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Digital ethics goes beyond black letter law and highlights the underlying principles and values of data protection. In digital ethics, responsibility for processing data must play a much more proactive role. As they work towards a Digital Ethics, what are the main question the EDPS Ethics Advisory Group should consider?

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Digital ethics goes beyond black letter law and highlights the underlying principles and values of data protection. In digital ethics, responsibility for processing data must play a much more proactive role. As they work towards a Digital Ethics, what are the main question the EDPS Ethics Advisory ...

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But how do we know what the right thing is? The philosophical answer points to the code of conduct governing your particular culture, industry, or belief group. Doctors, lawyers, and religious communities have sets of tenets that dictate behaviours that are acceptable and unacceptable and prescribe various types of punishments for deviating from these codes. However, such codes do not always exist in our professional lives. And when it comes to technology, these codes are often out of date.

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But how do we know what the right thing is? The philosophical answer points to the code of conduct governing your particular culture, industry, or belief group. Doctors, lawyers, and religious communities have sets of tenets that dictate behaviours that are acceptable and unacceptable and prescribe various types of punishments for deviating from these codes. However, such codes do not always exist in our professional lives. And when it comes to technology, these codes are often out of date.

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Over and above what is admissible from a legal perspective and what conforms to privacy regulations, digital ethics asks whether certain actions are the right thing to do. This encompasses actions such as collecting, connecting, or selling particular data sets, treating different groups of individuals differently due to vulnerabilities linked to their sociodemographic characteristics or other factors, or leading people to engage in addictive or otherwise unwise behaviours in the digital environment via technological nudges of various kinds by exploiting human weaknesses and biases.

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Over and above what is admissible from a legal perspective and what conforms to privacy regulations, digital ethics asks whether certain actions are the right thing to do. This encompasses actions such as collecting, connecting, or selling particular data sets, treating different groups of individuals differently due to vulnerabilities linked to their sociodemographic characteristics or other factors, or leading people to engage in addictive or otherwise unwise behaviours in the digital environment via technological nudges of various kinds by exploiting human weaknesses and biases.

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What do you mean by digital journalism ethics? Just as digital ethics is concerned with how organisations ought to behave when it comes to digital technologies, journalism ethics is concerned with how journalists ought to behave while carrying out their journalism duties. Typical elements of journalism ethics include truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness, and public accountability. 

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What do you mean by digital journalism ethics? Just as digital ethics is concerned with how organisations ought to behave when it comes to digital technologies, journalism ethics is concerned with how journalists ought to behave while carrying out their journalism duties. Typical elements of journalism ethics include truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness, and public accountability. 

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What frameworks exist for digital ethics? For any organisation, including a charity, building a code of digital ethics can be a daunting prospect. That’s because it can be hard to recognise which decisions about the use of digital technologies are – or should be – ethical ones. That’s where a simple digital ethics framework can help. In general terms, organisations can benefit from the following four principals of digital ethics:

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What frameworks exist for digital ethics? For any organisation, including a charity, building a code of digital ethics can be a daunting prospect. That’s because it can be hard to recognise which decisions about the use of digital technologies are – or should be – ethical ones. That’s where a simple digital ethics framework can help. In general terms, organisations can benefit from the following four principals of digital ethics:

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Why is digital ethics important?Trust is a concept that is key to the charity sector because without trust charities cannot exist and thrive. That means that every charity has to have its own clear ethical standards which govern what it will and will not do, who it will and will not deal with, how it will and will not treat its service users, suppliers and partners, and so on. And, crucially, the charity has to uphold its ethical standards in order to earn the trust and support it needs to carry out its charitable activities.

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Why is digital ethics important?Trust is a concept that is key to the charity sector because without trust charities cannot exist and thrive. That means that every charity has to have its own clear ethical standards which govern what it will and will not do, who it will and will not deal with, how it will and will not treat its service users, suppliers and partners, and so on. And, crucially, the charity has to uphold its ethical standards in order to earn the trust and support it needs to carry out its charitable activities.

