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Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label National Security. Show all posts
Showing posts with label National Security. Show all posts

Friday, November 8, 2019

Privacy is a collective concern

Carissa Veliz
newstatesman.com
Originally published 22 OCT 2019

People often give a personal explanation of whether they protect the privacy of their data. Those who don’t care much about privacy might say that they have nothing to hide. Those who do worry about it might say that keeping their personal data safe protects them from being harmed by hackers or unscrupulous companies. Both positions assume that caring about and protecting one’s privacy is a personal matter. This is a common misunderstanding.

It’s easy to assume that because some data is “personal”, protecting it is a private matter. But privacy is both a personal and a collective affair, because data is rarely used on an individual basis.

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Because we are intertwined in ways that make us vulnerable to each other, we are responsible for each other’s privacy. I might, for instance, be extremely careful with my phone number and physical address. But if you have me as a contact in your mobile phone and then give access to companies to that phone, my privacy will be at risk regardless of the precautions I have taken. This is why you shouldn’t store more sensitive data than necessary in your address book, post photos of others without their permission, or even expose your own privacy unnecessarily. When you expose information about yourself, you are almost always exposing information about others.

The info is here.

Sunday, March 25, 2018

Did Iraq Ever Become A Just War?

Matt Peterson
The Atlantic
Originally posted March 24, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

There’s a broader sense of moral confusion about the conduct of America’s wars. In Iraq, what started as a war of choice came to resemble much more a war of necessity. Can a war that started unjustly ever become righteous? Or does the stain permanently taint anything that comes after it?

The answers to these questions come from the school of philosophy called “just war” theory, which tries to explain whether and when war is permissible, and under what circumstances. It offers two big ways to think about the justice of war. One is whether it’s appropriate to go to war in the first place. Take North Korea, for example. Is there a cause worth killing thousands—millions—of North and South Korean civilians over? Invoking “national security” isn’t enough to make a war just. Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons pose an obvious threat to South Korea, Japan, and the United States. But that alone doesn’t make war an acceptable choice, given the lives at stake. The ethics of war require the public to assess how certain it is that innocents will be killed if the military doesn’t act (Will Kim really use his nukes offensively?), whether there’s any way to remove the threat without violence (Has diplomacy been exhausted?), and whether the scale of the deaths that would come from intervention is truly in line with the danger war is meant to avert (If the peninsula has to be burned down to be saved, is it really worth it?)—among other considerations.

The other questions to ask are about the nature of the combat. Are soldiers taking care to target only North Korea’s military? Once the decision has been made that Kim’s nuclear weapons pose an imminent threat, hypothetically, that still wouldn’t make it acceptable to firebomb Pyongyang to turn the population against him. Similarly, American forces could not, say, blow up a bus full of children just because one of Kim’s generals was trying to escape on it.

The article is here.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Gaslighting, betrayal and the boogeyman: Personal reflections on the American Psychological Association, PENS and the involvement of psychologists in torture

Nina Thomas
International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies

Abstract

The American Psychological Association's (APA's) sanctioning psychologists' involvement in “enhanced interrogations,” aka torture, authorized by the closely parsed re-interpretation of relevant law by the Bush administration, has roiled the association since it appointed a task force in 2005. The Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) task force, its composition, methods and outcomes have brought public shame to the profession, the association and its members. Having served on the task force and been involved in the aftermath, I offer reflections on my role to provide an insider's look at the struggle I experienced over loyalty to principle, profession, colleagues, and the association. Situating what occurred in the course of the PENS process and its aftermath within the framework of Freyd's and her collaborators ‘theory of “betrayal trauma,” in particular “institutional trauma,” I suggest that others too share similar feelings of profound betrayal by an organization with which so many of us have been identified over the course of many years. I explore the ways in which attachments have been challenged and undermined by what occurred. Among the questions I have grappled with are: Was I the betrayed or betrayer, or both? How can similar self-reflection usefully be undertaken both by the association itself and other members about their actions or inactions?

The article is here.

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Ethics office says it wasn’t consulted about Ivanka Trump job

CNN Wire
Originally published May 2, 2017

The White House brought Ivanka Trump on as an adviser without consulting the Office of Government Ethics, the ethics office says.

