Big Data, moral­i­ty and infor­ma­tion­al self-determination

With the advent of the GDPR, the EU has also intro­duced the con­cept of infor­ma­tion­al self-deter­mi­na­tion with regard to data pro­cess­ing. What does infor­ma­tion­al self-deter­mi­na­tion mean? From what moral and cul­tur­al norms or even state forms has this con­cept devel­oped? Why has this right become estab­lished in Europe while not being found in most regions of the world? 

In her Duet Inter­view with the­o­log­i­cal expert and philoso­pher Dr Thomas Leyen­er, Dr Cal­daro­la, author of Big Data and Law, dis­cuss­es dif­fer­ent eth­i­cal views and behav­iours when using Big Data.

Infor­ma­tion­al self-deter­mi­na­tion is based upon which moral basic prin­ci­ple and how has it developed?

Dr Thomas Leyen­er: We can only mean­ing­ful­ly speak of infor­ma­tion­al self-deter­mi­na­tion if a per­son has already been grant­ed his¹ own per­son­al­i­ty and indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. If a human can be viewed as a “per­son”, then we can derive per­son­al rights from this idea.

If we con­sid­er the con­cept of a “per­son” from a Chris­t­ian as well as from a philo­soph­i­cal per­spec­tive, then we soon real­ize that, when we refer to a per­son, we mean the unique­ness, the val­ue and dig­ni­ty and the dis­tinc­tive indi­vid­u­al­i­ty of a human. All humans are in each case a per­son, although we are con­nect­ed in many ways: I share the same sex with many of them, we all have rough­ly the same phys­i­o­log­i­cal process­es tak­ing place in our bod­ies; With a cor­rect match, a per­son can live with the organs of anoth­er etc. And yet each per­son is the only one of its kind and is thus unique. We are all a per­son – each and every one of us is an individual.

Part of a human’s per­son­al­i­ty is the “free­dom to make ethical/moral deci­sions”: Accord­ing to the West­ern view of human­i­ty, a view which has been sig­nif­i­cant­ly shaped by Chris­t­ian val­ues, the free­dom intrin­sic to a human includes the free­dom to do Good or Evil. Even the first sto­ry in the Bible, the cre­ation of man in the Gar­den of Eden, alludes to this sub­ject, when Cain kills his brother.

The dig­ni­ty of a per­son also con­sists of being able to make eth­i­cal deci­sions and indeed hav­ing to make them. Because eth­i­cal deci­sions and eth­i­cal judge­ments are con­cerned with the ques­tion of Good and Evil, such a deci­sion must be made freely and in com­plete lib­er­ty. Doing Good, for exam­ple, lov­ing a per­son, help­ing and sup­port­ing some­one, feed­ing, edu­cat­ing and rais­ing a human etc., all these actions can only be done freely. A high­er form of good­ness is love; Love can­not be forced: I am not able to love against my will.

Only in the pres­ence of free­dom can such val­ues be real­ized – such as sup­port­ing one anoth­er, sol­i­dar­i­ty, or love. These val­ues, or atti­tudes, can only be con­ceived as freely giv­en by a person.

If a human as a per­son must be at lib­er­ty to be able to do Good, he will imme­di­ate­ly real­ize that togeth­er with the free­dom to do Good the free­dom to do the oppo­site of Good, name­ly, Evil, is also an intrin­sic part of this lib­er­ty. This means that part of the free­dom to do Good invari­ably includes the respon­si­bil­i­ty to avoid wicked­ness. This view shows us clear­ly that free­dom and respon­si­bil­i­ty cor­re­spond to one anoth­er and can­not be con­ceived of sep­a­rate­ly from one anoth­er. Who­ev­er wish­es to act as a free indi­vid­ual must nec­es­sar­i­ly also be respon­si­ble for what he does.

The free­dom to make eth­i­cal deci­sions must there­fore be kept open by the state and by reli­gion and can­not be lim­it­ed to any sig­nif­i­cant degree. Cor­re­spond­ing­ly, how­ev­er, the respon­si­bil­i­ty we just spoke of can be enforced and pun­ished if this very respon­si­bil­i­ty is not assumed or has been sig­nif­i­cant­ly impinged upon.

