An Ethics for the New Surveillance
Gary Marx
Prof. Emeritus MIT, Univ. of Colorado at Boulder, Dept. of Sociology, 219 Ketchum, Campus Box 327, Boulder, CO 80309-0327. E-mail: gtmarx@bainbridgeisland.net.
New technologies for collecting personal information such as computer dossiers, drug testing, video-cameras, electronic location monitoring and the Internet must be considered within a broad ethical framework. This paper offers such a framework. I argue that a surveillance activity must be judged according to the means, the context and conditions of data collection, and the uses/goals, and suggest 29 questions related to this. The more one can answer these questions in a way that affirms the underlying principle (or a condition supp;ortive of it), the more ethical the use of a tactic is likely to be. Four conditions are identified that, when breached, are likely to violate an individual's expectation of privacy. Respect for the dignity of the person is a central factor and emphasis is on avoidance of harm, validity, trust, notice, and permission when crossing personal borders.
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