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Regulating Invisible Harms

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Book cover Innovating Government

Part of the book series: Information Technology and Law Series ((ITLS,volume 20))

Abstract 

In the fairly standard account, IDM is also sometimes referred to as ‘Access Management.’ In this sense it controls the access and restrictions of ‘identities’ (individuals as well as groups) to their rights, entitlements, opportunities, and accountabilities. In its most elaborate form, IDM encompasses the total of all means necessary in an organization or structure for electronic data processing, including user names, preferences, and access to services and applications. There is however, a related, but broader sense in which IDM can be read, and that is the sense I am alluding to in this chapter. It also affects the registration and identification of persons; in this sense IDM is concerned with the collection of identity related data and the management hereof. 

Contribution received in 2010.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Jeroen van den Hoven also mentions Goldman and Thagard’s work in connection with the Internet in van den Hoven 2000, p. 144.

  2. 2.

    Below this point it may compete with other epistemic practices.

  3. 3.

    What we have not discussed here regarding efficiency is the term 'true' in its definition; however, this will be discussed below when we speak of the reliability of the acquired information.

  4. 4.

    This is especially relevant in open infrastructures such as the Internet, and perhaps to a lesser extent in secured infrastructures used for e-government; nonetheless, the entering, monitoring, review, and linking of information leads to similar issues concerning the quality of information.

  5. 5.

    Cf., Laslett and Fishkin 1992 and Page 2006b.

  6. 6.

    For challenging cases on this topic, e.g., resource depletion and the unborn child of a 14-year old cf., Parfit 1987. See also Cohen 2009 for a discussion of claims to compensation for a wrong that was also a condition of a person’s existence.

  7. 7.

    To quote Derek Parfit 1987, p. 361: ‘It may help to think about this question: how many of us could truly claim, 'Even if railways and motor cars had not been invented, I would still have been born?’.

  8. 8.

    van den Hoven 2000, p. 153 mentions Feinberg’s notion of accumulative harm in ‘The Internet and Varieties of Moral Wrongdoing.’

  9. 9.

    This example was borrowed from Andrew Kernohan, who uses it in his book Liberalism, Equality, and Cultural Oppression to point to the differences in act- and rule- utilitarian thought in attending to this problem. See Kernohan 1998, p. 78.

  10. 10.

    Cf., Anomaly 2009, pp. 423–435.

  11. 11.

    Examples used by Feinberg 1984.

  12. 12.

    Cf., Moohr 2003, pp. 731–784.

  13. 13.

    Cf., Alldridge 2001, pp. 279–319.

  14. 14.

    Interestingly, if we revisit what was said about free-riders in Sect. 5.1, we find that the issue of free-riders, understood as an example of accumulative harm, does not only fuel the identification of citizens and therefore the deployment of technologies such as IDM; in fact, IDM brings on a certain type of accumulative harm itself. Thanks to Sabine Roeser for pointing this out to me.

  15. 15.

    For an appraisal of world population control policies, cf., Connelly 2008.

  16. 16.

    Another discipline where this can be clearly seen is game theory, which holds the basic assumption that players can be identified; there is no point in studying the behavior of unknown players.

  17. 17.

    According to Feinberg 1984, we must distinguish between a non-normative notion of harm as a setback to interests, and a normative notion of harm as a wrong. Yet in Harm to Others he offers a definition of harm as ‘a wrongful set-back to other people's interests’ in which he conflates both conceptions, i.e., setbacks to others’ interests that are wrongs at the same time. For a critical discussion on this topic cf., Hurd 1994, pp. 210–213, and Stewart 2001, pp. 47–67.

  18. 18.

    Thanks to Jeroen van den Hoven for this useful analogy.

  19. 19.

    For frameworks included under this heading cf., ‘Design for Values’, Jean Camp, (n.d.), ‘Values at Play’, Flanagan et al. 2005; Flanagan et al. 2008, and Friedman et al. 2002.

  20. 20.

    For many purposes, a combination of minimum information and minimum technology is sufficient. A successful example is the project ‘Verwijsindex Risicojongeren’ (VIR). It is part of a Dutch national information system meant to provide insight to different care providers regarding each other’s involvement concerning a particular adolescent. For more information see http://www.verwijsindex.nl/ (available only in Dutch). What makes it a success is that there is no centralized and permanent database; the technology in question only supports the collaboration between associated parties for a clearly confined purpose.

  21. 21.

    For an account of harm on the basis of information cf., van den Hoven 2008, pp. 306–308.

Abbreviations

IDM:

Identity Management Technology

VCD:

Value-Conscious Design

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. 3TU Centre for Ethics and Technology, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Noëmi Manders-Huits

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  1. Noëmi Manders-Huits
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Correspondence to Noëmi Manders-Huits .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Tilburg Institute for Law Technology and, Tilburg University, Warandelaan 2, Tilburg, 5037 AB, Netherlands

    Simone van der Hof

  2. , Faculty of Law, Department of Public Law, Leiden University, Faculty of Law, Depar, Kamerlingh Onnes Gebouw, Steenschuur 25, Leiden, 2311 ES, Netherlands

    Marga M. Groothuis

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© 2011 T.M.C. ASSER PRESS, The Hague, The Netherlands, and the authors 2011

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Manders-Huits, N. (2011). Regulating Invisible Harms. In: van der Hof, S., Groothuis, M. (eds) Innovating Government. Information Technology and Law Series, vol 20. T.M.C. Asser Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-6704-731-9_5

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