The following is a discussion essay written for my Ethical Issues in Computing class at St. John’s University. Instructed by Dr. Noreen Herzfeld.
Imagine, for a moment, a city like New York decides to adopt a brand new technological infrastructure by scattering millions upon millions of minuscule microelectro-mechanical systems throughout the streets of the city limits. This so-called “smartdust” is allowed to go where the wind may blow it, where the shoes may kick it, and where the wheels may fling it all for the basic idea of collecting data and transmitting it amongst its brethren. “What is the point?” you may ask, and the point is, you will be told, for increased convenience and safety for everyone within the city! For example, the weather can be accurately tracked and relayed throughout the entire city at all times, and real-time traffic updates for every road, parking lot and ally can the broadcast 24/7. City and government officials can easily gain access to their respectively secured city and government buildings because the smartdust can authenticate who they are by the signal that their ID cards emit in their suit coats. Business-men and -women working in large office buildings can get into an elevator and be immediately taken to the floor on which their cubicle resides because the smartdust that was trudged in from outside identified the employees and informed the elevator of their likely destination. Data being sent and received from your cell phone—even conversations!—can be analyzed so that products and services relevant to your activities and discussions can be displayed on the billboard across the street. As you commute throughout the city, your location is constantly observed and remembered to not only later give you suggestions for optimized routes to work (as well as a tasty place to eat on the way) but to be scrutinized daily as the local law enforcement uses the collected data to solve ongoing cases as well as predict new crimes. Street cameras can be instructed to use the data to monitor anyone the system recognizes as suspicious. It doesn’t take long before everyone is treated as a suspect to a crime that hasn’t happened yet, and it doesn’t take the general public long to catch on, either. Suddenly, the people who work and live in the city regress to a point at which their actions are based solely on the worry of being recognized by the system as “suspicious” and the potential punishments that follow. However, the crime rate in the city plummets, and the city’s economy seems to be on the rise. Now, this is where my anecdote ends and the conversation begins; what might have started out being an innocent tool to increase convenience and safety, ultimately turned into a tool that redefined the moral behavior of the entire city. Keeping this a discussion about moral behavior and development (and not about privacy rights, etc.), the question I want this scenario to invoke is: Even though the city began to display morality, is there any real moral development going on? Is it even important that personal moral development takes place so long as there is an appearance of morality? I, for one, feel very strongly that personal moral development is an integral part of intellectual development as a whole. In fact, I argue that the use of surveillance to enforce morality stunts and even regresses the moral development of those under enforcement.
According to Kohlberg’s theory, there are six stages of moral development. The lowest stages are grouped into a “pre-conventional” category in which people make moral decisions based on selfish, individualistic concerns. The next group of stages is labeled as “conventional” in which people tend to think more of society and doing good to be accepted into it. Finally, there are the “post-conventional” stages in which societal/cultural biases and laws are replaced with concerns for rights and true principled conscience. Ideally, I believe that everyone should aspire to reach those highest levels of moral development. As with most cases of developed greatness, however, it requires effort, motivation, and patience to reach it, and because the majority of society only naturally makes it to the conventional level, it is seen by some that forms of surveillance need to be implemented in order to protect others from those who make poor moral decisions (“pre-conventional”). As innocent as these intentions may be, too much surveillance then actually takes away the societal need for an individual’s moral development and instead forces most back into the pre-conventional level in which they either act solely out of fear of punishment or desire for reward. Take, for example, the speed limit example from Emrys Westacott. By the end of the scenario, all vehicles were simply forced to remain within all speed limits. While this does indeed decrease the crime of speeding and give the appearance of moral actions, there actually isn’t a single purposeful moral action being made. Rather, everyone’s moral development digresses as their vehicle (and those restricting it) does all the moral decision-making for them.
This is significant because if all moral decisions came from an internal motivation to be moral for the sake of being moral (“…set fire to heaven and put out the fires of hell so that the lovers of God will love God only for himself and not out of hopes for heaven or fear of hell.” Rabia Basri), there would be no need for surveillance at all! Something as juvenile as shoplifting would simply not happen if the potential thieves had an internal drive to morally respect their local business. In a slightly different context, this entire concept can also be applied to the digital world of the Internet. Regardless of the animosity that the Internet can provide, if web surfers had an internal desire to participate in all that is the Internet through moral actions, characters like “the troll” would not make appearances, bloggers and writers of all kinds would take it upon themselves to post meaningful content, and an environment for massive growth of all forms of intellectual development will naturally develop. The introduction of surveillance, however, takes away the opportunity to develop the internal responsibility to do good for the sake of doing good.
Now, this does not go to say that surveillance has done nothing but harm for as long as it’s been used. It would be utterly unfair, naïve, and insensitive of me to ignore the fact that surveillance has indeed saved lives and brought some justice to the deserved. However, what should be stressed is that there is a time and a place, as they say, and there needs to be a clear, defined distinction in order to maintain an environment that can promote the growth of individual moral development—not stunt or regress it.
Reflecting upon the argument made, I realize that it is a fairly libertarian stance on the issue. That being said, there are some utilitarian flavors mixed in as well. Libertarians say that everyone has the right to do as they please so long as they do not impede upon the ability and rights of others to do the same, and I believe that a favorable libertarian argument could be made for every scenario given throughout this essay. When it comes to utilitarians, I think that they would generally see the use of surveillance as a quicker solution for the “greater good” due to the effect of a forced moral appearance. That being said, I would argue that lack of surveillance for the promotion and encouragement of individual moral development—with aspirations for reaching post-conventional levels—is ultimately for the “greatest good” even if it isn’t the quick and easy solution. If an internal desire to make moral decisions somehow sprouted and grew within the hearts of every human being on Earth, there would be little need for surveillance or otherwise; civilization would indeed be on a direct path to being the best it can possibly be which is essentially what life should be about in the first place.
Isaiah Schultz
September 23, 2011
September 23, 2011