What about the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the indi­vid­ual in the dig­i­tal world? Already with the advent of the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion and the con­comi­tant automa­tion of many process­es, peo­ple began to rely more and more on machines and automa­tons and less on their own per­cep­tions and abil­i­ty to judge. We can even say that with the intro­duc­tion of machine lines and sup­ply chains that peo­ple have become small cogs who are hard­ly in a posi­tion to have an overview of the entire process and its com­plex­i­ty or per­haps only with great dif­fi­cul­ty. The ques­tion is then: Has this automa­tion tak­en away a great deal of the respon­si­bil­i­ty of an indi­vid­ual and, if we con­sid­er the intro­duc­tion of fur­ther dig­i­tal mech­a­ni­sa­tion, the use of algo­rithms, robots etc., will this devel­op­ment take away even more from our sense of indi­vid­ual responsibility?

If free­dom and respon­si­bil­i­ty are insep­a­ra­ble, belong togeth­er and are to be con­ceived in rela­tion to one anoth­er, then, at the very moment when respon­si­bil­i­ty has been sur­ren­dered, free­dom has been yield­ed as well. In addi­tion, if being free and being respon­si­ble for one’s actions are char­ac­ter­is­tics of one’s per­son­al­i­ty, then it must also fol­low that a per­son can nev­er give up his respon­si­bil­i­ty, or man­age­ment process­es have to be con­ceived with­in a frame­work of human respon­si­bil­i­ty. It is hard to imag­ine a human being trans­fer­ring his respon­si­bil­i­ty to a machine or a man­age­ment process. When an air­plane in autopi­lot mode, or an auto­mat­i­cal­ly dri­ven car has an acci­dent, then the machine has not act­ed irre­spon­si­bly and it will not be pos­si­ble to assert that a machine is guilty of a mis­de­meanour- rather, we can only refer these actions to a per­son behav­ing as a sub­ject act­ing freely.

The eth­i­cal chal­lenge with regard to auto­mat­ed man­age­ment process­es con­sists of find­ing the right bal­ance between the advan­tage aris­ing from a gain in secu­ri­ty or avoid­ing errors owing to the automa­tion and, at the same time, avoid­ing the impres­sion that one could sur­ren­der one’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to a non-per­son­al entity.

Basi­cal­ly, there is, in my opin­ion, a require­ment to main­tain the pos­si­bil­i­ty to be able to expe­ri­ence human free­dom in con­junc­tion with the req­ui­site respon­si­bil­i­ty. This still rais­es the ques­tion of whether this is even fea­si­ble for the indi­vid­ual, giv­en the exist­ing com­plex tech­ni­cal devel­op­ment. Fur­ther­more, this tech­ni­cal devel­op­ment has already made it vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble for the indi­vid­ual, with regard to auto­mat­ed man­age­ment process­es, or, in the con­text of sys­tems that learn on their own, to have an overview of the var­i­ous process­es oper­at­ing in the back­ground- let alone eval­u­ate them from an eth­i­cal per­spec­tive. Thus, an eth­i­cal dilem­ma aris­es: On the one hand, to be respon­si­ble, and, on the oth­er hand, to state it sim­ply, to not know exact­ly what I am doing when I take part, to name an exam­ple, in social networks.

This ques­tion must be fur­ther con­sid­ered elsewhere.

My favorite quote:

 

“Lib­er­ty means respon­si­bil­i­ty. That is why most men dread it.”

George Bernard Shaw

Par­tic­u­lar­ly with regard to algo­rithms, it should be eas­i­er for all of us as indi­vid­u­als to con­sid­er and decide on a vari­ety of issues because algo­rithms can cor­re­late many para­me­ters and fac­tors in a quick and easy man­ner for us. Algo­rithms are being used more and more and we already can­not seem to do with­out them- or indeed avoid them. They are in our cars, homes, in short, in our every­day lives. Algo­rithms are by no means neu­tral and can be manip­u­lat­ed, thus influ­enc­ing the deci­sions of the indi­vid­ual or a group. Is it pos­si­ble to speak of free­dom and respon­si­bil­i­ty if algo­rithms are teamed up with crim­i­nal forces? Can the indi­vid­ual per­son even decide about free­dom, respon­si­bil­i­ty and ethics or does a small group of know-how car­ri­ers or pow­er­ful peo­ple decide on free­dom, respon­si­bil­i­ty and ethics? Can we even still speak of self-deter­mi­na­tion or should­n’t we be talk­ing about for­eign deter­mi­na­tion? In oth­er words, has­n’t the basic prin­ci­ple of infor­ma­tion­al self-deter­mi­na­tion in data pro­tec­tion law sim­ply become win­dow dress­ing because of the tech­ni­cal envi­ron­ment sur­round­ing it?

