Digital Earth Ethics

Abstract

Digital Earth scholars have recently argued for a code of ethics to protect individuals' location privacy and human dignity. In this chapter, we contribute to the debate in two ways. First, we focus on (geo)privacy because information about an individual's location is substantially different from other personal information. The compound word (geo)privacy suggests that location can be inferred from people's interests, activities, and sociodemographics, not only from traditional geographic coordinates. (Geo)privacy is a claim of individuals to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent location information about them is communicated to others. Second, we take an interdisciplinary perspective. We draw from (geo)computing to describe the transformation of volunteered, observed, and inferred information and suggest privacy-preserving measures. We also draw from organization studies to dissect privacy into ideal types of social relationships and privacy-preserving strategies. We take the point of view of Alice, an individual 'data subject' encountered in data protection legislation, and suggest ways to account for privacy as a sociocultural phenomenon in the future. Although most of the discussion refers to the EU and the US, we provide a brief overview of data protection legislation on the African continent and in China as well as various global and regional ethics guidelines that are of very recent vintage.

Earth Observation Applications and the Right to Privacy: Within and Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The traditional theories for international space law, private international law, and international human rights law are examined in relation to whether they can be applied to issues concerning EO applications and how they can be coordinated during the implementation. The interpretation of these legal sources shall accord with the balance between public interests in EO applications and values of privacy protection (Georgiadou & Kounadi, 2020).…”

Ethical challenges of researching emergent socio-material-technological phenomena: insights from an interdisciplinary mixed-methods project using mobile eye-tracking

“…After all, privacy is a basic right, to be carefully protected. Neglecting it can cause harm as well as distrust of technology which also would limit the actual potential technology could have (Georgiadou et al, 2020). On the one hand, it, thus, seemed ethically appropriate in our case to make passers-by aware of the recordings that were to happen, for example, by putting up signs informing passers-by that we were conducting studies in the parks.…”

Trends in The Adoption of New Geospatial Technologies for Spatial Planning and Land Management in 2021

“…There are several discourses about the use of artificial intelligence in the context of compliance and enforcement. Whilst some applaud its use, for example for the managing and enforcement of conservation and maintaining public spatial restrictions (Fang et al, 2019) , others warn for certain types of misuse (Maas, 2019;Hoffmann-Riem, 2020) and the need for more ethical considerations (Georgiadou et al, 2020). Despite the fact that geospatial data are now directly uploaded through mobile platforms and active sensors, the mere existence of data does not necessarily produce a direct benefit.…”