 225 USD.5 In this light, it is understandable that Facebook wants to tackle fake users, but it is unsettling if this can only be done by an encroaching ban on anonymity, especially earnest and necessary use of ano- nymity. Serious media regularly need to guarantee anonymity of sources or writers to even get them to participate, which then happens on the condition that the editorial staff know the identity of the person.
Regarding the strongly disputed concept of “fake news”, the following phrase from the document might seem reassur- ing: “There is also a fine line between false news and satire or opinion.” This could lead one to believe that Facebook does not feel called upon to act as judge of true and false. But the very next sentence goes: “For these reasons, we don’t remove false news from Facebook but instead significantly reduce its distribution by showing it lower in the News Feed.” So false news is not removed, but still the people in the background consider themselves capable of identifying false news, inas- much as such news stories are downgraded in the news feed and thus marginalized. This reveals a shocking level of con- ceit: Facebook believes that its some 30.000 moderation inspectors —probably untrained— should be able to perform a truth check on news within 24 hours. It is self-evident that news is new, and society’s established institutions—with their highly educated specialists in serious journalism, courts and academia—often spend a very long time determining and documenting what is true and false in the news flow. How would a platform with no experience in the production and research of news whatsoever be a credible clearinghouse for
4 Lanier (2018) p. 34. 5 According to New York Times, cit. from Lanier, op.cit.
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truth? Perhaps the company is realizing this as of late. In December 2016, when the “fake news” debate raged in the wake of the US presidential election,6 Facebook announced a collaboration with various fact-checking organizations. They were tasked with tagging certain news (primarily about American politics) as “disputed”. The idea was, however, abandoned in December 2017, when it was found that this tagging attracted more attention and traffic to those news stories rather than scaring users off.7
Despite the public promotion of Facebook’s new fact- checking cooperation, it is still a very closed procedure with few details given. The collaborating organizations are fact checker companies PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, Snopes and the two news outlets ABC News and Associated Press—cf. Mike Ananny’s comprehensive 2018 report The partnership press: Lessons for platform-publisher collaborations as Facebook and news outlets team to fight misinformation.8 Some collabo- rators work for free, while others receive a symbolic amount from Facebook. The report is based mainly on anonymous interviews with fact checkers and according to it, the collabo- rations between Facebook and the five organizations works as follows: “Through a proprietary process that mixes algo- rithmic and human intervention, Facebook identifies candi- date stories; these stories are then served to the five news and fact-checking partners through a partners-only dashboard that ranks stories according to popularity. Partners
6 It has since become clear that Facebook was the biggest source of “fake news” during the 2016 presidential election, cf. Guess, A., Nyhan, B. & Reifler, J. “Selective Exposure to Misinformation: Evidence from the consumption of fake news during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign” Dartmouth. 09-01-18. Last visited 07-30-18: https://www.dartmouth. edu/~nyhan/fake-news-2016.pdf. 7 BBC “Facebook ditches fake news warning flag” BBC News. 12-21-17. 8 Ananny, M. “The partnership press: Lessons for platform-publisher collaborations as Facebook and news outlets team to fight misinforma- tion” Tow Center for Digital Journalism. 04-04-18. Last visited 07-30-18: https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/partnership-press-facebook- news-outlets-team-fight-misinformation.php#citations—the following quotes are taken from this.
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independently choose stories from the dashboard, do their usual fact- checking work, and append their fact-checks to the stories’ entries in the dashboards. Facebook uses these fact- checks to adjust whether and how it shows potentially false stories to its users.” Thousands of stories are cued up on the website, and each organization has the capacity to control a handful or two per day.
The procedure for selecting critical news stories seems to consist of Facebook users flagging them as fake, in combina- tion with automated warnings, which are based on previous suspicious links. Once again, a lot of responsibility is put on users flagging other users—but the details of the selection remain protected, as mentioned above. Ananny’s report could access neither the central “dashboard” website nor the principles behind it, and many of the fact checkers inter- viewed in the report are dissatisfied with various aspects of the opaque procedure dictated by Facebook. Among other things, they complain of not being able to flag pictures and videos as fake.9 Among the interviewees, for example, there is suspicion that Facebook avoids sending them false stories if they have high advertising potential. In general, there is skep- ticism among fact checkers regarding Facebook’s motives and behavior around the design of the dashboard website and the classification and selection of its content: “We don’t see main- stream media appearing [in the dashboard]—is it being fil- tered out?” And: “We aren’t seeing major conspiracy theories or conservative media—no InfoWars on the list, that’s a sur- prise.” (InfoWars is a site dedicated to conspiracy theories, which had more than 1.4 million Facebook followers before Facebook finally shut down the site in August 2018—see Chapter 12).10
In the absence of a transparent process, several fact- checkers suspect that Facebook avoids sending certain types
9 On iconic material in truth-based assertions, see Stjernfelt (2014). 10 InfoWars host Alex Jones had his account on Facebook and other sites shut down on 6. August 2018, cf. Vincent, J. “Facebook removes Alex Jones pages, citing repeated hate speech violations” The Verge. 08-06-18. Apple, Spotify and YouTube also closed InfoWars on the same day.
