Table Of ContentHacking Digital Ethics
Hacking Digital Ethics
Andréa Belliger and David J. Krieger
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2021
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Copyright © Andréa Belliger and David J. Krieger 2021
The authors assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
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a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright
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British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021934704
ISBN- 13: 978- 1- 78527- 737- 5 (Hbk)
ISBN- 10: 1- 78527- 737- 5 (Hbk)
Cover image credit: James Felton Keith
This title is also available as an e- book.
CONTENTS
Series Editors’ Introduction vii
Introduction: Ethical Hacking and Hacking Ethics 1
Chapter One The Exploit 9
1.1 We Do What We Are and Not What We Ought to Do 9
1.2 Systems Theory 14
1.2.1 Principles of Systemic Order 17
1.2.2 Communication 21
1.2.3 Consequences of Luhmann’s Theory of
Communication for Morality and Ethics 23
1.2.4 Cognitive and Normative Expectations and the
Problem of Double Contingency 27
1.2.5 Symbolically Generalized Media and Functional
Differentiation 31
1.2.6 Consequences of Functional Differentiation 35
1.2.7 The Function of Morality in Modern Society 39
1.2.8 Can Society as a Whole Be Modeled as a System? 44
1.2.9 What Is the Status of Social Theory? 60
1.3 Actor- Network Theory 65
1.3.1 The Difference a Stone Makes 68
1.3.2 Information 77
Chapter Two The Breach 89
2.1 The Philosophical Mythology of Humanism 89
2.1.1 The Philosophy of Information and Information Ethics 89
2.1.2 What Is Information? 92
2.1.3 Information Ethics 98
2.1.4 The Informational Self 102
2.1.5 Privacy 113
2.2 Social Science Critique 125
2.2.1 The Modern Constitution 125
2.2.2 Critique 130
2.2.3 Platform Society 133
2.2.4 Surveillance Capitalism 142
2.3 Media Scandalization 160
2.4 Civil Society Activism 169
vi CONTENTS
Chapter Three The Redesign 187
3.1 Network Norms 187
3.1.1 Connectivity 191
3.1.2 Flow 192
3.1.3 Communication 194
3.1.4 Participation 194
3.1.5 Transparency 195
3.1.6 Authenticity 196
3.1.7 Flexibility 199
3.2 Network Governance 202
3.2.1 The Three Disruptions 203
3.2.2 Governance 204
3.3 Design 213
3.3.1 Attribution of Moral Agency and Responsibility 216
3.3.2 Case Study: Google’s Framework for Internal
Algorithmic Auditing 234
3.3.3 What Is Design? 240
3.4 Digital Ethics 243
Bibliography 257
Index 265
SERIES EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
Hacking Digital Ethics
As lead editors, we are excited to write this introduction to Belliger and Krieger’s Hacking
Digital Ethics, the second authored volume in the Anthem Press Ethics of Personal Data
Collection Series. We appreciate ongoing cooperation with the acquisitions editor
Megan Greiving, whose initial communication with Colette inspired our cooperation
after speaking with the publisher Tej P. S. Sood.
The series builds on a special issue of Genocide Studies and Prevention organized by Colette
at the invitation of Professor Douglas S. Irvin-E rickson, School for Conflict Analysis
and Resolution, George Mason University, Virginia, and Yasemin Irwin- Erickson, with
funding for workshops at New York University provided by a grant from the Robert
Bosch Foundation in Stuttgart, Germany. We are most grateful to Carolin Wattenberg,
senior manager to the board of management, and Dr. Stella Voutta, program director,
at the Bosch Foundation, as well as Anda Catharina Ruf, advisor for private foundations
and philanthropy, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)
GmbH (German Corporation for International Cooperation GmbH), for their helpful
and timely assistance in Germany.
Belliger and Krieger have been at the bleeding edge of thought on ethics and tech-
nology for the past few decades. Our earliest memory relative to this series was Belliger’s
publication On Networking: A Hermeneutics for the Digital Age (2012). Our aim is to explore the
ethics of personal data collection because we identify personal data as the most micro-
scopic measure of our information state. More specifically, we understand data as the
new matter. Our expectation is for a data point to be identifiable with every piece of
physical matter. Via data we are identifying the essence of what we are. In their explo-
ration of network theory during the 2010 decade, Belliger and Krieger had to examine
the methodological interpretation of philosophical texts like those of ancient religions,
including the Abrahamic beliefs.
