On a Tuesday in august, 2005, 17.000 people received, unasked, a text message from the police. The reason they received this text message was the nearness of their mobile phones to the football station ‘de Kuip’ in april, 2005, during some uproars. The day after 12 hooligans reported themselves to the police and the bulk of the Dutch people were enthusiastic about this new way of crime control. Not only the Dutch police is using this system, also in Belgium, and outside Europe, people with a mobile phone are texted if they were within a 10 km radius of the crime [Expactica, 2006].
After WO II International laws on human rights were developed which state that humans have the right of freedom, without being constantly watched by the government. 50 Years later, however, many people seem to have forgotten these laws and say things like ‘someone who has nothing to hide, has nothing to fear of’. But is this correct? If the police can trace your mobile phone and can locate every place were you have been and based on this information sends you text messages and can even treat you as a suspect, do you still have nothing to fear of? More important for this course is, however, the question if it is not immoral to desecrate your privacy, even if it can help crime control?
Personally, I think it is immoral for the police to save 4 years of internet and telephone data of innocent European Citizens, including data about the locations of your mobile phone, for crime control. It is against your privacy rights and in this case illegal is also immoral.
http://www.bof.nl/docs/opiniesmsactie.pdf
http://www.expatica.com/nl/news/local_news/police-seek-belgians-after-child-abduction-bids-31196.html
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4 comments:
I must disagree, since it is also the job of the police and the government to protect the people. Thereby they are at least acting with a moral motive. On the other side, the government is not permitted to watch at the data and phone locations they stored unless they have permission from the court. To get permission from the court they have to have good arguments and probable cause that the information they will be watching will help solve a crime.
459783
I think that this case is an example of a morally hard case. This because there are good moral reasons to use the phone numbers of the inhabitants, so the police can fulfill their duty to create a save country. But there are also enough moral reasons that defend the fact that you cannot use someone’s phone number, since then you harm a person’s privacy. Therefore, whatever the police decided to do, it would always have caused questions that deal with morality.
In this case I think that the police have made a good decision, since I think it is important to live in a save country. They used the information of the inhabitants with a moral motive and not just for for example commercial goals, therefore I think this action can be justified.
I disagree with the fact that the police is acting immoral. The police will only use these data when it could definitely help to solve a crime. Otherwise, these data will be used. So, if you are behaving correctly and you are not a defendant, you don’t have to complain about privacy problems, because then nobody will track where you have been or who you have called. I think the two arguments, privacy and police rights, should be compared to get a final result. The right of the police, and thereby the safety of all inhabitants outweighs the possible privacy aspect. It is only for your own safety that those data is stored, so that crimes can be solved and violent people go into prison. Most of the data will never be looked at, so the privacy problem is not that large. Therefore, the police is acting morally right.
s289233
The point here being made, which is more important: the safety of people or the privacy of people. There are good moral reasons for both of them, so it can be stated that this is a moral hard case.
In my opinion the safety is more important. Who cares if his phone is being tapped for security matters? The police will only use the phonecalls if privacy if it exceeds legal proceedings. I wouldn't care if my phone is tapped, as long as criminals can be arrested more easily. I think the safety of people is much more important than the privacy right.
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