Ethical Foundations of Cybersecurity

Britian’s Enterprise Privacy Group is starting a new series of workshops that deal squarely with ethics.  While specialists in ethics have achieved a signficant role in professions like medicine, this is one of the first workshops I’ve seen that takes on equivalent issues in our field of work.  Perhaps that’s why it is already oversubscribed… 

‘The continuing openess of the Internet is fundamental to our way of life, promoting the free flow of ideas to strengthen democratic ideals and deliver the economic benefits of globalisation.  But a fundamental challenge for any government is to balance measures intended to protect security and the right to life with the impact these may have on the other rights that we cherish and which form the basis of our society.
 
‘The security of cyber space poses particular challenges in meeting tests of necessity and proportionality as its distributed, de-centralised form means that powerful tools may need to be deployed to tackle those who wish to do harm.  A clear ethical foundation is essential to ensure that the power of these tools is not abused.
 
‘The first workshop in this series will be hosted at the Cabinet Office on 17 June, and will explore what questions need to be asked and answered to develop this foundation?

‘The event is already fully subscribed, but we hope to host further events in the near future with greater opportunities for all EPG Members to participate.’

Let’s hope EPG eventually turns these deliberations into a document they can share more widely.  Meanwhile, this article seems to offer an introduction to the literature.