Throughout history, people call into questions the actions of the powerful and rich. From the “Act of God” flooding of Johnstown in 1889, to the Enron Scandal in 2001, society has deemed there to be a minimum bar of moral reasoning on which everyone must follow. This applies to all fields of work, from the accountant who sees everyones 401K statements to the teacher who gives out punishments to bad behaving students. A strict code of conduct must be maintained to keep individuals safe.
With the thrid Inductrial Revolution and the dawn of the Information Age, people are being more connected to the technologies they possess, and companies are becoming ever more richer than before. In this capitalist world, technology is being advanced faster and the quality of life is improving by the day. But at what costs come with the pursuit of wealth? Do companies have a moral obligaton to its customers and society, or to its shareholders and owners?
Google was one of many companies that struggle with controveries. Particularly with privacy breach controversies. Take Google Street View, a revolutionary product that transormed how we navigated cities and neighborhoods. The ability to actually see the look of your desitnation changed the game of navigation. This was acheived by sending “Google cars” that took 360 degree photos of a street which was then compiled to show what a partcular street looked like on the ground. There is no denying that Street View has impacted society in a positive way. However the process of creating the product has “unforseen consequences.”
From a legal standpoint, Google did nothing wrong as anyone can take a picture of anyone in a public place, and since the street is defined to be a public place, no one can sue Google about their picture being taken. Except with Google’s infinite wisdom, the initial pictures did not censor any faces. They legally did not have to do this, but what happens when someone uses Street View and implicates someone of wrongdoing, say a woman getting divorced from having her picture taken from Street View leaving an abortion clinic. So, with all the resources in teh world, with a big team of engineers, programmers, managers, and legal consultants, did no one think about a scenario where an uncensored face on Street View might implicate someone in a serious legal dispute?
Let’s say that they simply forgot about that scenario. Given an infinite number of ways something could go wrong, it is impossible to account for them all. Okay. Then why exactly were they collecting and analyzing wireless data transmissions? While yes, one can argue that “anyone can do the same,” but for what reason does a person have with collecting that information who is not a security analyst? Why would Google, a company built on gathering and distributing vasty amounts of data, want with users data? Did they want to collect valuable information to sell to ad companies so they can more effeciently place targeted ads? All under the guise of putting your neighborhood on Street View?
What Google did when they made it hard to censor your face in Street View is ethically grey and in the end they did fix the problem by censoring all human faces. However, them collecting data under the guise of mapping out Street View is defintley ethically wrong as it compromises customer privacy. The fact that they also apparently tried to cover up the data collection is also unethical as it shows that the company is lying and untrustworthy.