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Article Excerpt
Abstract. This paper is an attempt to present disclosive ethics as a framework for computer and information ethics--in line with the suggestions by Brey, but also in quite a different manner. The potential of such an approach is demonstrated through a disclosive analysis of facial recognition systems. The paper argues that the politics of information technology is a particularly powerful politics since information technology is an opaque technology--i.e. relatively closed to scrutiny. It presents the design of technology as a process of closure in which design and use decisions become black-boxed and progressively enclosed in increasingly complex socio-technical networks. It further argues for a disclosive ethics that aims to disclose the nondisclosure of politics by claiming a place for ethics in every actual operation of power--as manifested in actual design and use decisions and practices. It also proposes that disclosive ethics would aim to trace and disclose the intentional and emerging enclosure of politics from the very minute technical detail through to social practices and complex social-technical networks. The paper then proceeds to do a disclosive analysis of facial recognition systems. This analysis discloses that seemingly trivial biases in recognition rates of FRSs can emerge as very significant political acts when these systems become used in practice.
Key words: biases, disclosive ethics, facial recognition systems, false positives, information technology, politics
Introduction
It would not be controversial to claim that information technology has become ubiquitous, invading all aspects of human existence. Most everyday technologies depend on microprocessors for their ongoing operation. Most organisations have become entirely reliant on their information technology infrastructure. Indeed information technology seems to be a very cost-efficient way to solve many of the problems facing an increasingly complex society. One can almost say it has become a default technology for solving a whole raft of technical and social problems. It have become synonymous with societies view of modernisation and progress. In this paper we will consider facial recognition systems as one example of such a search for solutions.
However, this reliance on information technology also brings with it many new and different kinds of problems. In particular, for our purposes, ethical concerns of a different order. We would argue that information technology is mostly not evident, obvious, transparent or open to inspection by the ordinary everyday person affected by it (Brey 2000). It is rather obscure, subsumed and black-boxed in ways that only makes its 'surface' available for inspection. Imbedded in the software and hardware code of these systems are complex rules of logic and categorisation that may have material consequences for those using it, or for the production of social order more generally (Introna and Nissenbaum 2000; Feenberg 1999; Latour 1992). However, often these remain obscured except for those experts that designed these systems--and sometimes even not to them as we shall see in our analysis of facial recognition systems below. Simply put: they are most often closed boxes unavailable for our individual or collective inspection and scrutiny. This problem of 'closure' is made more acute by the fact that these systems are often treated as neutral tools that simply 'do the job' they were designed to do. Differently put, we do not generally attribute values and choices to tools or artefacts but rather to people. Nevertheless, Winner (1980) and Latour (1991, 1992) has shown convincingly that these tools have inscribed in them value choices that may or may not be very significant to those using them or affected by them--i.e. software programmes are political in as much as the rules of logic and categorisation they depend on reflect or included curtain interests and not others. Enclosed in these 'boxes' may be significant political programmes, unavailable or closed off from our critical and ethical gaze.
Many authors have realised this and have done a variety of analysis to disclose the particular ways in which these technologies have become enrolled in various political programmes for the production of social order (Callon 1986; Latour 1991, 1992; Law 1991). However, in this paper we would like to ask a different question--the normative or ethical question. How can we approach information technology as an ethical problem? In response to this question we will propose, in accord with Philip Brey (2000), but in a rather different way, that the first principle of an information technology ethics should be disclosure. Thus, we want to propose a form of disclosive ethics as a framework for information technology ethics. We will aim to show how this may work in doing a disclosive analysis of facial recognition systems. Thus, this paper will have three parts: First, we will discuss the question of the politics of information technology in general; second, we will present our understanding of disclosive ethics and its relation to politics; and finally, we will do a disclosive analysis of facial recognition systems.
The politics of (information) technology as closure
The process of designing technology is as much a process of closing down alternatives as it is a process of the opening up of possibilities. In order for the technology to produce its intended outcome it needs to enforce its 'scripts' on its users. Its designers has to make assumptions about users and the use context and often build these assumptions into the very materiality of their artefacts. These artefacts then function as sub-plots in larger social scripts aimed at 'making society durable'--plots (and sub-plots) that are supposed to generate durable social order in which some ways of being are privileged and others are not. It is this closure that is an implicit part of technology design and use that is of interest to us. Let us consider this closure in more detail.
The micro-politics of the artefact
Technology is political (Winner 1980). By this we mean that technology, by its very design, includes certain interests and excludes others. We are not suggesting that this is always an explicit politics. In fact it is mostly implicit and part of a very mundane process of trying to solve practical problems. For example, the ATM bank machine assumes a particular person in front of it. It assumes a person that is able to see the screen, read it, remember and enter a PIN code, etc. It is not difficult to imagine a whole section of society that does not conform with this assumption. If you are blind, in a wheelchair, have problem remembering, or unable to enter a PIN, because of disability, then your interest in getting access to your account will be excluded by the actual design of the ATM. This 'closure' may not be obvious to the designers of ATMs as they may see their task as trying simply to solve a basic problem of making banking transactions more efficient and accessible. In their minds they often design for the 'average' customer doing average transactions. And they are mostly right--but if they are not, then their biases can become profoundly stubborn. In some senses quite irreversible. Where does the excluded go to appeal when they are faced with a stubborn and mute object such as an ATM? Maybe they can work around it, by going into the branch for example. This may be possible. However, this exclusion becomes all the more significant if banks start to close branches or charge for an over-the-counter transaction (as some banks are doing). Thus, as the micro-politics of the ATM becomes tied to, and multiplied through other exclusionary social practice, trivial injustice soon multiply into what may seem to be a coherent and intentional strategy of exclusion (Introna and Nissenbaum 2000; Agre and Mailloux 1997). Yet there is often nobody there that 'authored' it as...
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