If it can be guar­an­teed that a per­son can still be in a posi­tion to make informed deci­sions because he has been award­ed full and trans­par­ent dis­clo­sure on the fact that an algo­rithm has tak­en over man­ag­ing some process and how this is tak­ing place, then the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the indi­vid­ual or of a soci­ety is again at the fore­front. The pos­si­ble abuse of the tech­nol­o­gy involved in algo­rithms being in con­trol does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean they should not be used. In my opin­ion, the key issue in this eth­i­cal debate lies before this par­tic­u­lar tech­nol­o­gy is to be used. Is the tech­nol­o­gy in ques­tion trans­par­ent enough and capa­ble of being inde­pen­dent­ly mon­i­tored to rec­og­nize that it is being abused or is this abuse “hid­den” in the fraud­u­lent­ly pro­duced “new real­i­ty via new data”? If this ques­tion is posed cor­rect­ly, then we are real­ly just talk­ing about com­plete trans­paren­cy in the con­struc­tion and appli­ca­tion of algorithms.

Each and every one of us is over­whelmed when it comes to lead­ing an inde­pen­dent eth­i­cal dis­course or mak­ing a deci­sion based on dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed reflec­tion of the mat­ter. The indi­vid­ual requires, to a cer­tain extent, the “sup­port” of inde­pen­dent and expert insti­tu­tions which ensure that a suit­able pub­lic dis­course is tak­ing place and to guide that per­son in terms of the con­tent- pub­lic facil­i­ties or insti­tu­tions can take on this role (e.g., the Ger­man Ethics Coun­cil, Insti­tu­tions, expert soci­eties, jour­nal­ists, even church­es or polit­i­cal par­ties) if they appear to be knowl­edge­able and cred­i­ble con­cern­ing the mat­ter in question.

What­ev­er form the eth­i­cal dis­course is to take, giv­en the high­ly com­plex con­di­tions and top­ics involved, this issue has to be fur­ther dis­cussed elsewhere.

Chi­na is push­ing towards a dig­i­tal future at a dizzy­ing speed and aims to be the glob­al mar­ket leader in all mat­ters hav­ing to do with AI. By the end of 2020, there are to be 600 mil­lion sur­veil­lance cam­eras in all pub­lic spaces. Each step and every move­ment is to be record­ed- and not just using sur­veil­lance cam­eras. Every­thing is trans­par­ent and vis­i­ble. At train sta­tions, peo­ple are not only being x‑rayed, they are open­ly being exposed by mak­ing pub­lic, for exam­ple, if tax­es have been paid, traf­fic reg­u­la­tions flout­ed or envi­ron­men­tal require­ments abid­ed by. Every­thing is being col­lect­ed and eval­u­at­ed in a cen­tral data bank known as the “Social Cred­it Sys­tem”, a rat­ing sys­tem based on data which is meant to influ­ence the behav­iour of peo­ple. Kai Strittmat­ter, Ran­ga Yogesh­war as well as Shoshana Zuboff point to an image of sur­veil­lance cap­i­tal­ism. Is anoth­er sort of ethics at play there? If so, is it because the form of the state is dif­fer­ent? What are the rea­sons and what are the dif­fer­ences com­pared to Europe?

I think the dif­fer­ence you refer to is part­ly based on our West­ern his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy as well as our Chris­t­ian his­to­ry which both led to a philo­soph­i­cal enlight­en­ment empha­siz­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the indi­vid­ual. Even today a state­ment of Immanuel Kant which is over 250 years old can be seen as a sum­ma­ry of this enlight­en­ment: “Habe Mut, dich deines eige­nen Ver­standes zu bedi­enen² .“

If the indi­vid­ual has been accord­ed free­dom as well as hav­ing his own intel­lect, togeth­er with a cor­re­spond­ing abil­i­ty to judge, then this con­di­tion is for the time being con­sid­ered to be a gen­er­al one and is attached to the dig­ni­ty of the per­son and is also inde­pen­dent of one’s intel­lect and social standing.

