Technology invades human privacy
On areas like military, robotics will have profound ethical implications
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2015-08-19 06:39 GMT
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The emerging technologies are encroaching on the privacy of human beings and the entire behavioural aspects of the next generation will be transparent to such machines, experts said at a discussion on ‘Ethics and emerging technologies’ here.
Free software supporter and Columbia Law School professor Eben Moglen cautioned that most mobile phones have the capability to capture user data such as location, browsing, shopping behaviour and even lifestyle information, and upload on the Cloud.
On areas like military, robotics will have profound ethical implications. “Throughout history, military forces have been guided by human values and ethics, but a non-human force may not be constrained by such ethical values while dealing with its victims,” he said at the discussion organized by the International Centre for Free and Open Sources Software at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing here.
Software Freedom Law Centre India founder Mishi Choudhary pointed out that many aspects of the digital lives of citizens were being monitored.
The end-user licences that many of us accept without even reading them actually gave the companies the permission to do so. ICFOSS director Satish Babu said that given the increasing role of software-driven machines in human lives, it was important that people had control of such software. The only way to do this was through Free Software, he said.