---
title: "Ethics of technology"
chunk: 13/16
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_technology"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:11.653934+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Mass surveillance ===
The ethics behind mass surveillance has become a highly discussed ethical topic in the twenty-first century, especially in the United States due to the tragedy of 9/11. Some areas of ethical concern involve privacy, discrimination, trust in government, infringement of government-granted rights/basic human rights, conflict of interest, stigmatization, and obtrusiveness. Many of these ethical topics in the timeframe between 2001 and 2021 have become the main topic of discussion in many recent laws all throughout the world. Shortly after 9/11 when the United States began to fear the idea that more terrorist attacks could occur on American soil. A law passed on October 26, 2001, known as the Patriot Act was one of the first larger Mass Surveillance laws passed in the United States. Years later, Europe would begin to follow suit with their own set of mass surveillance laws after a string of terrorist attacks. After the 2015 terrorist attacks in France, the French government would move forward with passing the International Electronic Communications Law.
The IEC would recognize the power of the French Directorate-General for External Security allowing them to collect, monitor, and intercept all communications sent or received on French territory. In 2016, the United Kingdom would pass the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, a law allowing the GCHQ to engage in acquisition, interception, and equipment interference of communications/systems sent by anyone on British territory. Finally, in 2016, another law like the Investigatory Powers Act was passed in Germany that was named the Communications Intelligence Gathering Act. This act allowed the German intelligence community to gather foreign nationals communications while they were in German territory. In 2021, Australia passed a law known as the Surveillance Legislation Amendment, which granted the Australian Federal Police and Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission the right to modify or delete data of suspected offenders, Collect intelligence on criminal networks, and finally, forcefully break into a suspected offender's online account. After these laws were passed all throughout Europe, and later on in Australia, a string of protests would begin to arise involving the laws, as citizens from each country would feel it infringed their privacy rights.
Two years after the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016 was passed in the United Kingdom the English High Court would rule that the act would have to be rewritten. This ruling occurred due to the High Court finding the law to be incompatible with EU law since the law "authorizes the UK government to issue retention notices with no prior independent checks, such as review by a court or other body, and for the purpose of investigating crime that is not "serious crime"; and (2) subsequent access to any retained data was similarly not subject to any independent authorization and not limited to the purpose of combating "serious crime". The origin of this ruling comes from a human rights group known as Liberty who first began to battle the act shortly after it was enacted as they stated it violates the United Kingdom's citizens the right to privacy. In 2020, four years after Germany enacted the Communications Intelligence Gathering Act it would also make its way to court to be reviewed. Receiving heavy backlash from multiple members of the German public and Non-German citizens. Many of these complaints continued to dwell on the same issue of the privacy of both German and non-German citizens. After a two day trial, the high German court did rule that the law was unconstitutional and gave the German parliament until 2021 to make corrections to the Act.
Though, as of recent in the year 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The ethical atmosphere regarding public health surveillance began to take center stage due to its overall use during the height of the pandemic. The purpose of this mass surveillance was for data collection of  the transmission of the COVID-19. Though, many individuals around the world cited they felt this form of surveillance infringed on their privacy and basic human rights. Another concern regarding this level of surveillance was the lack of government or institutional policy documents regarding how to address the ethical challenges around mass surveillance to track a pandemic transmission rate. The use of this mass surveillance was used on a far larger scale compared to some of the other acts passed in recent years, as this had a more global focus due to the want to bring the transmission of COVID-19 to a halt. For example, on March 16, 2020, the Israeli government allowed emergency regulations regarding mass location tracking of citizens to slow the spread of the disease. Singapore and Taiwan also did something similar, yet their method of mass surveillance was allowing their law-enforcement agencies to monitor quarantine orders.

=== Technoethics and society ===
This field is concerned with the uses of technology to ethically regulate aspects of a society. For example: digital property ethics, social theory, law, science, organizational ethics and global ethics.
Digital property rights or DPR refers to individual rights on information available online such as email accounts, online website accounts, posts, blogs, pictures, and other digital media. Digital property rights can be regulated and protected by making the digital property tamper-proof, by adding legal clause to the digital properties, and limiting the sharing of software code.
Social theory refers to how societies change and develop over time in terms of behavior and explanation of behaviors. Technology has a great impact on social change. As technology evolves and upgrades, human interaction goes along with the changes. "Technological theory suggests that technology is an important factor for social change, and it would initiate changes in the arrangement of social relationships".
Organizational ethics refers to the code of conduct and the way an organization responds to stimulus. Techno ethics plays a role in organizational ethics because technology can be embedded and incorporated in many different aspects of ethical values.