Law and Technological Developments
Justin Ellsworth's parents should not have been given access to his e-mail correspondence. Notwithstanding the court order, Yahoo!'s decision to disclose Mr. Ellsworth's e-mail to his parents seriously compromises privacy rights and is not supported under either a utilitarian or deontological moral framework.
The Utilitarian Perspectives
According to West (2004), "[u]tilitarianism is the ethical theory that the production of happiness and reduction of unhappiness should be the standard by which actions are judged right or wrong and by which the rules of morality, laws, public policies, and social institutions are to be critically evaluated" (p. 1). Stated differently, "the rightness of actions is to be judged by their consequences" (Smart, 1956, p. 344). Accordingly, in Mr. Ellsworth's case, a utilitarian must ask whether disclosing his e-mail -- e-mail that was protected from disclosure by an explicit privacy policy -- is justified by the consequences. We do not know the long-term consequences from a court-ordered disclosure of correspondence to next-of-kin; in the short-term, however, online bloggers and others lamented Yahoo!'s decision (Leach, 2005, p. 12). The apparent "consequences" of Yahoo!'s actions, as seen by these individuals, is that one's privacy is no longer safe, even if it bears the indicia of a privacy policy. These viewpoints are not without merit. Indeed, from an extreme utilitarian point-of-view, one may argue that Yahoo!'s actions undermine the very essence of the privacy policy between the user and the company....
Justin Ellsworth Many for are uneasy with the rapid pace of changing technology in today's contemporary environment. There are now issues to whether or not information sent through these technologies is safe in terms of privacy concerns. For example, there is the case of Justin Ellsworth who died serving the country at war; yet whose parents demanded access to his e-mail. Ellsworth's information should still be protected under Internet privacy
2005, John Ellsworth, father of deceased soldier Justin Ellsworth, made national news when he asked to be granted access to his deceased son's e-mails. Twenty-year-old Justin had been killed in Fallujah on November 13, 2004, by a roadside bomb. The least, Mr. Ellsworth could do, the father felt, was to collect these e-mails that his son had written whilst in Iraq and fashion them into some sort of memorial.
Email Privacy Times change and so do social institutions. When the laws protecting our privacy were originally drafted there was not even the notion of email. Such a concept was so futuristic as to be well beyond the most imaginative of the Founding Fathers. Today, however, emails have become a regular course of communication between members of society and, as such, they deserve attention. Do they fall within our expectation of
Essentially, by taking such a strong stance against breaking their own regulations, even in cases of death, Yahoo! was upholding utilitarian principles in order to benefit the community as a whole. Thus, the company was focused on upholding a commitment to privacy for all of its members. It was unfortunate that Justin Ellsworth lost his life in the line of battle, but that could not jeopardize the promise Yahoo!
Taken in isolation, consequentialist ethics would dictate that Yahoo allow the parents access to Mr. Ellsworth's email. However, in today's legal environment, such actions cannot reasonably be taken in isolation. If Yahoo sets a precedent, they will be asked to release this information time and again in this circumstance. They would also need to defend against abuse of this by demanding proof of death, and other such burdening verifications. While
Privacy Justin Ellsworth's parents should not have been given access to his e-mail account on their request alone, as it would have violated nearly every privacy act in existence at the time of the case, the Yahoo agreement terms with Justin, and set a dangerous precedence for invasion of digital assets of the deceased. Yahoo relented and only provided the e-mail account access on court order, which preserved the digital
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