Online Security and Civil Rights: A Fine Ethical Balance

Online insecurity is like a Hydra with many heads - from e-commerce and online banking scams to malware, from hacking to cyberwar. It requires Herculean efforts to slay the Hydra, but, unfortunately, fighting insecurity may easily cause serious ethical problems, since security measures can also undermine civil rights, such as individual liberty, privacy, and freedom of speech and expression, because such measures often rest on the collection, storage, access, or elaboration of individuals’ personal information. Clearly, any democratic government, fair society and responsible organisation need to identify an ethical balance between online security and civil rights, in order to implement the former successfully while respecting and furthering the latter. At the same time, it is also clear that the problem is growing and becoming increasingly pressing. Nowadays, when the US and several EU countries are debating which rights should be protected on the Internet and how extended online security measures should be, ethical guidelines for the management of cyber security are urgently sought.

Titles & abstracts of the workshop papers can be found following this link: