In “The Googlization of Everything”, Vaidhyanathan weighs the possibilities that Google may have violated many people’s privacy vs. the possible usefulness of the Google Streets initiative. Many cultural appropriations were made without the express permission of the people in that cultural section of society when the plan to implement Google Streets was made. Vaidhyanathan discusses a few people’s opinions on the matter, but I will focus on the different countries and cultural differences that Google did not keep in mind when rolling out their Google Streets. Japan and many other  countries are among the cultures that value their personal privacy above all and would not violate another’s privacy for ease-of-use. On the other hand, American’s are more willing to give up privacy to get to an outcome that will make their lives easier. I am generalizing this and not every person in the same culture or in the same country feels the same way. What I am trying to portray is that you cannot say that it was a good roll out and people only complained for a couple weeks and then everyone was ok with it about one area where the country, culture and social norms are different to make generalized assumptions about every other one. In this Case Study I will argue that Contractarianism shows us that Google should have delved more deeply into what is accepted, culturally and socially, in specific areas of intended roll-out of Google Streets.

                Floridi talks about Informational Friction as the force that opposes the flow of information and how it is directly related to the amount of effort it takes an agent to obtain or block information about other agents in their respective environments. Google failed to see the differences in the type of people or cultures of people who would want to maintain the highest level of Informational Friction. They may differ from the people that are ok with pictures of their residences on the internet and just didn’t want that portion of their privacy to be violated. If “…privacy is a function of the informational friction in the infosphere”, as Floridi tells us, and Google Streets completely reduced opposition of the flow of the information that is the pictures of your residence, then Google had a direct effect on everyone’s privacy. This is where we must think about things in a Contractarianism method and figure out if this is morally acceptable. If society deems it as ok then it is ok, according to Contractarianism theory. When we discuss this, we must then discuss what we mean by “society”. If we mean human society, then what is the percentage of people in the entire world that are ok with this? I believe that Google needed to do more research and pinpoint cultural and social differences and ask the question, “Is THIS society ok with what we are about to do?”, rather than just assume that because one worked out that everything will work out in their favor. With that in mind, there will be a big difference among societies when it comes to how much Information Friction and, in turn, privacy, are they ok with giving up for this, or any, “service”.

                With the decrease in Informational Friction that inherently comes with a world that lives on the internet, anonymity is a key factor in making people feel safe and that they have a sense of privacy. Many of the people that were affected by Google Streets were ones that did not have to proper access, ability, or knowledge to fight the privacy infringement. Floridi states, “Anonymity may be understood as the availability of personal information…”. Many people in the Google Streets roll-out areas may have just wanted to maintain their local life with no interest in allowing the world to know who they are or where they may live. If a person wanted to use anonymity as a method to maintain their privacy in the changing world, that is now being chipped away at by Google Streets due to their residence and possible identifiable photos now being completely available to the world. Even a person’s address is considered Personally Identifiable Information, so how could the pictures of their residence not be considered private? Vaidhyanathan talked about the difference in laws in places like Canada, where even taking pictures of a person or their property without consent is illegal. How then can Google have sat down and said that this society is ok with this therefore we should do it? The constant chipping away of the methods that are contributing to a person’s ability to maintain a level of privacy, such as anonymity and Informational Friction, are being done without the consideration of the individual societies and cultures acceptance.

Another way to think about all this information that was taken in the form of photographs of people’s personal belongings (their homes, cars, themselves, etc.) is that this information together should be identified as a database. This means that according to different law and practices around the world, it is the company’s duty to keep that information safe. According to Grimmelmann, the idea behind documentation such as the Data Protective Directive in Europe, is that the company disclose what the purpose will be of the information collected and to see to it that it is only used for that purpose. Google may have done this on a very hushed basis and not with the express permission of everyone whose information was taken. There is also no guarantee that the information that they have taken will be used for only their primary purpose. If it has or will be used for a secondary purpose then it was intended, then the company is held at full fault for the breach in privacy. They should have taken a step back away from what they were trying to accomplish and ask themselves if the person with no voice was just as willing to accept as the person with the biggest voice. This goes all the way down to the person, but I am talking more about societies. Not every country or society had, at the time of implementation, full access to, and know-how of, the information environment known as cyberspace. Even if the implementation would have taken longer, Google should have gotten more backing from the people within society to make sure that they were ok with having their information available to all on the internet. With this backing, and the help of the Contractarianism approach, they would have been able to argue that each society was fine with the slight loss in privacy, therefore, implementation is morally acceptable.

