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Ethical Implications of ICT Implants

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Human ICT Implants: Technical, Legal and Ethical Considerations

Part of the book series: Information Technology and Law Series ((ITLS,volume 23))

Abstract

This chapter focuses on a variety of ethical implications of ICT implants. We will explain how different ethical implications arise from different types of implants, depending on the context in which they are used. After a first assessment of what is at stake, we will briefly discuss the Opinion 20 of the European Group on Ethics of Science and New Technologies as published in 2005. We will extend the scope of discussion by tracing the ethical implications for democracy and the Rule of Law, considering the use of implants for the repair as well as the enhancement of human capabilities. Finally, we will refer to a set of EU research projects that investigate the relevant ethical implications.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ethics is a sub-discipline of philosophy. For an overview of approaches in the field of Computer Ethics see Bynum 2001.

  2. 2.

    The deontological perspective derives from Kant’s ethical position, which implies adherence to moral rules that apply even if the consequences of their application are problematic. The moral imperative overrules other considerations. This perspective is focused on the individual choice of a rational person. Methodological individualism also inspires the consequentialist ethics derived from Bentham’s utilitarian position, meaning that choices are based on a rational calculation of costs and benefits. Virtue ethics builds on an Aristotelian understanding of human flourishing and excellence, suggesting that we should find the Golden Mean when developing our character, for example the mean of courage between cowardice and recklessness.

  3. 3.

    Bynum 2006.

  4. 4.

    Cf. e.g. Nissenbaum 2004; Hildebrandt and Gutwirth 2008.

  5. 5.

    Rodotà and Capurro 2005.

  6. 6.

    Want 2008.

  7. 7.

    See Chap. 10.

  8. 8.

    We do not want to restrict the analysis to ‘standard’ ICT implants which are typically considered to be small or even tiny, like RFID implants. We do not want to exclude entire body parts nor nanosized ICT items from this discussion. Neither do we restrict the discussion to invisible or to intangible implants. After all, what would visibility mean to a human being augmented by say, X-ray vision, or RFID reading capabilities, etc.?

  9. 9.

    See for example FIDIS deliverable D12.3 ‘A Holistic Privacy Framework for RFID Applications’ (Fischer-Hübner and Hedbom 2007). In this context, one might be interested to look at the general discussion on how ethical responses to new challenging and revolutionary techniques might be developed (Moor 2005).

  10. 10.

    See, for example, Chaps. 3 and 5.

  11. 11.

    Halperin et al. 2008.

  12. 12.

    Halperin et al. 2008, p 34, citing Venkatasubramanian and Gupta 2007.

  13. 13.

    See for example Hildebrandt and Gutwirth 2008 for the implications of data aggregation and profiling, and Chap. 9 for a legal analysis.

  14. 14.

    Clearly, there are people who disagree with this opinion, for example due to religious views, etc.

  15. 15.

    Note that such wireless communication is not the future but the state of the art in pacemakers which operate in the 402- to 405-MHz band, with 250 Kbps bandwidth and have a read range up to five metres (Halperin et al. 2008, p 32).

  16. 16.

    Compare, for instance, the case of the vaccination of small children in their first 3 years. Nowadays, vaccination for only one disease is not possible in Switzerland or very hard to get. This means that as a ‘client’ you are forced to have the combined vaccination (typically three of them), hence progress diminishes your choices.

  17. 17.

    C.f Hildebrandt and Gutwirth 2008.

  18. 18.

    See: “The Anatomy of Prejudice, A blog about real and perceived prejudice,” May 22, 2006, available at http://wallsmirrors.blogspot.com/2006/05/deafness-is-not-disability-argumentum.html.

  19. 19.

    See: “NAD Position Statement on Cochlear Implants (2000),” NAD Cochlear Implant Committee, approved by the NAD Board of Directors on October 6, 2000, available at http://www.nad.org/issues/technology/assistive-listening/cochlear-implants.

  20. 20.

    See: “The Cochlear Implant Controversy,” CBS Sundary Morning 2nd June 1998, available at: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1998/06/02/sunday/main10794.shtml.

  21. 21.

    Warwick 2003, and Garreau 2005.

  22. 22.

    This section builds partly on work of P. Rotter, R. Compañó and B. Daskala from IPTS, partly also published in Rotter et al. 2008 .

  23. 23.

    Perakslis and Wolk 2006.

  24. 24.