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of news through the fact-check system in order to avoid their labelling. If that is the case, then some false news stories are removed or de-ranked while others are not even sent to check. The suspicion seems justified, as in July 2018, an undercover reporter from Channel4 Dispatches revealed how popular activists from the extreme right get special protec- tion from Facebook. The documentary showed how modera- tors, for example, let right-wing movement Britain First’s pages slip through, simply because they “generate a lot of revenue”. The process is called “shielded review”. Typically, a page is removed if it has more than five entries violating Facebook rules. But with shielded review, particularly popu- lar pages are elevated to another moderation level, where the final removal decision is made by Facebook’s internal staff.11
In Ananny’s report, fact checkers are also quoted as com- plaining that they have no knowledge of the actual purpose of Facebook’s checks or what impact they have. Facebook has publicly stated that a negative fact check results in 80% less traffic to the news in question. But as a fact checker says, this claim itself is not open to fact-checking. Others complain that the process has the character of a private agreement between private companies and that there is no openness about its ideals or accountability to the public. With so little transpar- ency about Facebook’s fact-check initiatives, it is difficult to conclude anything unambiguously, but the whole process seems problematic from a free speech standpoint, given the lack of clear criteria regarding which stories are sent to check and which are not. The efforts do not seem to be working well, either. The number of users visiting Facebook pages with “fake news” was higher in 2017 than in 2016.12 As part of its hectic public relations activity in Spring 2018, Facebook announced that it would begin to check photos and videos, this time in collaboration with the French media agency
11 Hern, A. “Facebook protects far-right activists even after rule breaches” The Guardian. 07-17-18. 12 According to a Buzzfeed survey: Silverman, C., Lytvynenko, J. & Pham, S. “These are 50 of Fake News Hits on Facebook in 2017” BuzzFeed. 12-28-17.
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AFP.13 Details about the procedure and results of this initia- tive remain to be seen. In December 2018, after Facebook had used the Definers spin company to smear opponents became known, former managing editor of Snopes, a fact- checking company, Brooke Binkowski expressed her disap- pointment with the company’s two-year collaboration with Facebook: “They’ve essentially used us for crisis PR.” She added: “They’re not taking anything seriously. They are more interested in making themselves look good and passing the buck […] They clearly don’t care.”14 By February 2019, Snopes quit the Facebook factchecking partnership.15
The next clause of the Facebook removal manual concern- ing intellectual property rights does nothing more than make explicit the company’s responsibility disclaimer—much like Google and other tech giants. It puts all responsibility on users, who are assumed to have made the copyright situation clear for all posts they upload (cf. Ch. 14).
The last section of the clause, “Content-Related Requests”, covers users’ right to delete accounts—as expected, there is no mention of the right to ask Facebook to delete their detailed data profiles including their general online behavior, data purchased, etc. Also, the section does not address the issue of how the tech giant will respond if asked by intelli- gence agencies and police for access to user data—a touchy subject concerning anything from relatively unproblematic help with criminal investigations to much more debatable help with politically motivated surveillance.
Crucial to freedom of expression, however, is the third item: “Objectionable Content”. It features the subcategories “Hate Speech”, “Graphic Violence”, “Adult Nudity and Sexual
13 Ingram, D. “Facebook begins ‘fact-checking’ photos and videos” Reuters. 03-29-18. 14 Levin, S. “‘They don’t care’: Facebook factchecking in disarray as jour- nalists push to cut ties” The Guardian. 12-13-18. 15 Coldewey, D. ”UPDATE: Snopes quits and AP in talks over Facebook’s factchecking partnership” TechCrunch. 02-01-19.
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Activity” and “Cruel and Insensitive”.16 Each category is described in detail. “We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics— race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disability or disease. We also provide some protections for immigration status. We define attack as violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation. We separate attacks into three tiers of severity, as described below.”17 Facebook’s list of “hate speech” examples is charac- teristic in its attempt at a definition based on a random list of groups of people who for some reason should enjoy particu- lar protection beyond other groups in society. Such a break with equality before the law is one of the classic problems of “hate speech” regulation, both because different legislators choose and select different groups for special protection, but also in practice: usually, it is humor or other remarks about certain, selected skin colors, ethnicities and religions, that are considered as bad taste. But then there are others of whom it is considered acceptable to make fun. This changes with the spirit of the times and is often a matter of which groups yell the loudest—groups that do not have the zeitgeist in their favor notoriously do not even expect to find protection in “hate speech” paragraphs. Although “race” is a crucial con- cept on the list, for instance, the Caucasian race is rarely
16 Facebook’s “Community Standards 12. Hate Speech” p. 18. Last vis- ited 07-30-18: https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/objec- tionable_content/hate_speech. 17 Many tech giants have similar formulas that directly cite the range of groups that enjoy special protection in US anti-discrimination legisla- tion. Although the United States has no criminalization of hate speech (and may not have it because of the First Amendment), companies thus, in a certain sense, generalize and extend the existing law to include hate speech. It is worth noting that the characteristics (ethnicity, gender, reli- gion, etc.) used in this legislation do not distinguish between minority and majority groups—unlike what is often assumed, the protection here is not aimed at protecting minorities specifically, and as a matter of prin- ciple majority groups supposedly have right to equal protection accord- ing to such laws and regulations.
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mentioned as worthy of protection from attacks related to skin color, and attacks on Islam is often taken very seriously which is seldom the case with Christianity. Also, Facebook’s “hate speech” definition does not include a reference to the concept of truth, as we find in libel—thus, a true statement can be classified as “hate speech” if someone claims to feel offended by it.