                Whether admitted or not, Google is a purveyor of information for the cost of your time and focus on their products. They maintain power and status by selling data. Grimmelmann writes that he believes that “…the branch of tort law known as product-liability […] may have useful lessons for thinking about privacy…”. He also brings up some valid points that have to do with basic product safety law that I will summarize as I make statements about Googles responsibility in all of this. The first point is that the seller must make their product safe and can be held liable even if it is the consumer’s fault. If this is the case, then if a burglar says that they stalked a house and made plans using Google Maps, Google is liable. The next point is that disclaimers are not a substitute for  a safe product. That means that slapping a warning on a website or sending a message saying that information may not be used as intended is not a substitute for safely securing that information. Any misuse of that information would, again, be Googles fault. The final point is that sellers are responsible for their design’s defects. If they posted incriminating, defacing, or just embarrassing pictures on their Street View service then, again, they are liable. They did, on the surface, take care of this point by getting rid of pictures that people asked to delete, but that did not mean that damage was not already done. If there is enough of society that has had problem with product safety, it is not, according to Contractarianism, morally correct to release a product that does not meet the standards currently in place, whether digital or physical.

                I am not saying that what Google did with Street View wasn’t a technological advancement or that most people haven’t benefitted from it at one point in their life. What I am saying is that there was a better method of implementation than just saying that there are ways to get your information removed if you don’t want it on there. Contractarianism would have been a valued steppingstone in the formulation of a better plan that incorporated the different societies’ ideals and acceptance of the loss of privacy. If this would have been used there would have been many happier people and the implementation of the Street View application may have gone more smoothly. Also, many direct violations of individual privacies may not have been infringed upon. This would have also given Google the ability to say that they had tried to consider the societal differences before implementing a new piece of technology and selling the associated data to the world.

                The article by Ron Lieber was mainly what some would call a “call to arms” by the people that were affected Equifax data breach not long before the article was published. He talks about the approximately 2000 messages he received by angered or concerned readers about the breach itself or what was being done by the company following the breach. He discussed how the credit companies had burrowed their way into every facet of our lives but did next to nothing when it came to a breach of all the information that they had collected about each person. People that had messaged him were talking about the company taking a greater responsibility for their information, especially since they had no way to opt out of their information being sent to credit bureaus, assuming they wanted a steady life in today’s society. The company had done little more than issued a rickety apology statement with no real enthusiasm about the protection of the information they controlled. In this Case Analysis, I will argue that Contractarianism shows us that the Equifax breach harmed all American people by destroying the level of trust society had in the bureau and that this was morally bad.

                Friedman tells of the businessman that believes that businesses should have a social conscience and not merely be concerned with profits. He believes that this type of businessman is preaching “unadulterated socialism”.  He says that a business cannot have responsibilities because it is not a person only an artificial being. In a sense, Friedman brings up points about business and the fact that business is for profit and there should be other means in society to take care of those societal responsibilities that is created from business (i.e., providing employment, pollution, environmental contamination, etc.). He also talks of the corporate executive’s responsibility to provide for the owners of the company not the society on the owner’s dime. The problem with Friedman’s line of thinking is that he is not taking into consideration the business’s responsibility to provide to the consumer. He is taking the side of the old Field of Dreams movie with the line, “If you build it, they will come.” That may have worked in a time that one business may have been the only providing that service or product. Now if consumers aren’t happy with a business or product they will move right on to a different on or to find the technology to render that product or service useless. The consumer’s view is much more intertwined with a business’s future than ever before.                 Friedman writes that if there are social responsibilities, then they are not the business’s but the individual’s. This outlook is no longer going to work with our society. In Contractarianism, there is no real right and wrong when it comes to making a decision, it is only whether the societal parties effected are ok with the outcome. When this was written there was already the start to public outrage when it came to the means by which the business’s are saving money and in turn, making a higher profit. People were starting to wonder why, if the businesses were making a higher profit off damaging their environment or by not paying high enough wages or having unsafe work environments, they were not putting some of that profit into fixing the problems they were creating. This line of thinking has had a snowball effect through the years and now we will not accept a business without the minimum positive feedback to the areas they effect. Our society has come to ask much of business in its contribution to societal issues. Would this have been different if business and government rigidly held against for-profits helping society? Eventually the same outcome would have shown through the anti-monopolization that technology has brought us. Society requires these businesses to contribute to maintain their status, profits, or control over their sector. If society requires it, then businesses must bend to the will of the people and make sound choices in that regard. If they do not, then contractarianism will show that they did not make an ethically good decision, and they will no longer be allowed to thrive in our society.

