IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2014 - 72
Moral Harm
Non-consensual taking of an individual's image is a moral harm because
it infringes individual privacy. Other
than in circumstances where religious or cultural beliefs are profoundly offended by image-taking,
in itself it is a moral harm unlikely to
have significant actual harmful consequences. A more significant moral
harm comes with the second element
of the intrusion, the infringement of
autonomy and the use of information
from such images by third parties.
Greater moral harm (and potentially significant actual harm) occurs
when the image-subject not only
has no control over how the images
and information are used but also is
directly or indirectly harmed by their
subsequent use. The moral theory
of policing provides an account in
which lawful, proportionate and
necessary non-consensual imagetaking leading to subsequent moral
and actual harm (e.g., conviction and
punishment) can be morally justified
in certain circumstances.
Taking official use of surveillance and CCTV as its initial context, this article has considered
ethical aspects of non-consensual
image-taking. Official use of BWV
can be accommodated within the
same moral conversation. But private citizen use of BWV for surveillant seeing changes the moral
dynamic through promiscuous
image-sharing and the absence of
effective redress mechanisms for
image-subjects.
The ethical concerns raised by
CCTV camera surveillance and
by covert investigation surveillance have begun to be addressed
with a number of protections: for
example, prior use-authorization
regimes; data protection legislation; automatic periodic deletion; subject access protocols; and
privacy-protection software [7].
Within the paradigm of public
72
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sector accountability, together with
Von Hirsch's framework for ethical routine surveillance of public
areas, such measures bring ethicsbased regulation to official use
of camera surveillance: a regime
which can incorporate official use
of BWV. In this sense BWV is
merely a different manifestation of
how State and citizen interact. The
basic principle is the same as in
other forms of interaction: regulating use of State power in relation to
a citizen in order to prevent (or else
remedy) abuse of that power.
The use of BWV technology by
private citizens to capture information about other private citizens
empowers the user to the extent
that the user acquires usable information about another person, thus
creating an asymmetrical power
relationship. The ethics of surveillance as social control have been
widely considered and sousveillance can be accommodated within
that ethical account. But such an
account is found wanting in connection with citizen use of BWV
surveillance because there is no
obvious morally justifiable counterweight to the prima facie moral
harms engaged.
The digital environment is redefining social interaction and creating
a need for new ethical accounts [3].
Superficially empowered through
social networking, individuals have
in fact lost the last vestiges of control over how they manage information about self to present a desired
public personality. Communications
technology facilitates interaction
between people: it can also neutralize
social inhibitions if the user perceives
their interaction to be primarily with
the technology rather than with the
recipient of the message - hence the
concept of "netiquette" establishing conventions about acceptable
ways of expressing self in email. For
similar reasons, general recognition
and understanding of what is acceptable and unacceptable in relation to
private use of BWV technology is
required. Because the immediate
outcome of such use is the acquisition of information about others, the
onus of ethical responsibility lies
firmly with the users of images and
recordings made with BWV technology when surveillance is used as a
means of private seeing for the purpose of public sharing.
Author Information
Clive Harfield is an Adjunct Fellow, Griffith university, Qld, Australia, and Associate Investigator at
the ArC Centre of Excellence in
Policing & Security.
Acknowledgment
The author is grateful to Seth Lazar,
School of Philosophy, The Australian National university, and to two
anonymous peer reviewers for comments on early drafts of this paper.
References
[1] C. Burt, "Privacy as security: comparative developments in Canada, the u.K. and
the u.S.A." in Eyes Everywhere: The Global
Growth of Camera Surveillance, A. Doyle, r.
Lippert and D. Lyon, Eds. Abingdon, u.K.:
routledge, 2012, pp. 354-369.
[2] K. Michael, "For now we see through a
glass, darkly," IEEE Technology & Society
Mag., pp. 4-5, Wint. 2013.
[3] K. Michael, "No limits to watching?," Commun. ACM, vol. 56, no. 11, pp. 26-28, Nov. 2013.
[4] S. Miller and J. Blackler, Ethical Issues in
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[5] J. rachels, "Why privacy is important,"
Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 4, no. 4,
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[6] P. roberts, "Privacy, autonomy and criminal justice rights: philosophical preliminaries"
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[7] A. Senior, "Privacy protection in a video
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u.K.: Springer-Verlag, 2009, pp. 35-47.
[8] S. Sontag, On Photography. London, u.K.:
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[9] A. von Hirsch, "The ethics of public television surveillance," in Ethical and Social Perspectives on Situational Crime Prevention,
A. von Hirsch, D. Garland, and A. Wakefield,
Eds. Oxford, u.K.: Hart, 2000, pp. 59-76.
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