It is a well-known fact that Facebook and other tech giants have had a hard time deciding how to deal with statements which merely cite or parody the hateful statements of others. This problem is now openly addressed in the following seg- ment: “Sometimes people share content containing someone else’s hate speech for the purpose of raising awareness or educating others. Similarly, in some cases, words or terms that might otherwise violate our standards are used self- referentially or in an empowering way.” Irony and satire are not mentioned explicitly but are referenced in the part about “fake news”, and one must assume that they are addressed in the “self-referential” use of “hate speech”. Such statements are, of course, difficult to process quickly or automatically because their character cannot be determined based on the simple presence or absence of particular terms but require a more thorough understanding of the whole context. Facebook’s solution goes: “When this is the case, we allow the content, but we expect people to clearly indicate their intent, which helps us better understand why they shared it. Where the intention is unclear, we may remove the content.”18
Quotes or irony are allowed, then, but only if this is made completely clear, with quotation marks and explicit or implicit underlining. An ironic post about Christians and white Danes was exactly what sprung the Facebook trap on Danish journalist Abdel Aziz Mahmoud in January 2018.19 As
18 Facebook’s “Community Standards 12. Hate Speech” p. 18. Last vis- ited 07-30-18: https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/objec- tionable_content/hate_speech. 19 See Abdel Mahmoud’s Facebook post in Pedersen, J. ”Kendt DR-vært censureret af Facebook: Se opslaget, der fik ham blokeret” BT. 01-28-18.
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a public figure with many followers, he had posted a com- ment aimed at highlighting the double standard among many players in public Danish debate. However, after several users reported the post as offensive, Facebook chose to delete it and throw the journalist off the site. Facebook does not seem to understand that irony works best in a delicate balance, causing its addressee to wonder what exactly the idea may be—and not by overexplaining and spelling out. The reason for this removal was, of course, that no one can expect sophis- ticated text interpretation from underpaid staff working under pressure on the other side of the globe, just as it has not yet been possible to teach artificial intelligence to understand irony. But apparently Facebook has concluded that some of the most elegant and artistically and politically effective instruments—irony, parody and satire—cannot come to full fruition. In a Danish context, we need to dig deep in the his- tory books and go all the way back to the Danish Freedom of the Press Act of 1799. Its Article 13 established that irony and allegory were penalized the same way as explicit statements. At the time, the idea was to protect the Monarchy. In the case of Facebook, the reasons are financial, as the company cannot afford to deploy the procedures necessary to really differenti- ate such challenging statements.
Since 1790, crimes of press freedom in Denmark have, at least as a general rule, been decided publicly in the courts, allowing for thorough arguments pro et contra to be pre- sented, and for the intention and meaning of a contested statement to be clarified. One of the key challenges of the new online censorship is that this is not the case. It is per- formed automatically, without transparency, and thus far removed from any real appeal option, unless the affected person—as in the case of Abdel Mahmoud Aziz—is fortunate enough to be a publicly known figure with the related oppor- tunities of contacting the traditional press to raise public awareness about a problem, pressuring tech giants to respond and apologize for the removal.
Another example from Denmark of a public figure clash- ing with Facebook’s foggy policies was Jens Philip Yazdani,
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former chairman of the Union of Danish Upper Secondary School Students. During the 2018 Soccer World Cup, Yazdani, whose background is part Iranian, weighed in on the debate on national identity and what it means to be Danish. In a post he wrote that he found it easier to support the Iranian national team than the Danish one, because of the harsh tone of the immigration debate in Danish society. The post was shared vividly on Facebook, garnering many likes and a glow- ing debate in the comments. Against all reason, Facebook decided to remove the post—including its many shares and comments—after several complaints, because the post had allegedly violated Facebook’s guidelines on “hate speech”. One may agree or disagree with Yazdani, but it is indeed hard to find anything per se offensive in the post whatsoever. With the press of a button, Facebook managed to kill a relevant contribution to the Danish debate in society. Only journalist Mikkel Andersson’s public criticism of Facebook’s decision led to a concession from Facebook, who put Yazdani’s post back online.20
The “hate speech” clause details three levels and therefore requires a larger quotation here:
Do not post:
Tier 1 attacks, which target a person or group of people who share one of the above-listed characteristics or immigration status (including all subsets except those described as having carried out violent crimes or sexual offenses), where attack is defined as
Any violent speech or support in written or visual form
Dehumanizing speech such as reference or comparison to:
Insects
Animals that are culturally perceived as intellectually or physically inferior
Filth, bacteria, disease and feces
Sexual predator
Subhumanity
Violent and sexual criminals
20 Andersson, M. ”Når Facebook dræber samfundsdebatten” Berlingske. 07-25-18.
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Other criminals (including but not limited to “thieves”, “bank rob- bers” or saying “all [protected characteristic or quasi-protected characteristic] are ‘criminals’”)
Mocking the concept, events or victims of hate crimes even if no real person is depicted in an image
Designated dehumanizing comparisons in both written and visual form
Tier 2 attacks, which target a person or group of people who share any of the above-listed characteristics, where attack is defined as
Statements of inferiority or an image implying a person’s or a group’s physical, mental, or moral deficiency
Physical (including but not limited to “deformed”, “undeveloped”, “hideous”, “ugly”)
Mental (including but not limited to “retarded”, “cretin”, “low IQ”, “stupid”, “idiot”)
Moral (including but not limited to “slutty”, “fraud”, “cheap”, “free riders”)
Expressions of contempt or their visual equivalent, including (but not limited to)
“I hate”
“I don’t like”
“X are the worst”
Expressions of disgust or their visual equivalent, including (but not limited to)
“Gross”
“Vile”
“Disgusting”
Cursing at a person or group of people who share protected characteristics
Tier 3 attacks, which are calls to exclude or segregate a person or group of people based on the above-listed characteristics. We do allow criticism of immigration policies and arguments for restrict- ing those policies.
Content that describes or negatively targets people with slurs, where slurs are defined as words commonly used as insulting labels for the above-listed characteristics.
