He Dit It His Way

I'm having a hard time deciding if this guy is funny or just a jerk. What he does is perfectly by the rules, but hardly nice to his fellow players...

Girls Just Want to Have Fun

...and hopefully as little harassment as possible.

Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except For Me and My Monkey

In March, the Swedish minister of Defense, Odenberg, put forward a highly debated proposition for a new law, commonly known as the FRA law. The law includes passages about allowing certain forms of “eavesdropping” on traffic such as e-mails and phone calls. The proposition stated that the material searched through will not be stored and that it will be searched for certain key phrases only.

While Odenberg states that this law is proposed to safeguard the integrity of individuals and that there will be checks to ensure this, critics are less than thrilled.

One blogger is comparing the proposed law to Nazi-Germany and other dictatorships. He suggests that people should send a copy of all their private e-mail correspondence to the Defense ministry, both to prove a point (that is more or less what the law wants to do, in his opinion), which could be a problem for the servers if enough people did it, and to be a nuisance, as the ministry has to save and file all inbound correspondence.

Does this blogger have a point? Well, I think he does. The Nazi-Germany argument is a bit hard for me to relate to, because I deem it pretty unlikely that my e-mail will be read by anyone using it like that, even if similar things have happened before and are happening in other parts of the world. I think that his other reasons are a bit better.

Bottom line is this law is an intrusion in some way. I don’t think it is very likely that any normal person would suffer from the law, other than a feeling of being watched for some. However, I think the argument is a bit backwards: instead of people having to discuss how the law makes them feel violated, I’d like some rock solid proof, or even statistics indicating that the law would actually help.

For catching terrorists, the law is pretty ridiculous. A keyword based system would be extremely easy to fool. A friend of mine occasionally sends e-mails to China. Just replacing words like “orphanage” with “O” does the trick, and the e-mail gets through. I doubt terrorists would be more careless than my friend. And if this is the intended use of the law, catching terrorists, I think it is unethical to put it in force. Clearly the benefits of the law would then by far be outweighed by the possible intrusion into people’s integrity.

Knowing This, Knowing That

Can't help but think, when reading this blog entry, about all the interesting this the US government could do with a list of every perscription drug a person ever bought, apart from what it's actually needed for.

With a Little Help From My ISP

Integrity is an initiative (initiated by Bahnhof) that ISP's and web hotels can be a part of, saying they won't shut down websites or volunteer informations about their customers unless obligated by the law. The initiative has its roots in the declaration of human rights, articles 12 and 19.

Gossip Makes the World Go Around

I watched the movie ‘The Queen’ just the other day. It’s a movie about Queen Elizabeth, and the death of Lady Diana plays a major part in it. One of the first things that pop into my head when I’m thinking about the concept of ‘integrity’ today is therefore the personal life of celebrities. Diana was more closely watched than most celebrities, and definitely more than anyone in Sweden. Pictures and stories about her and many others with her have been in gossip magazines for ages now.

A while back a friend told me about a forum she reads every now and then, a gossip forum about Swedish celebrities. I got the link today so I had a look. Threads you can find there are ‘Who is the financier with the champagne?’ (debating what financier it is who bought a very, very expensive bottle of champagne according to an article in some newspaper), ‘Celebrities you have done drugs with’ and many other similar threads. There are also links to several gossip blogs.

So, what am I trying to say here? It’s basically the same argument that you’ve most likely heard before: is it right to gossip?

From an ethical point of view, you could argue that it is. The gossiper could claim to be a believer in hedonistic utilitarianism: the amount of happiness from the people who enjoy hearing the gossip will be larger than the amount of sadness from the person the gossip is about. Many other people would follow other ethical rules, for example saying that it’s not ok to encourage the paparazzi and that even celebrities need some space. Myself, I read the gossip pages in magazines at times, and I click on links every now and then to pages with gossip. But I can’t say I think that it’s the ‘right’ thing to do, and I beat myself up about it.

On a side note, what I also think is interesting in the case of that forum, is that the people being gossiped about would have a hard time suing someone for libel. First of all, it’s ‘just gossip’. But every now and then, a gossip magazine has to make apologies to celebrities for printing things about them that weren’t really true. On a forum such as this one, that’s still read by a considerable amount of people, it’s much harder to get that apology. There is a law, the ‘BBS law’ (1998:112), which could possibly be applied. It more or less states that the person in charge of an electronic bulletin is responsible for making sure that inappropriate material is removed. This is, however, something that’s first and foremost used in cases of forums distributing child pornography or copyrighted media, not libel. As a result, people can gossip on forums such as this one to their hearts’ content, and can be pretty liberal with the truth. The joys of modern technology.

Oh, and I’m not posting the link to that forum. That’s the least I can do to feel a bit more ethical about this!

Ethics Without Borders

One organization which I have been interested in learning more about ever since I first heard about it is Ingen människa är illegal (No one is illegal). The name is, in my opinion, extremely well chosen, and each time I hear it I can’t really shake it off. It gets to me.