The New York Times and Politico reported March 20 that the president’s older daughter was working out of a West Wing office. A White House official told CNN that she would get a security clearance but would not be considered a government employee.

The next day, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer assured reporters that Ivanka Trump would follow the ethics restrictions that apply to federal employees. He said she was acting “in consultation with the Office of Government Ethics.”

But the ethics office, in a letter made public Monday, said it was not consulted. Director Walter Shaub said he reached out to the White House and to Ivanka Trump’s lawyer on March 24 to tell them that Ivanka Trump should be considered a federal employee, subject to those rules.

Sunday, August 9, 2015

What, exactly, does yesterday’s APA resolution prohibit?

By Marty Lederman
Just Security
Originally posted August 8, 2015

By an overwhelming vote of 156-1 (with seven abstentions and one recusal)–so lopsided that it stunned even its proponents–the American Psychological Association’s Council of Representatives yesterday approved a resolution that the APA describes as “prohibit[ing] psychologists from participating in national security interrogations.”

What does Approved Resolution No. 23B do, exactly?  As I read it, it does three principal things, in ascending order of importance:

1.  It reaffirms an existing APA ethical prohibition that psychologists “may not engage directly or indirectly in any act of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment,” a prohibition that “applies to all persons (including foreign detainees) wherever they may be held”; and it “clarifies” that “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” (CIDTP) should be understood not (or not only) as that term is defined in the U.S. Senate’s understandings of, and reservations to, the Convention Against Torture, but instead in accord with the broadest understanding of CIDTP adopted by any international legal body at the relevant time:  the definition “continues to evolve with international legal understandings of this term.”

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3.  Finally, and most significantly, the Resolution establishes a new prohibition that “psychologists shall not conduct, supervise, be in the presence of, or otherwise assist any national security interrogations for any military or intelligence entities, including private contractors working on their behalf, nor advise on conditions of confinement insofar as these might facilitate such an interrogation.”

The entire article is here.

Friday, August 7, 2015

Psychologists Approve Ban on Role in National Security Interrogations

By James Risen
The New York Times
Originally posted August 7, 2015

The American Psychological Association on Friday overwhelmingly approved a new ban on any involvement by psychologists in national security interrogations conducted by the United States government, even noncoercive interrogations now conducted by the Obama administration.

The council of representatives of the organization, the nation’s largest professional association of psychologists, voted to impose the ban at its annual meeting here.

The vote followed an emotional debate in which several members said the ban was needed to restore the organization’s reputation in the wake of a scathing independent investigation ordered by the A.P.A.’s board.

The entire article is here.

Friday, July 24, 2015

Use of force: the American public and the ethics of war

By Scott D. Sagan and Benjamin A. Valentino
Opendemocracy.net
Originally published July 2, 2015

The philosophical and legal doctrine known collectively as “just war theory” has been the prime focus of scholarly debate about the ethics of war in the West for hundreds of years. It also provides the basis for most extant international humanitarian law governing the conduct of war and has directly influenced the US military’s official targeting doctrine.

But to what extent are the American public’s views on the use of force consistent with just war doctrine’s ethical principles? Understanding the extent to which the public has internalized these principles provides insights into how warfare is likely to be practiced in the real world because, at least in democratic states, the public exerts an important influence over government policies.

The entire article is here.

Monday, July 13, 2015

How national security gave birth to bioethics

By Jonathan D. Moreno
The Conversation
Originally posted June 8, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

Ironically, while the experiments in Guatemala were going on in the late 1940s, three American judges were hearing the arguments in a war crimes trial in Germany. Twenty-three Nazi doctors and bureaucrats were accused of horrific experiments on people in concentration camps.

The judges decided they needed to make the rules around human experiments clear, so as part of their decision they wrote what has come to be known as the Nuremberg Code. The code states that “the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”

The Guatemala experiments clearly violated that code. President Obama’s commission found that the US public health officials knew what they were doing was unethical, so they kept it quiet. Years later, one of those doctors had a key role in the infamous syphilis experiments in Tuskegee, Alabama that studied the progression of untreated syphilis. None of the 600 men enrolled in the experiments was told if he had syphilis or not. No one with the disease was offered penicillin, the treatment of choice for syphilis. The 40-year experiment finally ended in 1972.