We find these straitlaced∗, American∗ moderators on Facebook despicable∗. We hate∗ their retarded∗ attempts to
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subdue free speech. We think that such idiots∗ ought to be kicked out∗ from Facebook and from other tech giants∗.
In this short statement, we have violated Facebook’s “hate speech” criteria in Tiers 1, 2 and 3 (marked by ∗). Despite the amplified rhetoric, the sentiment is sincere, and we consider the statement to express legitimate political criticism. It is instructive to compare Facebook’s weak and broad “hate speech” criteria with Twitter’s radically different narrow and precise definitions, beginning with: “You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race…” (and then a version of the usual well- known group list is added).21 The only strange thing here is that it implies that users are indeed allowed to promote vio- lence against people who happen not to belong to any of those explicitly protected groups. At Twitter, the focus remains on “harm”, “harassment”, “threats” and—unlike Facebook’s list—it does not operate with a diffuse list of fairly harmless linguistic terms, statements and metaphors.
Regarding “Violence and Graphic Content”, Facebook’s policy goes as follows:
Do not post:
Imagery of violence committed against real people or animals with comments or captions by the poster that contain
Enjoyment of suffering Enjoyment of humiliation Erotic response to suffering Remarks that speak positively of the violence; or Remarks indicating the poster is sharing footage for sensational viewing pleasure Videos of dying, wounded, or dead people if they contain
Dismemberment unless in a medical setting
Visible internal organs Charred or burning people Victims of cannibalism
It is no wonder that the company wants to ban snuff videos where people are actually killed in front of rolling cameras,
21 Quot. from Gillespie (2018) p. 58.
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essentially for profit. But the paragraph seems to completely overlook the value of war journalism and other serious reports on torture, crime or disasters—such as Nick Ut’s already mentioned press photo “Napalm Girl”, featuring a naked child running from a US napalm attack, a photo that at the time contributed to a radical turn in the public opinion on the Vietnam War.22 Or what about Robert Capa’s famous photos from the Spanish Civil War? Facebook seems to assume that all images featuring, for example, “charred or burning people” necessarily have a malignant purpose as opposed to an enlightening, medical, journalistic, documen- tary or critical purpose. In any event, this section of the policy has no counterpart in the legislations of most countries.
The section on nudity and sex contains the following inter- esting concessions:
“Our nudity policies have become more nuanced over time. We understand that nudity can be shared for a variety of reasons, including as a form of protest, to raise awareness about a cause, or for educational or medical reasons. Where such intent is clear, we make allowances for the content. For example, while we restrict some images of female breasts that include the nipple, we allow other images, including those depicting acts of protest, women actively engaged in breast- feeding, and photos of post-mastectomy scarring. We also allow photographs of paintings, sculptures, and other art that depicts nude figures.” Facebook seems to be realizing that fighting against the Delacroix painting, breast-feeding selfies, and so on is going way too far. Still, as recently as 2018, the company had to apologize for repeatedly deleting photos of one of humanity’s oldest sculptures, the tiny 30,000-year-old stone figurine known as “Venus from Willendorf”, an ample-
22 Ingram, M. “Here’s Why Facebook Removing That Vietnam War Photo Is So Important” Fortune. 09-09-2016. Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten went to great lengths to attack Facebook’s removal of the photo when its Editor-in-Chief published an open letter to Zuckerberg, which gained international impact. Critics added that the effect of Facebook’s removal of the photo reiterated the Nixon administration’s attempts many years ago to label the photo as a fake.
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bodied fertility symbol with highlighted labia.23 And August 2018 saw the story of the removal from the Anne Frank Center page of a Holocaust photo featuring naked concentra- tion camp prisoners.24 The very long list of things that this section disallows is very detailed and would probably still include Peter Øvig’s hippie photos from 1970. In a subclause such as the following, there are two interesting things to make a note of among the list of sexual content which users are not allowed to post:
Other sexual activities including (but not limited to)
Erections Presence of by-products of sexual activity Stimulating genitals or anus, even if above or under clothing Use of sex toys, even if above or under clothing Stimulation of naked human nipples Squeezing naked female breast except in breastfeeding context
The recurring phrase “but not limited to” (cf. “for any rea- son”) gives the platform a license to expand the list of prohib- ited subjects as it sees fit. Thus users, despite the quite explicit and detailed descriptions of examples worthy of a porn site, are not given any real clarity about where the boundary actu- ally lies. Another interesting ban is that against “the presence of by-products of sexual activity”… the most widely known and visible byproduct of sexual activity being—children. However, photos of children (unless nude) do not seem to be removed from people’s Facebook pages—the sloppy choice of words shows that the platform’s detailed community stan- dards are still a far cry from the clarity one normally expects of real legal texts. This is no minor issue, inasmuch as these standards are in the process of supplementing or even replac- ing actual legislation.
23 Breitenbach, D. “Facebook apologizes for censoring prehistoric figu- rine ‘Venus of Willendorf’” dw.com. 01-03-18. 24 The photo was put back up after a complaint filed by the museum. Brandom, R. “Facebook took down a post by the Anne Frank Center for showing nude Holocaust victims” The Verge. 08-29-18.
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The last form of forbidden content has been given the enigmatic title “Cruel and Insensitive” (which seems to be missing a noun, by the way). It is only briefly elaborated: “Content that depicts real people and mocks their implied or actual serious physical injuries, disease, or disability, non- consensual sexual touching, or premature death.” Is this to say that making fun of someone’s death is okay, as long they died on time? Perhaps this rule against mockery of disabili- ties was also what allowed Facebook to remove a caricature drawing of Donald Trump with a very small penis, believing that it was an offense against the poor man. Again, a more context-sensitive reader or algorithm would know that this was an ironic political reference to the debates during the presidential primaries of 2016, where an opponent accused Trump of having small hands (obviously referring to the popular wisdom that a correlation exists between the size of men’s hands and their genitals).