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What are your digital expectations?Charities need to ask themselves some questions. Do service users who come to a charity expect their personal data to be sold to an advertiser even if they give permission for the charity to do so? Ought charities to raise funds by selling personal data supplied to them by people seeking help? Does the good that the funds generated by selling service users’ data outweigh any reservations a charity might have? What happens if the data sold to an advertiser is subsequently stolen and leaked by a hacker?

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What are your digital expectations?Charities need to ask themselves some questions. Do service users who come to a charity expect their personal data to be sold to an advertiser even if they give permission for the charity to do so? Ought charities to raise funds by selling personal data supplied to them by people seeking help? Does the good that the funds generated by selling service users’ data outweigh any reservations a charity might have? What happens if the data sold to an advertiser is subsequently stolen and leaked by a hacker?

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Asking for permission to collect and store data about usersAsking for permission to sell any personal data that has been storedGiving users the right to request that data about them is deletedGiving users access to personal data that has been collected and stored

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Asking for permission to collect and store data about usersAsking for permission to sell any personal data that has been storedGiving users the right to request that data about them is deletedGiving users access to personal data that has been collected and stored

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This distinction is important, because what organisations can do with digital data – as opposed to what they ought to do – is already governed and restricted by rules and regulations such as the General Data Protection  Regulation (GDPR). This places a number of obligations on organisations that collect and use digital data about people, including:

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This distinction is important, because what organisations can do with digital data – as opposed to what they ought to do – is already governed and restricted by rules and regulations such as the General Data Protection  Regulation (GDPR). This places a number of obligations on organisations that collect and use digital data about people, including:

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Digital ethics is the branch of ethics concerning the set of rules and moral guidelines that govern interpersonal behaviour between individuals and/or companies that is mediated by computer technology, either inside a company or, more broadly, in markets and society.

Over and above what is admissible from a legal perspective and what conforms to privacy regulations, digital ethics asks whether certain actions are the right thing to do. This encompasses actions such as collecting, connecting, or selling particular data sets, treating different groups of individuals differently due to vulnerabilities linked to their sociodemographic characteristics or other factors, or leading people to engage in addictive or otherwise unwise behaviours in the digital environment via technological nudges of various kinds by exploiting human weaknesses and biases.

But how do we know what the right thing is? The philosophical answer points to the code of conduct governing your particular culture, industry, or belief group. Doctors, lawyers, and religious communities have sets of tenets that dictate behaviours that are acceptable and unacceptable and prescribe various types of punishments for deviating from these codes. However, such codes do not always exist in our professional lives. And when it comes to technology, these codes are often out of date.

A few years ago, during my PhD programme, Professor Clayton Christensen at Harvard Business School taught me this. When you're considering if you're doing the right thing, ask yourself, how you would feel if your project was showcased on the first page of The New York Times? How proud would you be to talk about it with your mother, or even more pointedly, if your children wanted to know about what do you do at work?

I am firmly convinced that most individuals and most companies do not set out to engage in deliberate unethical behaviours or outcomes. Rather, what we often see is that when it comes to ethics, there are various processes at work that contribute to unethical behaviours. Some of these processes are general processes, such as a slippery slope or pushing for results without considering the means to get to them.

Others are specific to the digital context, such as prioritising the development or implementation of a new technology without concerns for how it could be misused, using biased data without understanding how it was generated, or aiming for a solution that performs well enough, good enough, except for a few outliers that, upon closer examination of the data, turn out to belong to a disadvantaged, underrepresented minority who is further harmed, marginalised, or burdened by the encoding of the societal bias in a digital form.

As our world is becoming increasingly reliant on digital products for life and for work, let this be your starting point for reflections and conversations on topics of digital ethics, and let it be an inspiration to build in ethical considerations throughout the process of technology product design.

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Digital ethics is the branch of ethics concerning the set of rules and moral guidelines that govern interpersonal behaviour between individuals and/or companies that is mediated by computer technology, either inside a company or, more broadly, in markets and society.

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Digital ethics is the branch of ethics concerning the set of rules and moral guidelines that govern interpersonal behaviour between individuals and/or companies that is mediated by computer technology, either inside a company or, more broadly, in markets and society.

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Digital ethics is the branch of ethics concerning the set of rules and moral guidelines that govern interpersonal behaviour between individuals and/or companies that is mediated by computer technology, either inside a company or, more broadly, in markets and society.