A Critical Review On Technology, Individual Rights Essay

Asiata, Lanre-Abass Bolatito. “Technology, individual rights and the ethical evaluation of risk.” Journal of Information, Communication & Ethics in Society 8.4 (2010): 828-840. Web. 10 Mar, 2012.

Scope

To date, many social, political and legal issues are raising due to the effects on technology to human beings such as closed circuit television (CCTV) and nuclear power plants. Moreover, CCTV and nuclear power plants carry the risk of infringing on people’s right to privacy and security, respectively. Nuclear power plant is believed to produce tons of deadly waste, since it involves taking a poisonous substance and turning it into many times more poisonous waste. This makes the disposal of radioactive waste a major problem with nuclear waste. Therefore, nuclear energy raises fundamental questions relating to the rights to security of the individual. Similarly, government security devices such as the CCTV and other surveillance cameras, both visible and invisible, also infringe on the right to privacy of many. Although many people evaluate CCTV as a technology that reduces crime, its effectiveness varies with offender perception, type of crime, attentiveness of the camera monitors and other factors.

This paper, entitled “Technology, individual rights and the ethical evaluation of risk” gives an explanation of CCTV and nuclear power plants as examples of technological devices which impose risk on members of a society and consequently infringe on people’s rights to privacy and security. This paper also examined how ethical theories, such as communalism and liberal individualism, would evaluate risk-imposition and the resultant consequence of right-infringement. It argued that consent is not enough to justify risk-imposition and right-infringement.

Objectives

i. To examine the risk arising from technological devices, such as closed circuit television (CCTV) and nuclear power plants.
ii. To examine the consequent effects of CCTV and nuclear power plants...