In the spring and summer of 2018, Facebook seems to have been hit by almost a panic of activity in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal—hardly a week went by with- out new, ostentatious initiatives from the company, probably in an attempt to appear serious and well-behaved enough to avoid imminent political regulation. However, many of the initiatives come off as improvised and uncoordinated—the principles of the removal manual from April were thus already being revised in August. During the Alex Jones case (see Chapter 12), the application of the “hate speech” policy was further tightened, and a few days after the Jones ban, on August 9th, Facebook came out with another sermon, this time with the title “Hard Questions: Where Do We Draw The Line on Free Expression?”, signed by the company’s Vice President of Policy Richard Allen. The document takes its departure in a defintion of freedom of speech as guaranteed by the government. The spread is noted between American freedom, acknowledged by the First Amendment, and at the other end, dictatorial regimes. However, in the message Facebook takes care to remind us that it is not a government, but that still the company wants to draw this line in a way “...
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that gives freedom of expression the maximum extension possible.”25 It seems that leaders at Facebook have finally begun to look to the political and legal tradition of freedom of expression. Now there are references to Article 19 of “The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” (ICCPR) as a source of inspiration. The United Nations joined this covenant in 1966, but even back then, the agreement was already surrounded by a lot of discussion and criticism, partly due to its Article 20 calling for legislation on “hate speech”. It was heavily criticized by many Western countries for its curtailment of free speech. There is some irony to the fact that this convention, which Facebook now invokes, was promoted by none other than the former Eastern Bloc, led by the Soviet Union.26 One may wonder why Facebook does not prefer to seek inspiration in the US tradition of free speech legislation and case law, a country which has gained important experience practicing freedom of speech over a long period of time. In the short term, however, what is worth noting is another bit: “we do not, for example, allow content that could physically or financially endanger people, that intimidates people through hateful language, or that aims to profit by tricking people using Facebook.” In mere casual remark, Facebook here introduces a new removal criterion that was not included in the removal handbook: “financial danger”, i.e. content that tries to gain a profit by fooling Facebook users.27 Again, the sloppy steps of the approach are spectacular: A whole new removal criterion is introduced in passing, with no clear definition or examples of what would comprise a violation of the new rule. If we did not know any better, the many ads through which Facebook gen- erates its huge profits could easily be characterized as tools to gain profit by fooling people into buying something they do
25 Facebook: “Hard Questions: Where Do We Draw The Line on Free Expression?” Facebook Newsroom. 08-09-18. 26 See also Mchangama & Stjernfelt (2016) p. 781ff. 27 Constine, J. ”Facebook now deletes posts that financially endanger/ trick people” TechChrunch. 08-09-18.
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not need. This is yet another piece of improvisation when formulating policy—one must hope that American and European politicians realize that such measures cause more problems than they solve, and that such measures call out for regulation rather than make it superfluous.
The bottom line is that Facebook’s belated publication of more detailed content removal guidelines is a small step for- ward—probably triggered by the congressional hearings of Zuckerberg a few weeks before their publication. It is commendable that a little more public light is shed on the mix of reasonable and strange, common-sense and unconsidered pondering that lie beneath this key political document. We still do not know much, however, about the safety and secu- rity staff, at present counting some 30.000 people, and their training, qualifications and working conditions, or what equips them to perform this task so crucial for the public. Many of the content moderation departments of the tech giants work mostly for a low pay (3–500 dollars a month) in third-world countries like the Philippines and under non- disclosure agreements.28 There is indeed some distance between the luxurious hipster life of table soccer and free organic food and drinks at the Facebook headquarters in California and the work lives of stressed subcontractors stuffed closely side-by-side in shabby surroundings. One might reasonably ask how they should be able to understand the motivation behind a user posting a picture, especially when that user is in a different country, posting in a different language and a different context. Is the staff being trained, and if so then how? Image, video and text are often inter- twined, commenting on each other: Does the company have personnel with the appropriate language skills to cover a global circle of users posting in hundreds of different lan- guages? Does Facebook give moderators productivity bonuses—how many cases does an employee need to solve
28 Chen, A. “The Laborers Who Keep Dickpics and Beheadings out of Your Facebook Feed” Wired. 10-23-13.
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per hour? And, respectively, how many accounts need to be blocked? And how much content is removed per hour?
An average time of five to ten seconds spent on each image is often mentioned; in such a short span, aspects like context, culture, quotation or irony of course cannot be taken into account. But the actual time frame may be even shorter. Dave Willner, who worked for Facebook as a moderator from 2008 to 2013, processed 15,000 images per day; on an eight- hour workday, that makes around two seconds per image.29 Since doubtful cases presumably take a little longer, the aver- age time for most decisions is even shorter. Is there any effec- tive, overall assurance that the many employees actually follow the guidelines, or are they to some extent left to their own rushed decisions and assessments based on taste? In an interview with ProPublica, Willner’s description of how the removal work began in 2008 points to a great deal of judg- ment involved: “ ... [Facebook’s] censorship rulebook was still just a single page with a list of material to be removed, such as images of nudity and Hitler. At the bottom of the page it said, ‘Take down anything else that makes you feel uncom- fortable’.” This is an extremely broad censorship policy, leav- ing a considerable amount of judgment on the shoulders of the individual employee—and very little legal protection for the user. Willner continues with a thoughtful remark: “‘There is no path that makes people happy. All the rules are mildly upsetting.’ The millions of decisions every day means that the method, according to Willner, is ‘more utilitarian than we are used to in our justice system. It’s fundamentally not rights- oriented.’”30 The utilitarian attitude weighs damage against utility. So if a number of users’ rights are violated and their content is removed, the act can be legitimized by the fact that a larger number of other users, in turn, experience a benefit— for example, if they feel that a violation has been avenged.