    CapGemini ‘RFID and Consumers—What European Consumers Think About Radio Frequency Identification and the Implications for Business’ (2005), available at http://www.ca.capgemini.com/DownloadLibrary/requestfile.asp?ID=450. This study has been conducted in Europe (UK, France, Germany, The Netherlands) in Nov. 2004 by means of an Internet panel. Responses were made by more than 2,000 persons over 18 years. Among the goals of the study were the understanding of consumers’ awareness and concerns with regard to RFID, their willingness to purchase RFID-enabled products and the importance of the corresponding potential benefits from RFID-technology.

  25. 25.

    For more information see Rotter et al. 2008.

  26. 26.

    Rotter et al. 2008.

  27. 27.

    Rotter et al. 2008.

  28. 28.

    In this context, it is interesting to see that ethical questions with respect to implants and enhancements of animals are getting more into the public focus. In Switzerland for example, recently a corresponding report (Ferrari et al. 2010) was published, commissioned by the ‘Eidgenössische Ethikkommission für Biotechnologie im Ausserhumanbereich’ (the Swiss federal commission on ethics for bio-technology in the non-human context). This report was also discussed in ‘Die Technisierung der Tiere’ (M. Hofmann) published in a widely read newspaper in Switzerland (NZZ Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 30.12.2010, p 11).

  29. 29.

    Wood 2006.

  30. 30.

    Some limited and specialised use cases may require that the user cannot fully control the implant and its communication, taking note of the usual exceptions of Articles 6, 7 and especially 8 of the Data Protection Directive. A special example would be the tracking of prisoners using ICT implants, which would clearly require that the prisoner should not be able to change the functionality of the implant. Note that this example would have to be based on the monopoly on legitimate force of the state (German ‘Gewaltmonopol’), which requires a number of safeguards as specified in Articles 5 and 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights (apart from the applicability of the right to privacy in Article 8). In fact the idea of using implants to track offenders seems an offence to human dignity.

  31. 31.

    For a discussion on ethical aspects with respect to RFID tags see Fischer-Hübner and Hedbom 2007.

  32. 32.

    Sotto 2005, UK RFID Council 2006.

  33. 33.

    Association for Computing Machinery ACM, ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, (Adopted by ACM Council 10/16/92), available at http://www.acm.org/constitution/code.html. The British Computer Society, British Computer Society Code of Conduct, 2001, http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/conduct.pdf. For a large collection of codes of ethics and conduct see Berleur and Brunnstein 1996.

  34. 34.

    For an overview of these two codes see Fischer-Hübner and Hedbom 2007, p 34ff.

  35. 35.

    Fawcett 1994.

  36. 36.

    See different FIDIS deliverables, for example Cvrček and Matyáš 2007, Kumpošt et al. 2007, Müller and Wohlgemuth 2007, Fischer-Hübner and Hedbom 2007, Sprokkereef and Koops 2009.

  37. 37.

    Weber 2006, p 14.

  38. 38.

    Hildebrandt and Koops 2007 and 2010.

  39. 39.

    Halperin et al. 2008, p 31ff.

  40. 40.

    Warwick 2003, p 131.

  41. 41.

    In this context the question arises: what does ‘belong’ to its own body? To what extent can ICT implants—which may be manufactured and even still owned by some company—be considered as belonging to one’s body?

  42. 42.

    See for example Halperin et al. 2008.

  43. 43.

    Warwick 2003, p 131. This merging of human and machine might go on in the direction of merging humans to some extent by connecting their nervous systems through electronic channels (cf. also below). This can question the ‘boundaries’ of the concept of a person; cf. also Jaquet-Chiffelle 2006, Koops and Jaquet-Chiffelle 2008.

  44. 44.

    Warwick 2003, p 134.

  45. 45.

    Clearly, one could start here discussing cyborg morals, ethics and the like. For this, we refer to Warwick 2003 as a starting point for further discussion and literature.

  46. 46.

    For aspects concerning social acceptance see Sect. 11.2.5.

  47. 47.

    See also the discussion in the following sections.

  48. 48.

    Warwick 2003, p 131.

  49. 49.

    Rodotà and Capurro 2005.

  50. 50.

    Cf. Hansson 2005 which aims to provide a more or less systematic overview of what is at stake.

  51. 51.

    Cf. Hildebrandt and Gutwirth 2008, Chaps. 14 and 15.

  52. 52.

    Cf. Garreau, Chap. 2 ‘Be All You Can Be.’

  53. 53.

    For an intriguing narrative about creating and using a set of human beings as a resource of ‘fresh organs’ we refer to Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go (2005).

  54. 54.

    These devices are in still in development, see for general information: http://www.devicelink.com/mpmn/archive/07/07/015.html and http://www.memsinvestorjournal.com/2006/08/mems_packaging_.html, and e.g. on drug delivery: http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/19784/and on MEMS used to ‘train’ cyborg-insects: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=571.

