Not as much reading this week, largely because I had already read several of the suggested resources for this unit in previous weeks! Which probably says something about how I approach social technology, all in all. The phrase “eyes wide open” comes to mind.
Honestly, I’ve been navigating the issue of privacy for a long time, including the moral and ethical issues involved. I know that “privacy” can be a double-edged sword. I run a Tor relay node, and I’ve taken a stab at running exit nodes in the past. Some would ask “Why??? Isn’t that the dark web, where all the criminals and drug lords are?” Except, as with so many things, it’s more than that. The Tor network is also the largest (and one of the most durable) censorship-resistant networks on the planet. When users in China or Iran want to bypass the content restrictions placed upon their network access, Tor is one of the ways they can reach the outside world.
The tradeoff for allowing people more freedom is that more harms will result. On balance, I believe that allowing people to bypass content controls is the greater benefit, because the alternate path of allowing governments and corporations to dictate what we are “permitted” to see and learn would eventually extinguish all free thought. Further, controls affect the honest people first–it’s not criminals and ne’er-do-wells who are immediately curtailed. And for those who say they have nothing to hide: that’s good to hear; now may I please have your name, social insurance number, date of birth, and mother’s maiden name? The truth of the matter is, we all have some information that we fully expect to keep private, hidden from those who we judge have no need to know.
So in some ways, this unit was easier to navigate for me, if only because I’ve been actively working in and thinking about this material for easily 15+ years. But revisiting highly negative experiences is never easy.
A lot of my thinking is that all the ethical questions end up coming down to individual decisions. Whom do you trust? You may never know what their decision would be… but can you at least trust that they will think deeply about it and have an informed moral framework that they will try to employ while balancing the various goods and harms for those affected?
The most difficult thing for me is finding the people whom I would trust to have those conditions in operation. I’m a big believer in the idea that those who demand your trust are not worthy of it. I can offer myself for service; I can’t demand it. Further, if I am to be worthy of trust, I cannot demand that I be the only person holding the keys. There has to be more than one person who can intervene, because that’s just good system design. A single “trusted” person is a single point of failure at higher risk of attack or subversion.
As an admin, I also believe strongly in a modified version of the phrase “Power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” My modification is that it’s not the possession of power that corrupts, but the usage of power. If I hold all the keys but never permit myself to use them, then I am not corrupted. But every time that power must be used, no matter how good the usage was, it corrupts the soul a little bit. The taste of power employed is, for many people, an extremely addicting feeling. I am not immune to this. My goal in any sort of admin situation is to avoid having to use the tools of power, because if ever I start to view power as a right or an entitlement, then I am no longer fit to be an admin.
If more people held to such an approach, informed themselves about the ethical dilemmas involved, and committed to getting involved and sharing the load (in any community!)… would the outcome not be a greater use of ethical principles in society? Greater understanding of each other’s struggles in determining the best course of action, and therefore more tolerance towards honest leadership? Would that not be an overall benefit?
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