IMäI is a network for people who believe in open borders, that everyone should have a right to live anywhere they choose ‘with the same social, political and economic rights’. It has chapters in four cities in Sweden. IMäI helps refugees that hide from the authorities in fear of being sent back to the country from which they fled, by helping them with food, clothes and rent.

IMäi’s ground principle is, as I said, that borders should be open. The network doesn’t believe in the notion of nations and claim to lack moral obligations to uphold them. They don’t see why anyone could have a right to close borders and classify anyone as an ‘illegal immigrant’. Until all borders are open, they will help refugees to hide from the authorities.

This is a clear case of civil disobedience, which I did not particularly like in my entry about Planka.nu. However, this network might have a point. They won’t obey by the rules (in this case, laws) because it would hurt people. Their reasoning is obviously ethical in some way; they aren’t just choosing not to follow rules because they don’t want to.

So, what sort of ethics do the members of this network abide by? I would deem it some kind of utilitarianism, most likely preference utilitarianism. They want people to be able to live where they choose to. Another view would be to classify it as hedonistic utilitarianism, as they want to make people happy. The reasoning then would be that the happiness of the people who get to stay in their new countries by far outweighs the unhappiness of anyone else.

I am, as I wrote earlier, all for following rules in most cases. I think that it’s my moral obligation to follow the laws that we all, in a way, decided on together (also some form of preference utilitarianism – if we decided on the law together, a majority of the people would be happy if I followed it). But in this case, I am willing to rethink that. Ok, I don’t think that a world without borders is a viable option, but I also think that the immigration policies in Sweden and most other countries are pretty messed up. Sometimes, the people working for the authorities have made the wrong decision, and I won’t be the one to judge people who try to help fellow human beings.

Don't Free the Animals

It's not easy to be ethical when nothing seems to be the 'right' choice or view. Take, for example, the PETA and PAAP organizations. Looking around on the PETA site, you read about why animals should have rights just like people, and sure, I am not a big fan of fur. Then you look at sites such as the PAAP one - and of course, I'm not against research that could find a cure for AIDS.

Being able to access all this information this easy on the Internet is a great thing, I guess, but it makes it hard to say anything at all for sure. I want easier times where everything is black and white and the bad guy is called something like Xzargrohk and wears a devilish grin!

Teehee

I'm gonna use of of these digital resistance meters to locate something intersting to write about in my blog...

Do Unto Others...

I was planning on writing something long and elaborate about the sites godhatesamerica.com, godhatesfags.com and godhatessweden.com. However, I'm having a hard time taking the author and his church seriously. I know they probably mean every word of it... but to most of the people who link to those sites they are a source of comedy. I guess that, in a way, they see it as 'no publicity is bad publicity', as they would be utterly unknown to most people without the Internet.

Most Christian people I know are pretty nice and peaceful, even though some have views I do not share. Those people probably despise this church even more than I do for doing what they do in the name of God. Kinda like Islamic terrorists ruining things for normal muslims around the world.

Ok, not going to write much more about this. I just want to say that the ethical grounds for this church are, in my opinion, highly questionable. I know that the Bible has things to say about homosexuality and that this could be wiewed as an ethical ground for 'preachings' such as what is conducted on these sites, but the Christian love and 'Do Unto Others' messages seem like so much better grounds.

To Pay or Not to Pay

Planka.nu is a site and network with the intention to form opinions about public transport in Sweden. The group behind it is a syndicalist movement who believe that people should not have to pay for the use of public transport. The website offers a form of 'insurance' for people who skip paying. The 'insurance' consists of paying 100 SEK (compare with the prices in Gothenburg: a monthly fee of 375 SEK for people under 26 years and 500 for people above) and then, if you get caught not paying, having the organization pay your fine.

So is this civil disobedience aiming to change something about society, or a way for people to save money without a 'higher cause'? Planka.nu argues that if enough people stop paying for public transport, there will be no choice but for politicians to make it free and financed by taxes. This argument can be seen as some form of welfare utilitarianism; the members of planka.nu have decided not pay their fees to, in the end, make public transport available to everyone regardless of their ability to pay for the service. Critics of the network argue that this is not what will be achieved, that the fees for the people who actually do pay will increase instead.

I think that the reasons why people join Planka.nu are not always a will to change the future of public transport. The people who do this for their own benefit I cannot view as ethical. I can, in a way, understand those who use this form of civil disobedience to change the rules, and I applaud their ingenuity – it is a very clever idea.

However, there are two reasons why I don’t like their reasoning. First, I don’t think they will succeed and this pretty much means that the only thing this network has achieved is higher fees for the people who do pay, just as the critics say. If this is true, the welfare utilitarianism argument will be reversed: instead of a large number of people benefiting from the actions, a small group of people ride the busses and trams for free while the larger group has to pay for them.

The other reason is that I think there is a value in following the democratic process. Civil disobedience is acceptable in certain extreme cases. But generally speaking: if you want to be part of a democratic society, you have to accept that a certain number of things about it won’t be to your liking. If you want to change them, you should use democratic tools to do that. If you join Planka.nu, you have decided to not play by the rules and every time that happens the democratic process is weakened a bit. In this case, I don’t think that it’s worth it.