Declaration of Privacy

Thank you @micheleminno for introducing us to Luciano Floridi, truly one of the greatest experts on technology ethics.

In his philosophies, full privacy for all is not a desirable goal state. He gives the example of terrorists wanting privacy. Also, too much privacy and we miss out not just on connecting with others, but also on many of the benefits of being connected to the ever growing network of data. For example in the realm of health we can already be telling people they have a high chance of developing some disease or having some kind of accident, but due to our sense of caution and privacy we’re currently not warning people and they’re getting sick and worse. Lack of preventative action due to being overly cautious about privacy can be just as bad ethically as doing nothing when somebody needs help or guidance in order to survive.

Thank you also @borja for your comments about semantics. You’re right that data we create is a part of us, that it belongs to us like our names and our bodies belong to us and are a part of us.

We live in a world where we need to improve how we handle data however. To that end perhaps we should scrap the idea of “privacy” as the end of all ends and look for more appropriate terminology to express our desired final goal, which as I have stated in “Reflections on the community’s Mission Statement” could be “To Connect Ethics and Technology to Create a Better World”.

To that end, we could change the title to something such as “Declaration of Technology Rights” or even style it as a declaration of philosophical sovereignty of a new world, “Declaration to Unite Ethics and Technology for the Creation of a Better World”.