Privacy and old data

Neil Brown of neilzone fame posed an ethical question on Mastodon. In brief:

I have bought a 30 year old computer and the hard disk hasn't been wiped. Ethically, should I wipe it immediately or may I poke around a bit first?

A few points of context. First, the focus on the ethical is important: Neil is a lawyer and wants to set aside legal/regulatory considerations and focus on the ethical. And I take him to really mean the ethical and not the quasi-regulatory concept which goes by the same name in ethics approval processes.¹ Second, Neil's interest in poking around is antiquarianism about computers: What operating system is it running? What software packages? How is it configured? What does it feel like to use it?

Third, we have to ask how Neil came to have this computer. And it is important to note that an answer like 'bought it on eBay' masks some ethically relevant details for eBay sellers include professionals refurbishing and reselling computers, individuals making personal sales as they upgrade their equipment, collectors, and, what is most likely in this case, someone trying to make a bit of cash out of junk acquired directly or indirectly in a house clearance.²

So now we can start unpicking some ethical issues. A professional reseller or a collector ought to have wiped the disk before putting the computer up for sale. That is a clear ethical responsibility of their role and the answer to Neil's question is easy: ethically he should make up for their failing and wipe it. What about a personal sale? In that case it seems Neil could actually ask for permission and ethically, he ought to do what they ask. If they don't reply, then wipe.

The ethically interesting questions arise when the source is more likely to be a house clearance. A 30 year old computer is going to get into this 'car boot sale' sales channel because the last owner no longer cares what happens to it. That might be because they have died, or discarded it (e.g. in a house move), or is decluttering, or something similar. These are all natural social processes by which our possessions end up in someone else's hands without our being involved in that transaction.

Not only are such 'orphaned' possessions an essential source for social historians, but creating them and discovering them is part of everyday life. Consequently we expect to leave such traces of our lives to be picked up by others. If that concerns us, we might take special steps to minimise it, such as leaving instructions in our wills to have personal records destroyed. This expectation, and also the existence of social norms which facilitate those who find it uncomfortable, have real ethical significance.

That is why this being a 30 year old, rather than a 5 year old, computer really matters. Over the passage of time our relation to our personal information, contained in letters, photographs and other records, changes. It ceases to be part of who we are now and becomes more of an historical record of who we have been. We can see this in how we feel differently about our school reports and the last few years of 'Performance Review' at work.

So it seems that the answer to Neil's question is that, if he has good reason to believe that this is 'orphaned' data, it is ethically permissible to take a look. But the ethical questions do not stop there.

It is also relevant how he responds to what he finds. These historical records of past lives are still records of lives that people lived. As such, they deserve our respect.

This is important. It is not seeing the material which ethics will condemn, but using it in certain ways. Neil's interest is antiquarian and that is generally respectful of people and their pasts. Others have artistic interests in records of past lives, such as those who use old, anonymous photos in their art.

But yet others may be tempted to laugh, to make fun of people's pasts. That does transgress an ethical norm. It is never permissible to treat others as merely an object of amusement, whether they know it or not. The same goes for prurience and titillation. If Neil discovered some 1990s sexting, it really matters what his motives are should he choose not to simply look the other way. An historian of sex might find this valuable evidence, but it is not ethically permissible to read such messages never intended for others' eyes merely for private pleasure.

So the answer to Neil's question is that there is no ethical prohibition on firing up that 30 year old computer, but you should first be confident it is 'orphaned', that it is just the historical trace or residue of someone's life. However the ethical questions don't end there, because how you respond to what you find is also a matter of ethics.