29 Angwin, J. & Grassegger, H. “Facebook’s secret censorship rules pro- tect white men from hate speech but not black children” Salon (origi- nally appeared on ProPublica). 06-28-17. 30 Ibid.
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Questions of guilt and rights drift to the background, as what matters is the net number of satisfied users. Obviously, such a balancing system tends to favor the complainant, since he or she is the one heard by the moderators, while the accused party is not heard and has no means of defense. Therefore, it is inherent to this system that the expressing party, the utterer of a statement, has no right—no real freedom of expression.
The community standards of the tech giants are becoming the policies guiding a new form of censorship. Removal of content by an algorithm before it even becomes visible to users takes us all the way back to the pre-censorship which was abolished in Denmark in 1770 by J.F. Struensee. On large parts of the Internet, this “formal” freedom of speech is not respected. The manual removal of content upon complaints can be likened to post-censorship and is comparable to the police control practiced in Denmark from 1814 until the Constitution of Denmark came into effect in 1849—with it came a number of laws against material freedom of expres- sion, such as the sections on blasphemy, pornography and “hate speech”. Unlike Danish law going as far back as 1790, however, in the legal environment of the tech giants there is no judicial review, no public court case, and appeal options are poor, unsystematic, or non-existent.
Of course, Facebook’s rule-book is not a proper legal document, but still it is bizarre to note that this pseudo-legal text, with its vagueness and many hyper-detailed bans, now comprises the principles governing the limits of expression of millions—if not billions—of people for whom Facebook’s de facto monopoly is the only way they may reach the public sphere and access their news.
In the April 2018 document, Facebook had also promised a new appeal option for users whose content has been blocked and their accounts suspended. In a November 2018 missive to Facebook users, Zuckerberg elaborated on the idea. Here, he promised the long-term establishment of an independent appeal institution in order to “[...] uphold the principle of giving people a voice while also recognizing the
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reality of keeping people safe.”31 We are still waiting for the details on how that attempt of squaring the circle will work— particularly how the board will be selected and how indepen- dence of Facebook’s commercial interests will be granted. Given the amount of flaggings, one can only imagine how many staffers would have to be employed in this private “supreme court”. Even if this idea may be a virtual step in the right direction, such an appeal organ, of course, will still have to function on the basis of the much-disputed detail of the Facebook community standards.
In the same pastoral letter, Zuckerberg articulated a new theory on the regulation of free speech. No matter where one draws the line between legal and illegal, he claimed, special user interest will be drawn to legal content which comes close to that borderline. No matter whether you are prudish or permissive in drawing the line, special fascination will radiate from borderline posts. To mitigate this fact, Zuckerberg now proposes a new policy: such borderline content, legal but in the vicinity of the border, will be suppressed and have its Facebook circulation reduced—with more reduction the closer to the line it comes: “[...] by reducing sensationalism of all forms, we will create a healthier, less polarized discourse where more people feel safe participating.”32 The idea echoes de-ranking “fake news”, only now spreading to other types of content. Introduced in the same letter as the appeal institu- tion, this idea begs some new unsolved questions: will people posting borderline content be informed about the reduced distribution of their posts? If not, a new zone of suppression without possibility of appeal will be created. Furthermore, as soon as this reduction is realized in the community, more interest is sure to be generated by posts on the borderline of the borderline—a slippery slope if there ever was one.
One might ask why there should even be detailed rules for content removal at all. It was not an issue with the communi-
31 Zuckerberg, M. “A Blueprint for Content Governance and Enforcement” Facebook Notes. 11-15-18. 32 ibid.
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cation technologies Facebook is helping to replace: the tele- phone and mail former generations relied on to “connect” with their “friends”. The postal services of the free world do not refuse to deliver certain letters after examining their con- tent, and the telephone companies do not interrupt calls based on people talking about things the phone companies do not like. These providers of communications infrastructure were even obliged not to censor users; they were seen as com- panies that help communicate content, not moderate it.33 It is primarily for commercial reasons that companies like Facebook introduce restrictions on what their users have to say. But a harmful consequence of this is that it has turned out to be conducive to the desires for censorship of certain political forces.
33 Cf. the distinction in American law between “conduit” and “content”, responsibility for transfer and responsibility for content modification, respectively.
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Chapter 11. Facebook’s Handbook of Content Removal
4/20/2021 The cost of data security: Are cybersecurity investments worth it?
https://www.cloudmask.com/blog/the-cost-of-data-security-are-cybersecurity-investments-worth-it 1/2
Where is the evidence that current cybersecurity spending works?
"The average cost of losing sensitive information is approximately $4 billion."
The cost of data security: Are cybersecurity investments
worth it?
Cybersecurity and data breaches continue to make headlines as businesses and associations around the world fall victim to network intrusion and data theft. However, some organizations are still hesitant to just start spending thousands of dollars upgrading their security systems and improving data protection policies and practices. It isn't uncommon to hear someone asking, "Are investments into cybersecurity worth it compared to the cost of a data breach?"
Benjamin Dean, a fellow in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, told Fortune magazine that it's time to get down to the "hard evidence." He asserted that as long as businesses and associations have access to the facts, they can fix the cybersecurity problem. So, where is the evidence that current cybersecurity spending works?
