Month: October 2019

The line between individual privacy and national security is quite ambiguous because they are difficult to compare. On one hand, individual privacy is a right that everyone should have. On the other hand, national security is a responsibility of the government to protect us from any national threat. Both are important in their own right, but more things need to be considered before deciding which is more paramount in a democracy.

In this modern era, many of our daily activities involve interacting with technology. For instance, when we walk to class, we go on our phones and listen to music or text our friends, and outside of class, we go on our laptops to do homework or browse through YouTube. We leave behind such a big digital footprint without really thinking that this data can be collected and analyzed by others. Due to the evolution of technology, the idea of “Big Brother” in George Orwell’s novel, 1984, is now a reality. More specifically, the government now has the technology to secretly observe our online activities in order to protect us from certain threats, like the Big Brother from 1984. While this is a legitimate concern, we should learn to accept it as this is just an inevitability; the choice is not up to us but to the government. As a democratic nation, however, the government should be responsible for balancing privacy and security. In my opinion, the government should be allowed to secretly collect our data online, as long as they are using it to maintain national security. For us, if we are not doing anything illegal, we shouldn’t have to worry about having our data be used by the government. We wouldn’t be punished as long as we are not doing anything wrong, and the government wouldn’t be exposing any personal information on social media or to the public. Furthermore, not much is asked for on our end; the government is doing all the work to protect us while we can go about our lives and not have to worry about contributing to security. The fact that the government is constantly observing our online activities is indeed disturbing and uncomfortable, but it seems like the benefit of security that the government provides us outweighs the importance of our privacy. Technology companies, on the other hand, don’t necessarily have an obligation to contribute to national security. They were founded on a common dream to empower us with technology so that we can live a more convenient and comfortable life. To them, the interests of their consumers are what they value most, so they should prioritize privacy above security. If the technology companies had to yield their consumer data to the government for the sake of security, people would feel their data would be exposed and can’t be trusted by those companies, so they would stop using their products or services. As a result, it would not only hurt technology companies but also technological innovation, which thrives from people’s trust in technology. Therefore, valuing privacy is not just about protecting people’s information but also helping to build trust and growth in technology.

Both individual privacy and national security are important aspects to society. However, it appears that each bears more significance depending on who is the agent. For the government, it is of their best interest to pursue national security for the people while for technology companies, protecting their consumers’ identity outweighs the importance of national security. So, if the issue of privacy and security is considered in the context of democracy, national security may have the slight edge over individual privacy.

Of the whistleblowing cases that we’ve looked at, not much good has come out of whistleblowing. Generally, when a whistleblowing incident occurs, the whistleblower gets punished, and the public perceives a bad image of the organization whose secret has been exposed. Despite the negative consequences, some people may still believe it is justified to whistleblow if an organization tries to cover up engineering disasters. In our journey of innovation, we are bound to run into failures when we explore something new; there is always risk involved in engineering. We can try to rush to build something new but risk of running into disaster. On the other hand, if we spend too much effort into testing, we will never make much progress. There is no perfect algorithm that computes the optimal amount of risk acceptance, but we can always learn from our mistakes. In the Therac-25 and the Challenger Space Shuttle cases, these incidents occurred because people pushed the bounds of risk too far, but we can take these mistakes and adjust our risk acceptance accordingly to avoid running into these types of engineering disasters again. In terms of whether engineers are obligated to speak the truth, I think it really depends on the situation. If we consider the Manning case, whistleblowing had unfavorable consequences. Leaking the footage of innocent civilians being killed not only caused Manning to be punished and sentenced to jail but also hurt the image of the government. With the evidence from the footage, it is indisputable that the military did commit an immoral act, but it is just a single instance that shouldn’t reflect the image of the entire organization. As a whole, the government is just doing its best for the people of America, and it is unfair to let a single fault to tarnish the image entire organization and lose the trust of its people over an operation in which only a few people of the government and military were involved. In general, I think it is best for engineers to not immediately speak out the truth, unless it is justified. Although Manning’s case was not truly justified for whistleblowing, there are some cases in which whistleblowing is considered necessary. For example, if an organization was secretly condoning unethical practices, contrary to the image that the public sees it by, then the person who discovers this information should be responsible for reporting it by following the correct whistleblowing procedures. Even though the whistleblower would most likely lose his or her job in the process, it would be a worthy sacrifice for saving the people who were impacted by the organization’s unethical practices. Ultimately, the difference between this scenario and the Manning case, for instance, is based on the behavior of the organization. If the organization is inherently bad and the public did not know about it, then whistleblowing would be absolutely justified, maybe even an obligation. If, however, an organization were involved in an unethical operation that was not approved by higher-ups, whistleblowing should be ignored for the sake of upholding the image of the organization. Therefore, whistleblowing is good only when the exposure of the organization’s secrets outweighs the damage inflicted on the organization.