Is safety worth the loss of privacy? - Michael Vazquez and Sarah Stroud
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Your government has introduced a plan to address record-breaking rates of traffic tickets and deadly hovercar accidents. They propose assigning “driver credit scores” to every citizen, but would need to install cameras and microphones in every vehicle. While it would make the roads safer, is this undeniable benefit worth the cost to drivers’ privacy? Michael Vazquez and Sarah Stroud investigate.
Additional Resources for you to Explore
To effectively weigh these trade-offs, it is important to think about the moral costs associated with the violation of privacy by government and corporate surveillance. Philosopher Michael Lynch has written about the ways in which the surveillance state reduces people to mere objects. Others have raised concerns over unfettered access that big data companies have to our information, using philosophical analysis to push for changes in legislation. Seán Moran has written about the moral and epistemic dangers of mass surveillance technology and its parallels with Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon.
As mentioned in the video, some philosophers have doubted that privacy is valuable in its own right or independently from other valuable things. That is one way to be skeptical about the importance of privacy. In addition, feminist philosophers like Catherine MacKinnon have cautioned that "privacy" is often used to legitimize injustice. By carving out a private sphere that is safe from public surveillance and intrusion, wrongdoers can get a free pass. On this topic, Martha Nussbaum has written about the possible conflict between privacy and sex equality, highlighting a tension that is shared across cultures and societies who may value or conceptualize privacy differently.
For a comprehensive introduction to this concept within philosophical and legal traditions, start with the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on "privacy."
Interested in more examples? Consider whether incursions against privacy are justified in order to reduce crime, combat cyber threats, or to keep students safe in school. These cases were provided to students taking part in the National High School Ethics Bowl program, produced by the Parr Center for Ethics at UNC- Chapel Hill. They explore the ethical implications of various real- world scenarios, adding some questions for reflection. You can discuss them with your friends, peers or classmates.
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Meet The Creators
- Educator Michael Vazquez, Sarah Stroud, Jet Propulsion
- Director Jeff Le Bars
- Narrator Addison Anderson
- Music Stephen LaRosa
- Sound Designer Stephen LaRosa
- Director of Production Gerta Xhelo
- Produced by Sazia Afrin
- Editorial Director Alex Rosenthal
- Editorial Producer Dan Kwartler
- Fact-Checker Charles Wallace