The entire article is here.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

The Real Privacy Problem

As Web companies and government agencies analyze ever more information about our lives, it’s tempting to respond by passing new privacy laws or creating mechanisms that pay us for our data. Instead, we need a civic solution, because democracy is at risk.

By Evgeny Morozov on October 22, 2013
MIT Technology Review

Here is an excerpt:

First, let’s address the symptoms of our current malaise. Yes, the commercial interests of technology companies and the policy interests of government agencies have converged: both are interested in the collection and rapid analysis of user data. Google and Facebook are compelled to collect ever more data to boost the effectiveness of the ads they sell. Government agencies need the same data—they can collect it either on their own or in coöperation with technology companies—to pursue their own programs.

Many of those programs deal with national security. But such data can be used in many other ways that also undermine privacy. The Italian government, for example, is using a tool called the redditometro, or income meter, which analyzes receipts and spending patterns to flag people who spend more than they claim in income as potential tax cheaters. Once mobile payments replace a large percentage of cash transactions—with Google and Facebook as intermediaries—the data collected by these companies will be indispensable to tax collectors. Likewise, legal academics are busy exploring how data mining can be used to craft contracts or wills tailored to the personalities, characteristics, and past behavior of individual citizens, boosting efficiency and reducing malpractice.

The updated story is here.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

What happens to whistleblowers?

By David Nather
Politico
Originally published June 13, 2013

Edward Snowden might want to talk to a slew of recent national security leakers who learned a lesson the hard way: whistleblowing comes at a price.

Thomas Tamm, the DOJ attorney who told the New York Times about the National Security Agency’s surveillance program in 2004, struggled to stay employed for the five years he was under federal investigation.

And he was one of the lucky ones. Thomas Drake, a former National Security Agency official who helped expose a wasteful NSA surveillance program without privacy protections, is working in an Apple store.

And Matt Diaz, the Navy lawyer who secretly sent a list of Guantanamo Bay prisoners to a New York civil rights firm, was disbarred and now does non-legal work for the Bronx public defender’s office.

Snowden is still on the run, but he is expected to be extradited to the United States, eventually, and most likely charged with a crime.

If Snowden’s life turns out like other national security whistleblowers, his life will never be the same — leaving him to grapple with huge legal bills, poor job prospects, and a notoriety that will never really go away.

The entire story is here.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Morality and ethics - the 'next big thing' for IT suppliers

By Brian Glick
Computer Weekly Editor's Blog
Originally published on June 10, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

But with that greater influence, comes greater responsibility. It is inevitable there would be a backlash, and that backlash is well and truly underway.

IT was at the heart of the global boom in financial services. Today it stands accused of enabling the behaviours of bankers that crippled Western economies.

Facebook and social media have transformed personal communications, enabled new communities and improved information sharing for all. But at what cost for privacy of our personal information.

Google and Amazon have made it easy to find information, to buy quickly and cheaply, opening up new knowledge and commercial opportunities. And they are pilloried as arrogant tax avoiders.

But the biggest example of the dark side of technology so far is dominating front pages and web pages alike around the world - the US National Security Agency (NSA) monitoring of electronic communications, and the allegations of complicity on the part of the global internet giants that provide that data.

Look at all the great things the web allows us to do - and look at how easy that makes it to create a surveillance society. As someone said recently, if you could give George Orwell one Tweet from beyond the grave, he would write: "I told you so #Prism".

This backlash is an inevitable stage in the progress of technology and the digital revolution, but of course it presents challenges on a scale that the world has never before had to comprehend.

The entire blog post is here.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Silencing the Whistle-Blowers

By EYAL PRESS
The New York Times - OpEd
Published: May 27, 2013

LAST week Pfc. Bradley Manning returned to court for his final pretrial hearing in the WikiLeaks case, an appearance that has renewed debate about how to balance the imperatives of national security against the rights of whistle-blowers.

But while Private Manning’s ordeal has received exhaustive news coverage, it may ultimately have a less profound bearing on this tension than a barely noticed memo quietly released by the Obama administration earlier this year.

