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LEGISLATION

Let’s talk about digital ethics

There are plenty opportunities to collect customer and opticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind
user data of any kind, but what are the consequences? over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example." Else-
Customers are becoming more and more transparent as where, he described the Panopticon prison as "a mill
companies can trace every step they take! Shouldn’t for grinding rogues into honest ones”.
there be a taboo area for marketers, defining where they
have no right to be? Is transparency sufficient to allow “He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who
self-determination on the net? In order to clarify all these knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of
questions, we ultimately need digital ethics. power; he makes them play spontaneously upon him-
self; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which
For instance in 2010, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said: he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the
"We know where you are. We know where you were. We principle of his own subjection", Foucault writes.
know more or less what you think." I don’t know how you
feel, but his statements are freaking me out a bit. At least The ones observed are disciplining themselves con-
Schmidt gave advice as well on what to do if you don’t stantly. Of course, every individual knows that every
like these facts. In an interview on CNBC he said a year step he does is traceable. Hence, he adapts his behav-
earlier:" If there is something that you do not want any- ior to normative requirements.
one to know, maybe you should not do it anyway."
It’s a kind of nightmare scenario painted here that does
Respecting privacy not correspond to reality, or does it?

Well, the French philosopher Michel Foucault called such No, I am not starting a campaign that propagates not to
a situation of being aware that there is constant monitor- use data for marketing purposes, just want to point out
ing and observation “panopticism”. that there are solutions and ways in which companies
can deal responsibly with data, instead of risking to
The ‘Panopticon’ is a type of institutional building de- eventually lose the consumers’ trust.
signed by the English philosopher and social theorist
Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. The concept of Surveys show that lack of trust in businesses during
the design is to allow a single guard to observe (- data processing and the known risks of the Internet in
opticon) all (pan-) inmates of an institution without the general doesn’t discourage the majority of online users
inmates being able to tell whether or not they are being from disclosing personal information. Fact is that no-
watched. Although it is physically impossible for the sin- body can elude the Internet, as a result having the pro-
gle guard to observe all cells at once, the fact that the tection of privacy taking a back seat sometimes. It is
inmates cannot know when they are being watched simply too convenient to get information, and it is easy
means that all inmates must act as though they are to shop online, not to mention the social possibilities of
watched at all times, effectively controlling their own be- Facebook that nobody wants to miss.

havior constantly. Bentham himself described the Pan-
38 Asian eMarketing January 2015 - Digital Marketing Trends & Predictions