From the consolidation of the application of European data protection regulations and the recent adoption of Brazilian data protection regulations, we are faced with a scenario that crosses borders. In a world marked by companies whose business model is the analysis and commercialization of personal data and of governments that use their citizens' data for control and surveillance, it is imperative to discuss the necessary characteristics to foster a society that respects ethical and legal values regarding data privacy and consented uses there; the authors address concepts and cases that they consider important for the establishment of reflections on the use of web data. They also take into account ethical issues and regulatory instruments in Europe and Brazil, analyzing the strongness and weaknesses in the implementation of data protection and privacy.
TopThe subject in question necessarily calls for an analysis here enunciated from the ethical plane. And if we place ourselves on this plane, we can begin by emphasizing the importance of Multiculturality or the impossibility of a universal Ethics covering all peoples and continents, because Homo Sapiens is one as a living being, but diverse as a social and cultural being.
Rafael Capurro (Capurro, 2010; 11-51) and Adela Cortina (Cortina, 2009) are authors who emphasize Multicultural Ethics or minimal Ethics, alerting to the presence of a core of values and principles transversal to different environments and contexts, which they weigh heavily in the reconfiguration, adaptation and particularization of the universal and the creation of customs and norms with full meaning and strength at the local (ized) level.
At the top of the problems that are methodologically and instrumentally addressed by Information Science and which are also viewed reflexively by Information Ethics is that of freedom of expression and critical choice of information. A central topic that Information Science investigates by exploring the conditions of production and behavioral use of information; Information Ethics weighs cultural specificities, without losing sight of the fact that freedom is a fundamental right and a central principle of anthropocentric ethics. So, it imposes itself as universal, and this universality brings with it the counterpoint that its exercise is only limited by respect unavoidable equal right of the Other. But the full awareness of the centrality of this principle must be accompanied by the critical sense of each individual, that is, by a medium and, preferably, high level of literacy.
A related topic has to do with oppression, submission, manipulation of people - acts that violate human dignity. They appear evidenced in Information Science research. But it is to the Ethics of Information that the topic matters and, currently, acutely, because it seems to make sense again the concept proposed in the century XVI, by Étienne de la Boétie of “voluntary submission”, given the hegemonic and “imperialist” behavior of the falsely called “social networks”, that is, the digital platforms Facebook, Instagram, Twiter and Google.