The behav­iour of the indi­vid­ual is then con­front­ed with what is con­sid­ered to be valid with­in the group or with­in soci­ety. What “one does” does not nec­es­sar­i­ly have to con­form with “what I do” but what I do must take into account its effect upon the com­mu­ni­ty- indi­vid­ual action then bears a cer­tain respon­si­bil­i­ty with regard to social and com­mu­nal actions. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly clear when we look at hon­esty in pay­ing tax­es or eco­log­i­cal accountability.

Moral action has to be plau­si­ble and jus­ti­fied to the indi­vid­ual and it has to come about in the form of a dia­logue, tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the require­ments and claims of soci­ety. That is what is meant by eth­i­cal discourse.

The actions of the indi­vid­ual have an effect on “the whole” (e.g., wear­ing a mask in the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic) and the whole has an effect on the indi­vid­ual (e.g., lim­it­ing rights of free­dom in order to break infec­tious cycles). This must be set­tled in an eth­i­cal discourse.

Data pro­tec­tion laws vary all over the world and not every coun­try has turned infor­ma­tion­al self-deter­mi­na­tion into a basic prin­ci­ple. On the oth­er hand, data are cross­ing bor­ders every sec­ond and trav­el all over the globe. Glob­al­i­sa­tion is part of our dai­ly lives and the tech­nol­o­gy involved in data pro­cess­ing does not stop at the bor­der. Should there be a gen­er­al and uni­form under­stand­ing in how we deal with data- a uni­form eth­ic- so that projects, such as Big Data, Indus­try 4.0 or dig­i­tal eco-sys­tems can be achieved? Do we need a dis­course and how would it devel­op in the face of no coun­try want­i­ng to be behind in terms of being competitive?

If tech­no­log­i­cal and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment can only take place and be viewed at a glob­al lev­el, then we actu­al­ly need glob­al ethics, which is to say an eth­i­cal dia­logue to accom­pa­ny these developments.

In antiq­ui­ty the advent of trade had already led to a cul­tur­al exchange. Our terms “ethos” and “moral” go back to the words used by the Greeks and Romans to describe the behav­iour of oth­er peo­ples. Trade has since become a world-wide phe­nom­e­non, mean­ing there is already a glob­al cul­tur­al exchange tak­ing place. This in turn has led to the com­plex sit­u­a­tion of com­mu­ni­cat­ing by means of the prin­ci­ples of eth­i­cal deci­sions, or legal log­ic, as well as includ­ing eth­i­cal and social stan­dards in trade agree­ment con­tracts, as is now being attempt­ed in the case of con­tracts con­cern­ing Brexit.

A rea­son for found­ing the World Ethos Insti­tute in Tübin­gen 25 years ago has to do with the glob­al devel­op­ment we have just described. A goal of the insti­tute is to estab­lish a pre­req­ui­site by which the eth­i­cal aspects of indus­tri­al devel­op­ments are nego­tiable. This aim is to be achieved by joint learn­ing process­es and via a dia­logue of the religions.

Which prac­tices in terms of deal­ing with data will become stan­dard? What is active­ly being done to find a con­sen­sus on how data is to be han­dled? Is an active debate on data han­dling cur­rent­ly tak­ing place? Is the World Ethos Insti­tute lead­ing this dis­course and what results or rather inter­me­di­ary results exist? Are dif­fer­ences being ignored? Are the tech­no­log­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties the only ele­ment to be set­ting the tone?

In the past, an eth­i­cal debate or an eth­i­cal dis­course on tech­no­log­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal devel­op­ments took place much lat­er than the events them­selves or only when unde­sir­able con­se­quences had made them­selves notice­able. We must also take into account “the pow­er of the sit­u­a­tion at hand”: what­ev­er is pos­si­ble, will be done (On this, cf. the free­dom of being able to do Good or Evil).

Tak­ing all of this into con­sid­er­a­tion, it becomes obvi­ous that an eth­i­cal dis­course has to be held at the begin­ning of a devel­op­ment and not lag behind it. The lengthy debate on cli­mate change and on eco­log­i­cal­ly respon­si­ble eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty has shown that val­ues, such as sus­tain­abil­i­ty and eco­log­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty, have become estab­lished and have also led to eco­nom­ic con­cepts chang­ing and these val­ues being includ­ed. In the end, this must all sure­ly mean that sus­tain­able eco­nom­ics can be profitable.

