Abstract
Most studies on the ethics of privacy focus on what others ought to do to accommodate our interest in privacy. I focus on a related but distinct question that has attracted less attention in the literature: When, if ever, does morality require us to safeguard our own privacy? While we often have prudential reasons for safeguarding our privacy, we are also, at least sometimes, morally required to do so. I argue that we, sometimes, ought to safeguard our privacy for the sake of the possible wrongdoer, in order to prevent the possible wrongdoer from committing a morally defiling act that renders them worse off. I illustrate the variety of cases in which this duty binds us and contrast my view to some other claims in the literature which also purport to show that we sometimes have a duty to safeguard our own privacy.
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Notes
“Password” is simply a stylised example of a much more pervasive phenomenon. It is hard to exaggerate the number of situations in our current digital world in which we can act, or fail to act, to protect our privacy.
Notice that Premise 1 can also be used to show that C could have a duty to prevent A from disclosing his personal information to B in the interest of preventing B (for B’s sake) from wronging A. I do not explore this view here, however, due to my focus on duties to protect one’s own privacy. I thank Andreas Bengtson for highlighting this.
Does my argument imply some form of victim blaming? On a simple understanding of victim blaming, A—a wronged person—is victim blamed if and only if A is blamed for the fact that they were wronged. In such cases we might say that A in some (blame-implying) sense (partly or fully) “brought it on themselves” that they were wronged. This is different from the claim I make. My argument can allow that B—the person who has wronged A—bears the full amount of blame, with respect to the wrongdoing that B brought about. If A is blameworthy in some of the cases I discuss, they are blameworthy for a failure to do their part in making it less probable that the wrongdoing would occur. Thus, A is at best blameworthy with respect to a different wrongdoing that involves a failure to do what they owe B. Accordingly, since there are multiple wrongdoings at play, and A is not necessarily blamed for the fact that they are wronged, my argument does not entail victim blaming, at least based on the understanding being discussed here. However, notice that one might reasonably say that my view entails a form of (prospective) victim burdening. I thank Anne-Sofie Greisen Højlund for raising this objection.
Cf. “In particular, social-media revelations often create undue burdens for those, such as employers and university personnel, who are obligated morally to respect individuals’ privacy in their decision-making processes regarding hiring, firing, admission, dismissal, and the like.” Spurgin (2019: 3). Spurgin seems to be specifically concerned with cases in which we make it unduly burdensome for others to comply with their moral duties. By contrast, my argument highlights a different kind of burden that follows from doing wrong.
Lepora and Goodin (2015) show how one can be wrongfully related to wrongdoing in various ways, such as through collaboration or complicity. For most of the cases I shall discuss, however, their framework seems inapt for the two following reasons, which explain why I set this framework aside. First, in the cases I discuss, the person failing to protect his privacy is the person that is wronged. Of course, one might then say, for instance, that one is complicit in wronging oneself. But this raises the thorny question of self-regarding duties that I set aside for present purposes (see, for instance, Schofield (2013)). Second, maintaining that one is “wrongfully” related to the primary wrongdoing in the cases I discuss might pave the way for victim blaming, which I have expressed reservations about above (footnote 3). Instead, my argument suggests that failing to prevent wrongdoing violates a duty that does not implicate one (e.g., with regard to responsibility and blame) in the primary wrong.
There are societies in which some wrongs are not punished, and this part of my argument is not applicable in such cases; nor is it applicable in cases of wrongdoing that are never detected by third parties, as this would rule out the badness-instantiating responses.
One might still wonder why it is bad for wrongdoers to do wrong. One possibility, hinted at by Tadros (2020:233), is that our life goes better when we succeed in responding correctly to that which is worthy of such responses (i.e., our life goes better if we respond correctly to that which has value, which occurs when we value that which has value in the appropriate way). Based on this view, one might say that we respond correctly to the fact that some acts are wrong by avoiding such conduct. See also Hurka (1993).
To illustrate this point, simple consequentialism, according to which we ought to do what maximises the sum of well-being, is often found too demanding because it could require great sacrifices of individual interests for the sake of maximising the good.
Brownlee (2019) claims, in a similar spirit, that we sometimes have a duty to engage in self-defence for the sake of our attacker because the attacker’s wrongdoing is bad for the attacker (see also McMahan (2010)). I argue that a structurally similar duty seems to apply in cases concerning privacy protection.
I thank an anonymous referee for raising this concern about my argument in comparison to Tadros’.
Critics of duties of easy rescue tend to point out that it is unclear just what “little cost” amounts to in practice, and that people can be overburdened if they find themselves in many situations in which they can aid with “little cost” (since costs add up across cases). I can bracket these worries for present purposes.
Put differently, I do not claim any duty applies in cases where would-be victims are not causally important for preventing the creation of opportunities for wrongdoing. For instance, when companies processing our data fail to protect it adequately, or others share our data with possible wrongdoers against our will.