The cost to protect Businesses and associations are hesitant to publicly announce their cybersecurity spending habits. To add to the difficulties of tracking down the average investment in data protection, organizations have a variety of different needs when it comes to cybersecurity, since a health care provider might demand tighter security than a restaurant. However, the information security market is booming. According to Gartner, worldwide, organizations spent $81.6 billion in 2016 on information security, an increase of 7.9 percent from 2015.
The cost of a breach There is no getting around the huge financial results of a data breach. According to Ponemon Institute's 2016 Cost of Data Breach Study, the average total cost of losing sensitive corporate or personal information is approximately $4 billion. Per stolen record, businesses and associations can spend anywhere between $145 and $158, with health card information costing the most to lose, at $355 per record.
The majority of data breach costs are associated with resolving the matter, as organizations must pay compliance fines and court fees, invest in forensic and investigation processes, and spend revenue on identity theft prevention services for customers or employees. Additionally, Ponemon's report noted that turnover of consumers directly impacts business costs, and from then on out, these organizations must spend more on customer acquisition as the reputational losses of a data breach last a long time.
The showdown When Ponemon's data is paired with the Identity Theft Resource Center's statistics, it would appear that businesses and associations are spending too much on security that isn't working. With the average cost of a personal record coming in at $150 and 117,678,050 records accessed as of July 7 - according to ITRC - organizations have lost $17.65 billion six full months into 2015.
What is the solution? Simply put, every organization needs a use case for cybersecurity solutions, otherwise the investment is made into a tool that doesn't work. With different monitoring software, physical firewalls and cutting-edge cybersecurity offerings, businesses and associations aren't successful at the only thing that matters: data protection.
CloudMask acts as the last line of defense when all the others fail, ensuring that even when breaches, data remains secure. In other words, cybercriminals cannot compromise information when organizations use CloudMask.It encrypts emails and cloud storage data, separates the key from the data and ensures that no one - not even CloudMask - can access or alter information.
With CloudMask, only your authorized parties can decrypt and see your data. Not hackers with your valid password, Not Cloud Providers, Not Government Agencies, and Not even CloudMask can see your protected data. Twenty-six government cybersecurity agencies around the world back these claims.
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4/20/2021 The cost of data security: Are cybersecurity investments worth it?
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4/20/2021 Ethics and advanced medical devices: Do we need a new approach? - Health Voices
healthvoices.org.au/issues/november-2017/ethics-advanced-medical-devices-need-new-approach/ 1/7
Mary Jean Walker Dr Mary Jean Walker is Research Fellow, Ethics Program, ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Philosophy Department, Monash University. She has research interests in bioethics, philosophy of medicine, health policy, and personal
identity. Dr Walker is currently researching ethical issues related to advanced medical devices, with a focus on advanced
prosthetics and artificial organs.
Along with their potential to greatly benefit health, biotechnological advances surrounding medical devices may exacerbate risks, and pose new kinds of risk. Our primary mechanism for managing these risks is therapeutic goods regulation. As these technologies advance, it is apt to question the basis of the current regulatory approach.
WRITTEN BY
medicalmedical devices: Do wedevices: Do we need a newneed a new approach?approach?
4/20/2021 Ethics and advanced medical devices: Do we need a new approach? - Health Voices
healthvoices.org.au/issues/november-2017/ethics-advanced-medical-devices-need-new-approach/ 2/7
Ethics and the purpose of therapeutic goods regulation Regulation of therapeutic goods has two purposes that are sometimes at odds with each other. Regulation seeks to safeguard the public’s health and safety, while allowing or even incentivising beneficial innovations to reach the market as quickly as reasonably possible. In current systems, a major part of how regulation achieves both aims is the requirement that manufacturers present evidence of a product’s safety and effectiveness. On the one hand, this protects consumers from using products that are unsafe or won’t be beneficial. On the other, it means that commercial success must be based on sound research, incentivising quality innovation.
Any such approach to regulation must deal with difficult questions about the standard of evidence it will require. Answering these questions requires not only scientific input, but ethical decisions, since it will involve judgements about what levels of risk are acceptable, and which of the two aims should outweigh the other. If evidentiary standards are too low, regulators’ safeguarding role might be compromised; too high and they may unnecessarily prevent patients from benefiting from new advances.
Problems of evidence about devices With regard to devices, a lower standard of evidence is often accepted. There appears to be no principled reason for this; rather it has resulted from historical accident combined with some difficulties in obtaining evidence about devices. For example, controlled studies of devices can be difficult, since outcomes can depend on how they are used, for instance in surgical procedures, which may vary. Device risks may also be long-term, but many studies do not report on long-term outcomes – and doing so would require long delays for approval.
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Further, lower-risk devices are not always required to undergo pre-market approval, instead being approved on the basis of their similarity to previous devices, with lower evidential requirements. There are reasons for this system – the sheer number of minor alterations made to devices would make subjecting each new iteration to full scrutiny unfeasible, and many alterations are unlikely to affect clinical outcomes. But it was also involved in the approval of two devices later found to be harmful, metal- on-metal hips and vaginal mesh. Particularly where there are a series of small alterations, it can be difficult to judge when outcomes will be affected.
The major ethical issue in device regulation, then, is that we currently accept a high level of risk at the market approval stage – but this is because of problems of evidence collection and the practical needs of a regulatory system as it applies to devices, not because the risks have actually been assessed as acceptable.
On the contrary, many consumers assume that any product on the market has been thoroughly assessed for safety and effectiveness.
