Single Review on past events

Are we willing to give up privacy in favor of common goods? – A question that Margit Sutrop, Professor for Practical Philosophy at the University of Tartu in Estonia, deals with not only in her research, but also as ethics expert for international organizations. The topic is of highest interest as behavior detection technologies are currently being developed to monitor and manage malintents and abnormal behavior from a distance in order to prevent terrorism and criminal attacks.

The main problem concerns the dilemma between privacy and security, resp. between individual and public interests. Privacy is an important value, but another value – security – seems to be increasingly in danger, and its defense appears to demand significant curbing of privacy.

Margit Sutrop pointed out that liberal individualism, with its conceptual base of autonomy, dignity, and privacy, enjoyed a long period of dominance in bioethics and research ethics since the 1970s, but it has increasingly come under attack from ideologies promoting a more salient role for concepts of solidarity, community, and public interest. In the context of research ethics, it has been argued that principles of individual autonomy, informed consent, and privacy can seriously hamper medical research that aims to further the common good.  While technologies for the gathering and analysis of information have evolved rapidly, strict regulations protecting individual rights have obstructed the use of that information. For example, it has been pointed out that epidemiological research has been impeded by the impossibility of collecting statistical data without a subject’s informed consent.  In relation to biobanks, it is widely believed that restrictions requiring new informed consent on the re-use of biological samples and data severely limit research for the common good/public interest.  While in genomic research an attempt is still made to balance individual rights and common good, in the fields of public health and security people are more reluctant to allow paternalistic interferences in individual autonomy.

Margit Sutrop proved that capturing biometric features without informing people about the processing of their personal data raises serious ethical concerns. “My study of a range of European projects of second generation biometrics, particularly of intelligent information system supporting observation, searching and detection for security of citizens in urban environments (INDECT) and Automatic Detection of Abnormal Behavior and Threats in crowded Spaces (ADABTS), shows that violation of privacy will put several other values in jeopardy. I argue that since privacy is in functional relationship with other values such as autonomy, freedom, human dignity, one should take this into account when considering violations of privacy for protecting our security. If indeed in specific situations it is necessary to restrict our privacy, thoughtful consideration must be given to other ways of securing the values that are essential of our liberal democratic society”.

She further argued that the problem is that what is being endangered is not really privacy alone: “Since privacy supports a range of other values, limitations on privacy can also place these other values at risk. Privacy promotes liberty, autonomy, selfhood, and human relations, and furthers the existence of a free society. Therefore, in a democratic state one should continually be posing the question, what is the price of protecting security? Are we not paying too high a price to defend ourselves against hypothetical dangers”?

So the question is: What could we do in order to enhance security on the one hand and maintain privacy on the other hand? According to the ethics expert it is usually suggested that privacy can be maintained by holding on to the requirement of informed consent and notification for the processing of the individual’s data. The failure to honor autonomy is expressed by the failure to obtain individual consent. 

“In the case of behavior detection technology, it is not deemed possible to implement individual informed consent. It is understandable that the procedures of informed consent are not implemented in contexts of national security, defense, and law enforcement. However, this does not mean that one should not respect people`s autonomy. Granted, one really cannot make the implementation of safety measures voluntary, nor ask each individual person for consent before collecting data. But it is still possible to inform people of the collection and processing of the data, as well as of the purpose of these activities; thus one offers an opportunity for control and a measure of standing up for one`s rights.  In addition, so-called public consent should be solicited in the use of technology. Even in the case of technologies where people are not aware of being under surveillance, their autonomy can be respected by allowing them, in other contexts, to participate in public discussion concerning the benefits and losses accompanying the implementation of technology, and in decision-making about whether or not such technology should be adopted”.

Prof. Margit Sutrop got her PhD in philosophy from the University of Konstanz in 1997 with the thesis “Fiction and Imagination. The anthropological function of literature”. After that she worked for several years in Konstanz in the SFB project “Literature and Anthropology”. In 2000 she got the Chair for Practical Philosophy at the University of Tartu in Estonia, where she is currently also Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy. In Tartu she founded an Interdisciplinary Centre for Ethics which joins different faculties. Since 2004 she works as an ethics expert for the European Commission and is also a member of the International Advisory Board of the University of Konstanz. Margit Sutrop was in Konstanz in April 2015 to prepare the guidelines for dealing with freedom of research at the University of Konstanz. Her current research interests comprise moral and political philosophy, bioethics, and ethics of new technologies, philosophy of education, and aesthetics. She has led several EU projects on applied ethics, and currently leads a big research project on disagreements.