                Melvin Anshen has quite the opposite view of business and corporate management of resources as Friedman. About the same businessman mentioned by Friedman, Anshen sees them as challengers to the common thesis of the time that increased profit leads to increased public benefit. He also states that if they cannot be flexible to the future and changes in the social contract, that is what society demands of them and their business, it would raise “…fundamental questions about the[ir] intellectual ability…”. Anshen brings up the implicitness of the social contract and that rather than quantify them explicitly, business should be asking what the people of their impacted society really want. Without the social contract being accepted, “…man’s existence with his fellow men would be chaotic beyond endurance.” Business is a vital part of economy and is a factor in all people’s lives in our society. Though most entrepreneurs don’t start a business with the intent to destroy environments and offer non sustainable wages to keep employees poor, these things may come due to the focus of profit. Business executives need to be Semper Gumby and understand what type of contract they have entered by simply doing business in our society. What is required by law? Then what is not explicitly required, but is required implicitly by the people? What is required to run a prosperous, not just income-positive, business?

People have become very aware of things like ridiculous wage offerings, pollution, and businesses not offering a culturally diverse atmosphere. Only 70 or 80 years ago it was ok to deny someone a job because of the color of their skin. The changes in the social contract have flipped that notion. A business that would do something like that in this age, even if it wasn’t illegal, wouldn’t survive long enough to even turn a profit. The people in our society will not just sit idly by and allow something like that to take place. Even a long-standing organization, such as Equifax, will need to follow the rules of society and participate in the contract. If they do not, they will breed an atmosphere of distrust and societal rage and disengagement. Not only will they fall to the consumers of their society, but they will also be replaced by another that is willing to conform and be a part of society instead of a thorn in its side. Businesses can be reduced to ashes by going against what society asks of them by simply being put on social media and being judge by the court of public opinion. Owners of multi-billion-dollar industries have had to publicly apologize to all people due to something that goes against the social contract, even if it had nothing to do with them directly. Executives have begun to understand that whatever may be asked of them by society is worth doing to have a place to do business within that society. If they don’t then, by the rules of the social contract, contractarianism, their actions will be deemed ethically bad, and they shall be burned at the proverbial stake.

It is hard to find someone who would say that anything society related is not the problem of businesses and that they should just focus on money, but they may be out there. I understand that this argument will agree with many things that Friedman has suggested. In this case, Equifax should just be interested in how many times they can sell your credit information for money. Society would not agree with this. If it did, there wouldn’t be so many cyber related events taking place around how companies should handle, protect, and control our data when they have collected it. The social contract is changing with new technologies and views of what is important to people. Executives, especially in organizations that we have no choice but to be involved with, should be making their best effort to figure out what society is requiring of them. When they can figure that out and follow those implicit rules, society will accept them. Actions based on that social contract, following the contractarianism theory, will inherently be ethically good.

                Sourour was faced with a situation that was a test of what his ethical values were. Though he did not realize that he was in this dilemma at the time, he later realized that he had made the incorrect choice. He created a website that was supposed to just be informational, and he was told to add a quiz onto it for teenage girls to find the right medication for themselves. While coding he found out that the code the client wanted told the user that the client’s medication was the right one for them, no matter what the answers were on the quiz. We can see that there was an underlying agreement among the people working on the project to just do what the client wanted and get the job done. You can see this when someone questioned him about the quiz and then just said “oh, ok” when he told them it was what the client requested. Though at the time this was ok among the people working on the coding, or at least no one voiced any problems with it, I am sure we can agree that the method of the client was shady. Even if it was not illegal, society would agree that it is ethically wrong to lead teenage girls to a medication that has harmful side effects from a fake quiz on a website that is supposed to just give you useful information. It is that unspoken contract that it is not morally right to trick people into buying something they don’t need, especially children, especially if that item can be harmful, that makes this a poor ethical decision. In this Case Analysis, I will argue that contractarianism shows us that the code was morally problematic because of the negative impact on teenage girls, and that Sourour should have been more aware of how his code might affect end users.

                I think that the most important edict of all the codes is not to do harm to others and hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public. You can find this wording in all three of the codes of ethics. Not only does it just make sense that in whatever you do, you do not want to bring harm to others, but it also sheds light on the relationship that one must have with society, the public, when creating something. There is a genuine relationship between creators, or engineers, and the end user of what they create. The engineer can no longer create a code just for the beauty of creating the code, there must be some part of it that may contribute to society and the welfare and well-being of humanity. With this is mind, it is hard to give Sourour any ground to stand on. What he created went on to harm many individuals, most of which were still considered children in the eyes of the law. This may even come to harm the government of his country for them not controlling the information being put out by pharmaceutical companies on their websites. Not only did Sourour not think about the end use of his code being shady and near illegal, but he aided a company in breaching the social contract. Society tells that these things that harm the safety, health, and welfare of society are wrong. Therefore, contractarianism says this is an ethically wrong choice. He made the wrong choice, ethically, in creating the code and allowing his client to use it for their own capitalization through nefarious means, all the while hurting innocent people in the process.

