Ethics Assignment " Spying and Privacy"

Allen claims that "like parents and spouses, corporations may in principle be justified in spying to meet" a certain kind of responsibilities.  What kind of responsibilities is she referring to?  What are the boundaries she draws around this responsibility?  Do you agree with Allen's reasoning?  Why or why not?

                Spying by definition involves secret, covert activity, though not necessarily lies, fraud or dishonesty. To "spy" is secretly to monitor or investigate another's beliefs, intentions, actions, omissions, or capacities, especially as revealed in otherwise concealed or confidential conduct, communications and documents. In this philosophy text that we are given, Allen is really concerned about what is happening around us: Spying and privacy.

                "Like parents and spouses, corporations may in principle be justified in spying to meet" a certain kind of responsibilities.  This is what Allen claims. What kind of responsibilities is she referring to? What are the boundaries she draws around this responsibility?  Do you agree with Allen's reasoning?  Why or why not?

                According to her say in the text we see that the responsibilities she’s referring to are: There is no inherent ethical objection to business managers ordering fraud and deception investigations that protect investors' bottom lines. She means that ownership or properties of corporations is a right that belongs only to the companies and no one has the right to leak them out. The boundaries around these responsibilities are invading people’s privacy like HP did through complicity in pretexting to obtain personal data.

                As per her claim, I think I agree with her because when we talk about properties in corporations, we mean assets which are what belongs to that corporation. Corporations run by rules and regulations that bind both the corporation and the employees, in which we have concerns about the assets and the personnel. According to those rules and regulations, corporations as well as employees have boundaries. So in case a rule has been broken by an employee, corporations should use lawful ways to handle the situation, because the employee has his privacy. As with the case of Snowden which occurred last year. Edward Joseph Snowden, born June 21, 1983 is an American computer specialist, former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and former contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA). He came to international attention when he disclosed thousands of classified documents to several media outlets. The leaked documents revealed operational details of global surveillance programs run by the NSA and the other Five Eyes governments of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, with the cooperation of a number of businesses and European governments. Today he is in temporary asylum in Germany, running away from the American justice. This doesn't stop there, because employees also do have the right to sue corporations too. It has happened before and lot of times. From this note we can say that, both corporations and employees need to play their partition in all they do by following the rules that they sign before starting work, meaning contract or any kind of agreement.