The Ethics of Research into Invasive Technologies

The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason. individuals, shall always consider the principle of the individual's privacy and seek the following: To minimise the data collected. To limit authorized access to the data. To provide proper security for the data. To determine the required retention period of the data. To ensure the proper disposal of the data.Preliminaries Friends tell me my writing is sometimes a bit opaque. In particular, it is often difficult to see which point I am pursuing. This leaves them puzzled why I belabour the trivial and the obvious as I do, and why I am so fascinated with obscure examples and apparently irrelevant diversions. Given the possibility of such obscurity, I want to spend a few moments laying out my overall objectives and the general approach to the topics covered in this paper. In the spirit of reader-centred writing, my hope is to prevent needless confusion and irritation. To begin with: the important matters of style. This is not a research report in the normal sense nor is it a summary review of the literature in the fields it covers. I am primarily interested in arguments not findings and, in particular, with the forms which arguments take, not with classifying writers or writings according to the arguments which they use. Most importantly, this paper is a way of clarifying my thinking about these matters and an invitation to others similarly engaged to join me in dialogue. In no sense is it 2 meant to be an introduction to research on 'invasive technologies' nor a quick summary of the state of play for the interested observer. 1 Second, since I am interested in arguments, what especially engages me here is the route that can be taken through a set of propositions. How can one argue one's way from position to position in a consistent and coherent fashion? The questions I raise then are about tracking an argument from beginning to end and what it might take to have a trackable, coherent argument. What I am very specifically not interested in are design decisions and their implications. For me, this outlook imposes a number of features upon my discussion. The issues are conceptual not substantive: The discussion focuses on how we are to assess …