  55. 55.

    Warwick 2003.

  56. 56.

    For first steps in this direction see for example Warwick’s experiments with a 100-electrode array implanted in the nerves of his arm, see above and Gasson et al. 2005.

  57. 57.

    See Jaquet-Chiffelle 2006, Koops and Jaquet-Chiffelle 2008.

  58. 58.

    Hildebrandt and Meints 2006, Hildebrandt and Koops 2007.

  59. 59.

    Agre and Rotenberg 2001, p 7.

  60. 60.

    See Hildebrandt 2009b.

  61. 61.

    Moore’s law, formulated in 1965: ‘the complexity of ‘minimum cost semiconductor components’ doubles once a year, every year, since the first microchip had been produced 6 years before,’ see Garreau 2005, at p 49.

  62. 62.

    See at European Commission CORDIS, cf. http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7 and http://cordis.europa.eu/fp6.

  63. 63.

    ETHICSBOTS (cf. http://ethicbots.na.infn.it, project duration 2005–2008), amongst whose goals was ‘to identify and analyse techno-ethical issues concerned with the integration of human beings and artificial entities, […] to establish a techno-ethically aware community of researchers, […] on the subject of techno-ethical issues emerging from current investigations on the interaction between biological and artificial (software/hardware) entities.’ (from http://ethicbots.na.infn.it/goals.php). ETHICSBOTS produced deliverables, where we would like to especially mention deliverable D5, and therein Sect. 3.2 Ethics of Brain Computer Interface Technologies: ‘[…] in connection with ICT implants in the human body involving interfacing with information and robotic systems, more extensive studies are recommended, which take as starting point the 2005 EGE opinion on ICT implants in the human body, specialising and problematising the conclusions of that opinion in the context of the Ethicbots domain of investigations.’ (Capurro et al. 2008, p 145).

  64. 64.

    ICTethics (cf. http://www.ictethics.eu, project duration 2009–2012) is a project, which declares as objective that ‘There is an urgent need for a systematic analysis of the ESLA aspects of Research in ICT, of the same type as developed by the ESLA (Ethical Social and Legal Aspects) working group on biotechnology, established by the European Commission in the early 1990s.’ (http://cordis.europa.eu/search/index.cfm?fuseaction=proj.document&PJ_LANG=EN&PJ_RCN=10728181).

  65. 65.

    ETICA (http://www.etica-project.eu, project duration 2009–2011) is a project that ‘[…] will identify emerging Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and their potential application areas in order to analyse and evaluate ethical issues arising from these.’ (http://www.etica-project.eu/ → ‘About the project’) This project presents a brief overview of the ethical issues in the so-called field of Neuroelectronics (Rader 2007, p 70ff), a special version of the ICT implants discussed here.

  66. 66.

    EGAIS (http://www.egais-project.eu, project duration 2009–2012) is a project that ‘investigates how ethical reflexivity could be integrated into the research and technology development culture of EU research, so that these considerations become a more natural part of the evaluation and technical development process. It aims to provide guidance to stakeholders in general that will lead towards a coherent and cohesive approach to achieving ethical design outcomes from projects—an approach that begins with the proposal design and continues throughout the project.’ (http://www.egais-project.eu/?q=node/4).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Smart Environments, Data Protection and the Rule of Law, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Mireille Hildebrandt

  2. Department of Jurisprudence, Erasmus School of Law, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Mireille Hildebrandt

  3. Law Science Technology and Society, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Brussels, Belgium

    Mireille Hildebrandt

  4. Division of Computer Science, RISIS Research Institute for Security in the Information Society, Bern University of Applied Sciences, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland

    Bernhard Anrig

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  1. Mireille Hildebrandt
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Correspondence to Mireille Hildebrandt .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading, Redhatch Dr, Earley, Reading, RG6 6AY, Berkshire, United Kingdom

    Mark N. Gasson

  2. , ICRI, KU Leuven, St. Michielsstraat 6, Leuven, B-3000, Belgium

    Eleni Kosta

  3. , Risk Science Centre, University of Michigan, Washington Heights 1420, Ann Arbor, 48109-2029, Michigan, USA

    Diana M. Bowman

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Hildebrandt, M., Anrig, B. (2012). Ethical Implications of ICT Implants. In: Gasson, M., Kosta, E., Bowman, D. (eds) Human ICT Implants: Technical, Legal and Ethical Considerations. Information Technology and Law Series, vol 23. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague, The Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-6704-870-5_11

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