Apple: Ethics vs. F.B.I
The right of personhood, intimacy, secrecy, limited access to the self and control over information have been said to be the definition of privacy in the past four decades. Nevertheless, the definition of privacy has confirmed to be quite difficult and complicated. Several analysts conveyed a huge difficulty in precisely defining privacy (Solove, 2011, p. 42).
Privacy is essential in freedom, autonomy and self-discrimination for several reasons. First, privacy in freedom falls in the protectiveness of one’s personal ideologies such as political orientations, education and marriage. It is also about keeping people safe from interferences regarding their important decisions (Tayani, 2008, p. 135). Second, autonomy according to Cohen is crucial in privacy because of just and fair treatments inside the society. Finally, and according to the class slides, self-discrimination is essential in privacy as well owing to the fact that its absence would lead advertisers to deliver ads that can tailor prices for individual consumers in ways that maximize the revenue extracted from each purchaser.
According to our class discussion, smart phones are putting these values under pressure and increase our vulnerability to illegitimate intrusions of our privacy, harassment, abuse, identity theft or surveillance or by enabling others to gain insights into our personal lives we are not aware of or that we may not want to share. When these data trackers are gaining insights into our personal lives, they start spamming people’s social media accounts by advertisements that might sound judgmental because data trackers are assuming their interests according to our search history.
On December 2, 2015, a terroristic attack occurred in San Bernardino which led to the death of 14 people (Kharpal, 2016). The gunman, Syed Farook, left an iPhone 5c behind; nevertheless, Apple company refused to help the FBI unlock Farook’s phone for ethical reasons. Apple considered the access to personal information as a severe breach of trust and a violation of their obligations towards customers (Apuzzo, 2016).
In this particular case, Apple should have measured the harm based on the utilitarian theory, for the harm should have been calculated according to how many people are getting injured. It is the people versus Farook. Therefore, Apple should have unlocked the iPhone.
Another example that discusses Apple and privacy is the case of the Italian father, Leonardo Fabbretti, who asked Apple to unlock his deceased son’s iPhone to retrieve the photographs stored on it (Father asks Apple head Tim Cook to unblock dead son’s iPhone, 2016). Fabbretti threatened Apple company by making a charitable donation in Ethiopia or set up a grant for researchers looking into the issues surrounding privacy (Father asks Apple head Tim Cook to unblock dead son’s iPhone, 2016).
This paradigm is different than Farook’s owing to the fact there is no harm if the iPhone was not unlocked. On the contrary, Dama, Fabbretti’s son, might have storage he does not want his father to have access to. Apple here have taken the right decision by not letting access to the father no matter how desperate his situation was.
Privacy’s purpose is essentially to protect users’ personal life, but it varies from a case to another according to the harm measurement.
References
Apuzzo, M. (2016, February 17). Should the Authorities Be Able to Access Your iPhone? The New York Times.
Father asks Apple head Tim Cook to unblock dead son’s iPhone. (2016, March 31). The Guardian.
Kharpal, A. (2016, March 29). Apple vs FBI: All you need to know.
Solove, D. J. (2011). Information Privacy Law. New York : Wolters Kluwer Law & Business.
Tayani, H. T. (2008). Informational Privacy: Concepts, Theories, and Controversies. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