Another code that is part of all three codes of ethics is that the person in question should conduct themselves honorably and ethically. This is a little bit more difficult because honor is one of those things with various degrees and many different takes depending on many factors of the individual. Wars of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, were fought by soldiers that were seeking honor in their fight and in their death. Many hackers find honor in their fight to release information on companies and governments that they seem to be hiding. It is a loaded word when talking about it in terms of being ethically correct. I think that Sourour was not informed enough or was still too “wet behind the ears” to understand the affects of what he created. Ignorance does not free him from the unethical decision he made with a “hindsight is 20/20” lens. Was he, in his ignorance, working honorably for the company that had hired him and trusted his work? I do believe that since the event he has done the honorable thing and left that client. He has also told his story to many so they may not make the same mistakes he did. Through his shame, something that betters his industry and contributes to society has arisen.

I find it interesting that the three codes of ethics, documents telling the employee how to act ethically, just tell them to go ahead and act ethically. Ethically by which approach? If we are looking at this situation from a contractarianism perspective, then Sourour did both unethical and ethical work. His code that harmed people in his society and that the social contract would say was wrong to create was unethical. His aftereffect of taking his experience and sharing it with others to better his field and lead to less of the same mistakes is ethical. If Sourour looked at his choice to create the code or not through John Rawls’s revision of contractarianism, he would have never made the code. If he knew that the outcome of his code was to make more people take a drug that was unquestionably harmful, and that he could be one of those people with an unlucky roll of the dice, he would of thought much harder about that shady code implementation. He would know that he wouldn’t want to be one of those unlucky people and his choice to make the code would have been swayed.

                Armstrong is mainly talking about the right to confidentiality and when and how we can ethically infringe upon that prima facie principles. This differs by type of professional and the amount of harm that can be done by keeping that confidentiality. Armstrong’s states that “…the interests of the client or patient… is pitted against the interests of others in society (or even society itself) who may be harmed if confidentiality is kept.” Is this not contractarianism? She also talks about a professional’s natural interest in advancing public interest. Though keeping the status quo of full confidentiality for clients used to be in the public’s best interest, society has begun to realize that this is not always the case. Policy makers have begun to understand that with this information age, some infringements on confidentiality are required to “not case harm”  or to “prevent harm.” That harm is to the public by something a professional creates for their client. According to Childress, there are requirements that must be met before infringing upon one of these principles, such as confidentiality. I will not go into them in this paper, but one must look at what society thinks about the harm that may come from keeping that confidentiality, and then take the proper path to fix the problem before violating the prima facie.

Sourour owed the principle of confidentiality to his client and therefore couldn’t just run and tell everyone what he was doing and how it harms them, though he didn’t really know when he implemented the code. That is, he couldn’t unless he tried all other options available to him, such as talking to his client and letting them know how he felt about the code. If he had taken the time to learn about the product he was working to help market, then he may have felt differently. He never really talked about what he was doing with the company thereafter except that he was still in litigations with users of the drug. Did he decide to break confidentiality and tell some higher authority what the company had him create? If he did, would that have been an ethically correct answer? This can partially be answered by a chart created by Beauchamp and Childress weighing the Probability of Harm with the Magnitude of Harm. I believe that marketing a drug to teenagers would drastically increase the probability and suicide would be a high magnitude of harm. Therefore, this chart would aid in backing up a decision by Sourour to break the confidentiality and essentially be a whistleblower. This is assuming that he took the correct steps with the client when he created the software, which he did not. Further into Armstrong’s paper, she talks about how engineers concluded that “…the public’s safety, health and welfare is a higher duty than any other, conflicting, prima facie duty.” With all this backing for Sourour to make an ethically sound choice, he still went ahead with making the code without giving it a second thought. This, without-a-doubt, makes his choice unethical.

Ignorance does not free you of your duties and responsibilities as a professional. Sourour is trying his best now to remedy his mistake and help others not make the same one. He even updated the article to include that he is a follower of the 2018 ACM Code of Ethics. This does not change the fact that he broke his social contract and failed society with the creation of his code. There are many options Sourour could have used to infringe upon the prima facie and do the morally right thing for society. Had he known about all of codes of ethics he may have been able to make a more ethically and morally correct decision through their guidance. Though his choice was unethical, and he is probably still paying for it one way or another, he was able to learn from it and move on to make more ethical choices and have a more positive impact on society.