Ethics in the Information Age  --  Discussion Project  --  Surveillance and Data-mining

Discuss and try to agree on answers to the following questions:

1.  In 2001 Tampa police used a computer and camera system to scan the faces of all the people attending the Super Bowl.  The system then searched data-bases of criminals with outstanding warrants, looking for matches using facial recognition software.    When ‘matches’ were found, they were checked by a human operator.  This was only a test, and no one was arrested, but 19 wanted criminals were allegedly identified.  Should this technology be used to identify and arrest wanted persons?  (Everywhere?  In certain settings?)  Give reasons both for and against this practice and try to justify your answer.

2.  A March 15, 2012 article in Wired magazine provided details about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) program of warrantless wiretapping.  According to the article any person who communicates with anyone on a list of (millions of) “persons of interest” has all of their electronic communications (telephone and email) recorded and stored in NSA databases.  These are then correlated with credit card records, library records, commuter card (highway) records, Internet search records, etc., all of which is then subject to data-mining. In June of 2013 several newspapers began to publish revalations leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden that provided further details about these programs, including the fact that the vast majority of people whose information was being collected and anylyzed were ordinary American citizens and not foreign nationals.  The official purpose of the program is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks, but critics worry about the potential for abuse. (For example, government officials might use the information gathered by the program to track and persecute their political enemies a la Richard Nixon.)  Is this program a good idea?  Give reasons both for and against this practice and try to justify your answer.

3.(Adapted from Herman Tavanni, Ethics and Technology) Data-mining techniques can sometimes reveal surprising correlations between individual characteristics. Suppose, for example, that data mining revealed the following: Marketing executives making between $100,000 and $150,000 per year, who buy luxury cars and who take expensive vacations, are very likely to go into business for themselves within five years, and are very likely to declare bankruptcy soon thereafter (when their business fails). A person who fit that profile might be very credit-worthy when judged by more traditional standards (income, debt-burden, payment history), but, considered as a member of this rather odd group, they are a bad risk. Suppose a customer comes to a bank seeking a loan to buy a BMW. The individual earns $120,000 working at a marketing firm, has nearly finished paying off a $15,000 loan taken out to finance a family vacation trip to Europe, and otherwise has a very modest debt to income ratio. Would it be acceptable for a bank to turn such a person down for a loan? Give reasons both for and against this practice and try to justify your answer.

4.  Some people have proposed that it would be a good idea to routinely collect DNA samples from everyone (perhaps even at birth) and to construct a national DNA database.  Among other uses, this database would allow law enforcement agencies to identify the ‘owners’ of DNA-containing evidence found at crime scenes.  Is this a good idea? Give reasons both for and against this practice and try to justify your answer.