Issued on Jan. 25, the memo instructs the director of national intelligence and the Office of Personnel Management to establish standards that would give federal agencies the power to fire employees, without appeal, deemed ineligible to hold “noncritical sensitive” jobs. It means giving them immense power to bypass civil service law, which is the foundation for all whistle-blower rights.

The administration claims that the order will simply enable these agencies to determine which jobs qualify as “sensitive.” But the proposed rules are exceptionally vague, defining such jobs as any that could have “a material adverse impact” on national security — including police, customs and immigration positions.

If the new rules are put in place, national security could soon be invoked to deny civil servants like Franz Gayl the right to defend themselves when subjected to retaliation. Back in 2010, Mr. Gayl was accused of engaging in a pattern of “intentional misconduct” and suspended from his job. A Marine Corps adviser who had been deployed to Iraq in 2006, Mr. Gayl claimed he was being punished for publicly disclosing that Pentagon bureaucrats had ignored battlefield requests for mine-resistant armored vehicles, at a time when roadside bombs were killing and maiming soldiers.

The entire story is here.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Ethical Issues Related to APA’s 2005 Task Force Report on Psychological Ethics and National Security

On February 29, 2012, I posted an announcement pertaining to a new, APA member-initiated task force related to psychologists’ involvement in national security settings.

There is another group of psychologists involved in trying to shape APA policy on the ethics of psychlogists pertaining to national security: The Coalition for an Ethical Psychology.  They have called for an annulment of APA’s 2005 Task Force Report on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS Report).

To be as helpful, transparent, and comprehensive as possible, I posted the APA's PENS report and the Background Statement on Annulment of the APA's PENS Report from The Coalition for an Ethical Psychology in the Articles and Papers section of this site.

Readers are referred to these documents in order to have a deeper and more thorough understanding of the ethical issues related to this ongoing controversy.

John Gavazzi, PsyD ABPP
Psychologist
Board Certified in Clinical Psychology
Editor, Ethics Education and Psychology Site 

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Announcing New APA Member-Initiated Task Force to Reconcile Policies Related to Psychologists’ Involvement in National Security Settings

Dear Colleagues,

Many of you are aware of the petition to annul the 2005 Report of the APA Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (the PENS report) being circulated on behalf of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology.  This petition highlights how the PENS report (which is now out of date in important respects) is still being viewed at times as the sole or primary APA policy related to the role of psychologists in national security settings.  Yet, there are five other relevant APA Council resolutions focused on torture, ethics, detainee welfare, and interrogation dating back to 1985, along with the significant membership petition resolution in 2008 and the important changes to Standards 1.02 and 1.03 of the APA Ethics Code in 2010.

A membership-driven initiative has arisen in response to the concerns raised by the coalition.  Several leaders of Division 48 (Peace Psychology) have joined forces with a second group of APA members who represent a broad range of backgrounds and perspectives and who likewise agree that APA needs to address concerns regarding the PENS report.  Together, these two groups have formed the APA Member-Initiated Task Force to Reconcile Policies Related to Psychologists’ Involvement in National Security Settings.  The goal of this task force is to develop a clear, comprehensive policy statement that consolidates existing APA policies into a unified, consistent document.  This consolidated policy will replace the PENS report, along with other Council resolutions focused on national security settings, but will not replace the broader 2006 Council Resolution Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the membership petition resolution, or the amendments to the Ethics Code, all of which will remain intact as APA policy.

Among its provisions, the consolidated policy document will include the following principles drawn from existing APA policies: 1) torture is always a violation of human rights and psychologists’ professional ethics; 2) psychologists are always prohibited from engaging in torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; 3) abusive interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding and sensory deprivation, constitute torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment and are always prohibited; 4) the role of psychologists in unlawful detention settings is limited to working on behalf of detainees or providing treatment for military personnel; and 5) there is no defense to a violation of human rights under the APA Ethics Code.

As chair of this new task force, I am pleased to provide you with the attached announcement of our goal, rationale, membership, and work plan.  This statement has also been provided to the APA Board of Directors and Council of Representatives.  We welcome its wide dissemination.

Sincerely,

Linda M. Woolf

Policy Task Force Announcement