[LINK] Iphone/iPad changes: Draft APF Policy re Location Data

[Jan Whitaker]

At 12:36 PM 9/05/2011, David Vaile wrote:

>That phrase caught my eye too. I suspect the use of "crowd-sourced" 
>here is misleading, an abuse of this cuddly term in an apparently 
>deliberate attempt to imply the crowd's knowledge and support for 
>the activity when apparently the users were unaware of the 
>collection, and thus could not have intended to support it.
>
>The crowd (of humans) played no conscious part in the collection of 
>this, yet another potentially dangerous global database of where 
>everyone's insecure WiFi access points are to be found.

This relates directly to a concept I just happened upon this morning 
on a Big Ideas story on ABC tv about moral decision-making. It's 
known as the genocide effect. When a person is asked about how they 
feel toward the case of supporting an individual child in need, the 
empathy and contribution rate is high. Increase to 2 children, and it 
reduces by 25%. Show a room full and it nearly extinguishes entirely. 
This psychological effect is why concerns for individuals in strife, 
e.g. a child down a well, is high, but an entire population can be 
exterminated in Rwanda.

The corporates know this. Attack or characterise as a group (the 
crowd source above) and they can psychologically excuse themselves 
from the damage. But if it is someone's mother/wife/son/etc., the 
psychology changes. The amorphous group isn't an individual. The 
'problem' or damage shifts to the unknown mass and the object-ive of 
the exercise, not the sub-jective effect.

My guess is that in countries where the individual is seen as the 
'centre' rather than the community or group, or where the relative 
value is the individual over the social, then this is what happens: 
Google, Facebook, MS take your pick don't see the moral problem any 
more. People become numbers, not human beings.

Jan



Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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