The World Ethos Insti­tute believes that glob­al learn­ing process­es, to name one exam­ple, are nec­es­sary for politi­cians and those in man­age­ment posi­tions to com­mu­ni­cate with one anoth­er on val­ues, such as sus­tain­abil­i­ty, eco­log­i­cal account­abil­i­ty, rights of free­dom etc., and part of the rea­son for its found­ing includ­ed the belief that com­mu­ni­ca­tion process­es of this type require a dia­logue among the var­i­ous reli­gions. This belief seems obvi­ous since, from a his­tor­i­cal point of view, reli­gions shape our “mind set” and can pos­si­bly lead to cre­at­ing peace.

Chi­na invests sig­nif­i­cant­ly more cap­i­tal in dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion than oth­er coun­tries do. Owing to the size of their pop­u­la­tion, untold amounts of data are avail­able to the Chi­nese, data which are essen­tial for a dig­i­tal future. Chi­na is ahead of the game in this dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion. Are these all pre­req­ui­sites for decid­ing to process data Chi­nese-style at the glob­al level?

Eth­i­cal deci­sions are very com­plex because they are often dilem­ma deci­sions, giv­en that there is always a trade-off involv­ing decid­ing whether or not some ben­e­fit is jus­ti­fied, if, at the same time, some sort of col­lat­er­al dam­age is unavoid­able. They have to be shaped in such way so that the ben­e­fit in pro­por­tion to the harm being done can still be rec­og­nized and desired by the major­i­ty. Alter­na­tive­ly, a ben­e­fit can only be achieved if some dam­age is accept­ed at the same time, which is often the case in med­ical eth­i­cal deci­sions. This trade-off has to be con­sid­ered and accept­ed by a majority.

An eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit could hard­ly jus­ti­fy a deci­sion on its own account if, at the same time, mas­sive infringe­ments upon free­dom, self-deter­mi­na­tion, dig­ni­ty etc. were to fol­low. One could also tie the neces­si­ty of an eth­i­cal dis­course to the eco­nom­ic ques­tion: Can we afford to give up the con­comi­tant dis­cus­sion and con­sid­er­a­tion of eth­i­cal con­se­quences of a cer­tain devel­op­ment- or, if we waive the rights to an eth­i­cal reflec­tion, will this renun­ci­a­tion sim­ply lead to even greater eco­nom­ic or social harm in the full­ness of time?

A dia­logue, dis­course as well as a con­sid­er­a­tion of a cer­tain trade-off all require time in a demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem. Do we have the time for such a sig­nif­i­cant process? Or will we be over­tak­en by dif­fer­ent sorts of non- demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries as well as by oth­er types of ethics because they can react more quick­ly. Speed, favoured by tech­nol­o­gy in dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, is a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor. Will this char­ac­ter­is­tic be fatal to Europe, democ­ra­cy, ethics and Chris­tian­i­ty? Or will Europe find a way to lead such a dis­course more quick­ly and to imple­ment the results of a major­i­ty con­sen­sus in order not to lag behind in the glob­al market?

It is always a nov­el argu­ment to assert that eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits and eth­i­cal dis­course do not can­cel each oth­er out or deter one anoth­er. On the con­trary, they are even eco­nom­i­cal­ly suc­cess­ful. Exam­ples for this real­i­sa­tion can be found in eco­log­i­cal debates or in the con­cept of a social mar­ket econ­o­my: Owing to eco­log­i­cal­ly respon­si­ble behav­iour, new prod­ucts are cre­at­ed and, togeth­er with them, the con­comi­tant mar­kets. A social mar­ket econ­o­my always attempts to solve the eth­i­cal dilem­ma of wealth and an equi­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of it. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and social stan­dards in pro­duc­tion and trade (“sup­ply chain law”) have become well-estab­lished and rec­og­nized val­ues. Such devel­op­ments give me hope that, before some irre­versible dis­as­ter comes to pass in one area or anoth­er, our inher­ent com­mon sense and eth­i­cal reflec­tion will pro­vide the nec­es­sary input. A dis­cus­sion such as yours, Dr Cal­daro­la, con­tributes to this process gain­ing the upper hand in time.

Thank you for your kind words. I look for­ward to your com­ments con­cern­ing my next Duets.

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¹ For the sake of brevi­ty, the mas­cu­line form is used sole­ly for the sake of simplicity.

² Have the courage to use your own mind.

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