Ethical Theory, Information, and Surveillance

Notes from PowerPoint

What do people commonly use for determining an ethical course of action? “The law” is one example. What are some other popular standards?

Merit, need, equal share, other qualification, future contribution

What are some problems with each popular standards?

Law, religion, society, conscience, individual value, personal characteristics, precedent, emotion, intuition, majority opinion

What are some problems common to all popular standards? Problems with law specifically

Law can be wrong, change, courts make mistakes, different interpretation

Not universal and can change over time

Cross-cultural frameworks

Intended to address problems associated with the popular standards

Rights theory

Rights and responsibilities are correlative

Types of rights= legal, contractual, and ethical

Ethical (human) rights function to protect basic interest of any individual

Utilitarianism

Focus on the end result of an action, not the action itself

Preferred end result = the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Good means maximizing happiness, and all people desire happiness

Examples:

Voting in democracies

Businesses, competition, and consumer demand

Civil disobedience

Peaceful/non-violent resistance to laws perceived to be unjust. Examples like protest marches, sit-ins, filling up jails to capacity, refusing to pay taxes, boycotting certain businesses, labor strikes

Appeals to ethical rights or utilitarian arguments (higher standard than what is currently considered legal/illegal) are often used to justify such activities

What is not civil disobedience

Violence (or “direct action”) against property. Examples include vandalizing businesses, damaging government vehicles, hacking websites

Violence against people

Preconditions for civil disobedience to be effective

A free press to spread the message and thereby gain public support for the cause

Punishment proportional to the laws being violated

Evil disobedience, therefore has minimal effect in authoritarian societies, like North Korea or George Orwells 1984

Major figures associated with civil disobedience

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

refused to pay taxes as a protest against slavery in the U.S.

wrote the famous essay “Civil Disobedience”

Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948)

leader of non-violent resistance to British rule in India

maintained that India should be ruled by Indians

peaceful marches, boycotts of British products, labor strikes

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1940-1968)

leader of civil rights activities in the U.S. in the 1960s

inspired by Gandhi and promoted similar acts of non-violent civil disobedience

John Lewis (1940-2020)

worked closely on civil rights with Martin Luther King, Jr.

congressman from Georgia for 33 years; arrested 45 times for non-violent activities; famous for promoting “good trouble”

Recent case study—(former) UNI biology professor Steve O’Kane

Fall 2021, during the COVID pandemic, Iowa Board of Regents would not allow Iowa’s public universities to require the use of face masks when on campus

He’s a biologist who understood viruses was concerned about the safety of his students working close together in labs, and, as a faculty member in his 60s, his own health too

He refused to grade the work of any students who did not wear a face mask during class

He was forced to move his classes online, received disciplinary sanctions, and then took early retirement

Agricultural Revolution (began c. 10,000 B.C.E.)

Gradual shift away from a nomadic/wandering existence to permanent settlements

Growing crops, domestication of animals

Energy from human and animal labor

Scientific Revolution (began c. 1500)

Gradual shift away from explanations based on authority, tradition, or religion to explanations based on science

More of an intellectual movement, although ideas later led to the machines and technologies of the Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolution (began c. 1800)

Gradual shift away from human and animal labor to machines

Energy from fossil fuels

Immense increases in production

Urbanization of the population

Information Revolution (began c. 1940)

Began with the invention of the computer
Gradual shift away from machines and physical items to computers and information
Energy from both fossil fuels and renewable sources
Timeline and rapid social changes

General timeline for the information revolution

1940s—invention of the computer, perhaps at Iowa State University
(image)
1970s—Business/mainframe computers are adopted
1980s—School/home/personal computers become common
1990s—Internet emerges
• world’s information becomes accessible to all, not just to those in
urban areas, or with access to libraries, or with wealth to purchase
encyclopedia sets, etc.
• democratization of knowledge
2000s—smartphones (phone, camera, microphone, computer, internet
combos) appear, with the first iPhone in 2007
2010s—Cloud computing becomes commonplace
• storing data remotely instead of on individual devices
2020s and forward—artificial intelligence (AI), digital property,
cryptocurrencies, quantum computing, and others

Big data

Information becomes easier and easier to create, store, and transfer
Information becomes a commodity similar to oil
in high demand
created and stored
bought and sold
helps drive the economy

Economic/social impacts of the Information Revolution

Job market (creation and destruction)

Businesses (brick-and-mortar v. online)

City layouts (cities used to be planned around shopping malls)

Education

Financial transactions

Communication

Art

Property

Physical you v. online you

End of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991

Thought that Western-style democracies (with their emphasis on individual rights and the rule of law) would gradually spread around the globe
future conflicts would be only regional and minor
end of the possibility of a nuclear holocaust
note the optimism

Globalization

Believed that Western-style free market capitalism would gradually spread around the globe
Instant communication around the globe thanks to the appearance of the Internet in the 1990s
World would become more interconnected and interdependent, which in turn would decrease the
likelihood of war
Note the optimism

“Might makes right” (instead of democracy and the rule of law) and nationalism (instead of globalism) are gradually replacing international laws, agreements, and organizations

China is expanding globally (its “Belt and Road” initiative), aggressively expanding its territory into the South China Sea, and threatening to use force to retake Taiwan (where a majority of computer chips are made)
The U.S. is threatening to use force to retake the Panama Canal, and take ownership of a redeveloped Gaza Strip in the Middle East

Long-term alliances are being replaced with short-term partnerships

I’ll work with you, but only for so long as it is in my own interest to do so (a “transactional”
worldview)
Since January 2025 the U.S. has withdrawn from international organizations and agreements like the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Treaty, started economic trade wars with traditional allies around the globe, and may in the future withdraw from the military alliance NATO and the
United Nations

Why folks who follow current events and know their history are very concerned

The concept of a common good for the world as a whole—popular in the 1990s—is rapidly disappearing

In a “might makes right” world with each nation pursuing its own individual interests, armed conflict is the inevitable result
the situation today mirrors was the global situation in the 1800s and early-1900s, when nations colonized peoples and lands (especially in Africa) in order to increase their own power and resources, and eventually fought with each other in World War I and II
today all of the major nations have nuclear weapons

Tiananmen Square Massacre (1989)

Violent suppression of largely peaceful protestors who were concerned about basic rights, fair wages, political corruption, etc.
Few hundred to a few thousand were killed
Tank Man photo by Jeff Widener
perhaps the most famous photograph of all time
Today in China a person can be arrested for even mentioning the event; Chinese history textbooks ignore or downplay the event; online searches are censored (recall 1984

China today

One-party (communist) state where China’s leader Xi Jinping can rule for life

Largest companies are directly or indirectly state-controlled

Rapid economic growth in the last 30 years, which has raised hundred of millions of Chinese citizens out of poverty

Life is reasonably good for China’s citizens who agree with (or do not question) the activities of China’s government

Significant and increasing restrictions on freedom of speech, the press, and religion

Wikipedia, Facebook, and X (Twitter) are blocked

Due to a lack of cooperation and state-controlled media, it is still unclear whether COVID originated from a coronavirus research facility in Wuhan, China

Christians can only worship in state-approved churches