An anonymous referee points out, correctly to my mind, that duties of easy rescue befalling individuals typically only apply in cases where grave harm can be prevented at little cost. To accommodate this, we might say that my argument is only applicable in cases where the information is likely to be abused to do grave wrongs (either as a function of the harm they create or for other reasons unrelated to harm), since such wrongs would be very bad for wrongdoers. However, such grave wrongs seem commonplace in the digital domain. If a hacker looks at, or even disclose publicly, private videos or photos (nude photographs, for instance) non-consensually, this strikes me as a potentially grave wrong. And notice that such wrongs need not necessarily derive their wrongfulness from their harmfulness. Even if the victim never realizes that their private information was accessed, or even shared publicly, this may nevertheless amount to a grave violation of their privacy rights which explains the graveness of the wrongdoing.
I thank the referee for pressing me to detail this part of my argument.
I thank an anonymous referee for pointing out this difference between my view and Tadros’.
I thank an anonymous referee for raising this challenge.
As is well-known from the literature on discrimination, people can also sometimes be led to disadvantage others wrongfully, even though the processes that led one to act in these ways are subconscious (cf. Lippert-Rasmussen 2014). For instance in cases of so-called wrongful indirect discrimination (also known as “disparate impact” discrimination). In such scenarios, keeping the information that motivates such wrongdoing concealed and thereby private will help to prevent such wrongs.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for helping me sharpen this objection.
I thank an anonymous referee for encouraging me to discuss this objection.
Similarly, one may also object to my argument because it sounds odd that wrongdoers should be in a position to assert their rights vis-à-vis those who are required to protect their own privacy: “You failed to protect your privacy, and I therefore abused your personal information, and now you owe me some kind of compensation or an apology, even though I wronged you”. In response, I want to concede that this response sounds awkward, but I think it can be readily explained without threatening my argument. First, notice that although I claim that there is a duty, it does not follow that wrongdoers have a corresponding right (cf. Cornell (2015)). Second, I think the awkwardness can be explained by the fact that wrongdoers lack the standing required to blame those who do not protect their privacy or even assert a claim that they do because they themselves make it true that wrongdoing occurs. But, importantly, questions about conversational standing and what moral duties exist come somewhat apart: It might be true that there exists a moral duty, even though some person is in no position to assert it in conversation (cf. Frick (2020)). I thank Didde Boisen Andersen for raising this concern.
For an excellent and general discussion of what duties we have when others fail to do their part, see Tadros (2016b).
One might—reasonably to my mind—object to the comparison by saying that if the would-be victim lacks the duty I discuss here, it is more likely that he would nevertheless preserve his own privacy out of prudence and therefore not likely be wronged. While I think it is likely that would-be victims would be inclined to preserve their privacy even if they lacked the duty I discuss here, it is not clear how this consideration could figure in an argument to the effect that this duty is unfair. If what people would do out of prudential concern is at all relevant to the argument at hand, which I am not sure is the case, it seems that it should count as a reason to find the duty I discuss here acceptable because it aligns with prudential standards.
This response owes much to Tadros (2016b: 114-115).
For an even stronger conclusion, see Stemplowska (2016: 597) “if the costs remain otherwise reasonable, then the mere fact of unfairness cannot determine whether a consideration is or is not an enforceable duty.”
It is not that one cannot make this objection, but I believe that I have addressed this concern previously in the paper (Sect. 2) in explaining why we should think that we owe it to wrongdoers to aid them in avoiding wrongdoing. Additionally, I believe that I have shown why we cannot only, due to a concern with fairness, task the state with aiding wrongdoers in avoiding wrongdoing.
Perhaps this also requires that the costs of doing so are not too high. Plausibly to my mind, if the costs of doing so are too high, protagonists are not required to save the villain, but might instead choose to do so, as a matter of supererogation.
Perhaps such an implication could be generated from responsibility-sensitive accounts of justice, such as the position known as luck egalitarianism.
This theme is developed more generally in Anderson (1999) as a response to the alleged counter-intuitiveness (or ‘harshness’) of luck egalitarian accounts of justice.
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Acknowledgements
I thank Didde Boisen Andersen, Andreas Bengtson, Axel Gosseries, Anne-Sofie Greisen Højlund, Simon Laumann Jørgensen, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Søren Flinch Midtgaard, and Tom Parr for helpful comments on previous versions of this manuscript. I also thank two anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions significantly improved the paper.
Funding
Part of the work on this article were generously supported by a Carlsberg Foundation Young Researcher Fellowship Grant awarded to Jens Christian Bjerring (grant number CF20-0257).
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Munch, L.A. Digital Self-Defence: Why you Ought to Preserve Your Privacy for the Sake of Wrongdoers. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 25, 233–248 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-022-10269-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-022-10269-w