James recalls becoming familiar with our coauthors after giving a talk at the
Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference in 2010, sponsored by the Mormon
Transhumanist Association at the University of Utah’s Marriott Library. After a pre-
sentation titled “Integrationalism: Spiritual Disincentives for Humanity,” James was
approached by Common Ground Publishing to expand his paper into a book (published
in 2012) and was directed to Belliger’s paper. James considered that his and Belliger’s
thoughts overlapped, if only slightly, in her study of a hermeneutics for the digital era
and his use of data science to examine both popular ancient theology and modern
viii SERIES EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
religious speeches to find a central objective of spirituality. In a word cloud, connectivity
stood out among the rest of the concepts presented. Data based on the meaning of
language used over the past five thousand years has yielded versions of the word connec-
tivity. James studied spirituality to see if connections were incentivized by the spirit.
Throughout the decade, in technoprogressive communities like Humanity Plus,
the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology, Lifeboat Foundation, Singularity
University, the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, and many others, we all nur-
tured concepts like concluding the Information Age. As digital data became something
that we discovered to be coupled with all things, and information became something
that we understood existed via data, it would only be a matter of time until a new age of
knowing arrived. The revolution heralds an era in which the intangible and even spiri-
tual starts to come into view, via the network of humanity. We are excited to introduce
the original research in this manuscript to the Anthem Press Series with familiar authors.
This specific volume is rare in the authors’ effort to hack the typical methodological
approach to ethics as a scientific sect. In the context of the Anthem Press Series, Hacking
Digital Ethics expands the concepts defined in Kaliya Young’s volume, The Domains of
Identity (2020), which is rooted in a consideration of the many individuals and institutions
that might enforce one’s self- sovereignty. This volume further expands the series to con-
sider the idea pioneered by Belliger and Krieger, which is that, in a fully digital world, it is
necessary to consider the network’s or the community’s rights along with the individual’s
normalized human rights. In the context of the COVID-1 9 pandemic, we are reminded
of the ethics of contact tracing and the paradoxical potential of a community’s right to
a safe space with self- sovereign individuals wearing masks. Belliger and Krieger’s volume
is a bridge between domains of identity and a forthcoming volume edited by Mazzucelli,
Keith, and Hollifield, The Ethics of Personal Data Collection in International Relations: Inclusionism
in the Time of COVID-19. It is a bridge between the 14 domains of managed identity that
Kaliya Young presents and the redesign of 7 norms that Belliger and Krieger explain.
Personal data collection presents a unique dynamism that has not been acknowledged
in the modern literature. The reality that individuals are at their best when they identify
with a community is not at war with the reality that communities are at their best only
when they identify all of their individuals. In that regard, we insist on translating the
ethic of what Belliger and Krieger call the informational self with norms that networks- of-
humanity demand, like flexibility, authenticity, transparency, participation, communica-
tion flow, and, of course, connectivity.
At the macro-l evel in which Belliger and Krieger reason, the ethical concerns we face
require anti-s urveillance protection of a legal nature to prevent indefensible surveillance
and incessant accumulation of personal data. Only in this way will the growing power of
states to control every facet of the lives of targeted communities be held in check. It is no
longer enough to define human rights in terms of limits placed on arbitrary state power
in defense of individual freedom, as liberals do. In the second decade of the twenty-fi rst
century, billions of people across the planet are interconnected in ways that are a matter
of life and death. In a “post-p andemic world,” the survival of the human species is
dependent on connectivity, which is a core objective of spirituality. This second volume
in the series asks readers to rethink ethics in the context of the fragile community, which
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SERIES EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION ix
is composed of individuals vulnerable to surveillance capitalism as well as what John
Sexton identifies in Standing for Reason (2019) as “secular dogmatism,” which contributes
to the increasing polarization in societies. In thinking about the relevance of Hacking
Digital Ethics, throughout our world today the macro- and micro- levels connect with con-
siderable tensions in play: to counter the dangers of the surveillance capitalism Zuboff
defines (2019), as Wu explains, “A little less knowledge is what will keep us free,” whereas
to address the pitfalls of secular dogmatism, only a great deal more awareness may safe-
guard the peace in community.
We look forward to developing network partnerships, drawing on the ideas presented
by Anne- Marie Slaughter in her volume, The Chessboard & the Web (2017), with the
Institute for Communication & Leadership in Lucerne, Switzerland, where the authors
of Hacking Digital Ethics hold key positions. By developing projects with colleagues within
the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt Responsible Leaders Network, the contributors
to this series intend purposefully to exchange ideas and propose initiatives that speak to
various themes first introduced by Kaliya Young in her timely analysis.
Colette Mazzucelli, New York University, United States
James Felton Keith, Keith Institute, New York, United States