Partly to compensate for the difficulties of pre-market evidence collection, most jurisdictions expect manufacturers to undertake post- market studies and other ‘vigilance’ activities such as adverse event reporting. While this might be a good solution in theory, sometimes requirements for post-market studies have not been enforced, and there is often under- or inconsistent reporting of adverse events. It also raises the ethical worry that, to the extent that the evidence for safety and effectiveness is collected post-market, the first patients to use a device are de facto research subjects. Yet they are not protected, as subjects in pre-market research studies are, by ethical oversight and informed consent procedures. On the contrary, many consumers assume that any product on the market has been thoroughly assessed for safety and effectiveness.
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New challenges In the context of these existing challenges, emerging technologies pose further difficulties. I will discuss just two.
First, devices are increasingly computerised and many, such as pacemakers and insulin pumps, incorporate software into their functioning. This can have great benefits: automation of functions for easier management; better calibration of devices to patients’ needs; collection of physiological data of clinical value; and remote, thus more efficient, adjustment of device functioning.
Software in or as a medical device exacerbates old challenges, and introduces new ones. It means even more frequent updating of devices – and these updates may affect the functioning of devices that are already being used by, even implanted in the bodies of, patients. Ensuring that devices remain safe and effective through each change will become even more challenging. Manufacturers will need to take more responsibility for ongoing device functionality. Software also involves new kinds of risks, for instance in attempting to predict how functionality could be affected when used in conjunction with a range of different technological systems, and when integrated into different clinical situations. Another important, and somewhat new risk relates to cybersecurity: the possibility of devices being hacked and used to harm their users. Notably, Dick Cheney had his implantable cardiac defibrillator’s wireless connectivity disabled for the term of his office as US Vice President for this reason. Similarly, the collection of physiological information could constitute a risk for patients if it is misused. There are also further ethical questions to consider with regard to the research use of this data, to which patients may not have consented.
Again, customisation also poses new kinds of challenge. Given the unprecedented accessibility of this
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method of manufacture, it may simply be difficult for regulators to capture all uses.
A second emerging possibility is for increased customisation of devices, particularly through 3D printing and computer-aided design. Commonly used implants such as artificial hips can now be far more easily manufactured with dimensions matching specific patients, and bespoke devices can even be modelled directly on patient physiology. Intuitively, this could benefit patients; but obtaining rigorous evidence of safety and effectiveness for custom devices is even more difficult than it is for standardised devices. The best evidence for regulatory purposes is generated from populations of research subjects who receive a standardised intervention, and this is fundamentally at odds with customisation. Customisation thus exacerbates existing difficulties with obtaining good evidence about devices. Thus far, custom devices have usually been used under research regulations, or regulatory exemptions. The more customisation is used, the less appropriate this will be.
Again, customisation also poses new kinds of challenge. Given the unprecedented accessibility of this method of manufacture, it may simply be difficult for regulators to capture all uses. Clinicians and basic science researchers, among others, may engage in creating bespoke devices without being aware of regulatory controls on manufacturers, and without experience in quality assurance practices, putting patients at risk.
Questioning current approaches As advances further challenge the current system, it is worth questioning whether there could be alternative approaches to device regulation. Most radically perhaps, we could question the way current regulatory approaches incentivise research by linking it to commercial success. This link itself leads to ethical issues, such as that research is primarily directed towards addressing the health problems of the most well-off. Healthcare inequities are likely to increase with increasing technological sophistication, since this comes with increased cost. Some technologies also have the potential to reduce inequities, such as using 3D printing to
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provide lower-tech devices in low-income countries – but while research is incentivised as it currently is, this potential may not be fulfilled. That healthcare innovation primarily focuses on marketable products can also lead to neglect of improvements that could be made through social or institutional change.
Admittedly, making research necessary for commercial purposes, while in these respects not an ideal feature of a regulatory approach, might be the best possible one overall (and certainly be extremely difficult to change). Less radically then, we might question the way the current system is arranged around the pre-/post-market distinction, and the corresponding research subject/patient distinction. Other options, like creating a third category between research and practice, or developing new methods for post-market investigation (including ethical oversight where appropriate) or compliance, are worth considering.
Whatever the result of these considerations, my point is that there is value in questioning all features of the system and the assumptions built into them, even radically, if we are to arrive at an approach based on reasoned assessment, and defensible ethical decisions.
References 1 Gibbs JN, et al. 2014. 510(k) statistical patterns. Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry, 2 Dec, https://www.mddionline.com/510k-statistical- patterns.
2 Roger WA, Hutchison K. 2017. Hips, knees, and hernia mesh: When does gender matter in surgery? International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 10(1):148-174.
3 Hutchison K, Sparrow R. 2017. Ethics and the cardiac pacemaker: More than just end-of-life issues. Europace, online first doi:10.1093/europace/eux019.
4 IMDRF Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) Working Group. 2014. “Software as a Medical Device”: Possible Framework for Risk Categorization and Corresponding Considerations. International Medical Device Regulators Forum, http://www.imdrf.org/docs/imdrf/final/technical/imdrf-tech-140918- samd-framework-risk-categorization-141013.pdf.
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5 American College of Cardiology. 2013. From IEDs to ICDs? Credible threat led to disabling Cheney’s ICD in 2007. http://www.acc.org/latest-in- cardiology/articles/2013/10/20/21/04/from-ieds-to-icds. 6 E.g., Therapeutic Goods Administration. No date. Custom-made medical devices (fact sheet), https://www.tga.gov.au/custom-made-medical- devices. 7 Olsen L, Aisner D, McGinnis JM (Institute of Medicine). 2007. The learning healthcare system: Workshop summary. National Academies Press, Washington DC, https://www.nap.edu/search/? term=learning+healthcare.
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