The ethics of privacy in research and design: Principles, practices, and potential

Abstract

The contexts of sociotechnical privacy have evolved significantly in 50 years, with correlate shifts in the norms, values, and ethical concerns in research and design. We examine these eras of privacy from an ethics perspective, arguing that as contexts expand from the individual, to internet, interdependence, intelligences, and artificiality, they also reframe the audience or stakeholder roles present and broaden the field of ethical concerns. We discuss these ethical issues and introduce a principlist framework to guide ethical decision-making, articulating a strategy by which principles are reflexively applied in the decision-making process, informed by the rich interface of epistemic and ethical values. Next, we discuss specific challenges to privacy presented by emerging technologies such as biometric identification systems, autonomous vehicles, predictive algorithms, deepfake technologies, and public health surveillance and examine these challenges around five ethical principles: autonomy, just ice, non-maleficence, beneficence, and explicability. Finally, we connect the theoretical and applied to the practical to briefly identify law, regulation, and soft law resources-including technical standards, codes of conduct, curricular programs, and statements of principles-that can provide actionable guidance and rules for professional conduct and technological development, codifying the reasoning outcomes of ethics.