The Internet

Anti-Terror Surveillance Flip-Flops, Fools, Converts and Heroes

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Flag peek

There has been much ink and pixels spilled about the supposed hypocrisy of Republicans and Democrats in their disparate reactions to the revaluation of far more extensive phone and internet data-gathering by the government than those of us not wearing tin-foil on out heads ever suspected. For example, a recent Pew survey shows this...

Pew survey

Naturally, Republicans and Democrats are calling each other hypocrites, suggesting dishonesty and lack of integrity. There are surely some hypocrites in there, but for the most part, the flip-flopping is neither dishonest nor theoretically unreasonable. Even if we assume that the level of NSA intrusion under Bush and Obama administrations are the same (and to be fair, it appears that the current gathering of all domestic phone records goes well beyond what we understood to be the limited surveillance permitted under the Patriot Act), they are materially different in one key aspect, from the perspective of partisan citizens.

Think about it this way: Let’s say on successive days you discover your best friend and your business rival, both of whom visited your home for various reasons, looking through bills and financial papers on your desk. They did the same thing, but while you might be peeved at your friend, if he had a credible explanation like “I think I can save you some taxes,” you would not view his actions as sinister, and might even be grateful for it. When you found your rival looking over the same private papers, however, you would be furious, suspicious, and justly so. The difference is a matter of trust. You trust your friend, his motives and loyalty; you don’t trust your rival. Continue reading →

Self-Webshaming At Dunkin’ Donuts

/ Jack Marshall / 53 Comments

(Watch this after you’ve read the post. Kind of like dessert..)

The ethical considerations one should review when pondering whether to engage in webshaming nicely evaporate when the subject has chosen, though unwittingly, to webshame herself. Thus Ethics Alarms has no qualms about presenting for your consideration, revulsion, and rejection if she ever applies for a job from you, one Taylor Chapman, a 27-year-old woman who lives in the vicinity of Fort Lauderdale. She eagerly and proudly posted to her Facebook page the phone-video above, of her abusing an impeccable Dunkin’ Donuts employee, annoying a customer, and making serial statements with signature significance—no decent human being would utter even one of these appalling comments in public unless suffering from a brain trauma or extreme intoxication.

Chapman was angry because she and her friends had not received a receipt along with their large drive-thru order, and angrily (and abusively, based on Chapman’s manner, but we can only guess) demanded to receive their order free of charge, as Dunkin’ Donuts now promises as part of a service pledge. The employee handling the order apparently did not know how to proceed, and told the group that they would have to come by the store and see her manager the next day.

[An aside: That’s not good customer service, DD. If you make a guarantee that is supposed to mean anything, you have an obligation to train employees how to deliver on it. Telling customers who have not received the promised service that they have to come back to the establishment another day to receive what they are owed is unreasonable and a bait-and switch. I would have said to forget it. I would have written a letter. I would not have done what Chapman did, and I don’t know anyone who would.]

What Chapman did was to return the next day and demand her free order, tossing obscenities at the extraordinarily polite and unflappable employee (his name is Abid Adar, and you should send him flowers) on duty while she recorded the encounter as if it were a health department sting. Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On The NSA Surveillance Revelations….

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

NSA

My current ethics observations on the unfolding NSA story:

  • I do not have enough facts to conclude that what NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden did was truly heroic, but if one is going to be a whistleblower, Snowden did it the ethical way. Snowden decided not to hide his identity, and accepted responsibility for his actions. If his motives are as he has represented them-—“I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions,” but “I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant,” he wrote in a note accompanying his first set of leaked documents—-then he acted courageously and selflessly. Whether or not he also acted responsibly depends on whether he correctly weighed the possible harm of his leak against its benefits. Since its benefits include exposing what may well be ruled to be an unconstitutional and overly broad violation of citizens’ rights, I’m not certain any harm would sufficiently outweigh them in ethical balancing.
  • If it is true, as he says, that Snowden himself had the power to examine private communications of citizens who were not suspected of any crime, then the representations of Sen. Feinstein, the President and others that the NSA program was reasonable and not an abuse of power is not only untrue, but a lie. Snowden is a high school dropout, a consultant, about whose judgment, reliability and trustworthiness the NSA knew next to nothing, and what they thought they knew was obviously wrong, since he betrayed the agency. If such massive power to invade private communications and thoughts is casually placed in the hands of such an individual by a security agency, what other faceless future power-abusers have been similarly armed? Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: A Taco Bell Employee

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

tacobell

“WE WEREN’T EVEN IN THE FOOD AREA! IF YOU CAN SEE IN THE BACK IT’S THE SODA MACHINES!… YOU’RE OPINION DOESN’T EVEN MATTER BECAUSE THIS HAPPENED A LONG TIME AGO! DAMMIT!”

—-The Taco Bell employee who allegedly took the photo above of a colleague licking a stack of taco shells. The image was, naturally, posted by one of them on Facebook, and re-posted, with appropriate alarm, by Consumerist.

The runners-up for this quote of the day were several jaw-dropping comments on Facebook, such as…

  • Wes Abdi, who says: 1. I know the person in the photo, not just from work, but from school as well; and I know that he is not dumb enough to lick a stack of taco shells and then serve them to the public. 2. There is a 99% chance that stack of Tacos was getting thrown out, as in: getting thrown away, so it’s not as if they were going to be served to anyone. 3. This was obviously done out of humor. I know most of you don’t see it as this, but this is friggin hilarious, sit back and just laugh at it.

Uh, Wes….1. He was dumb enough to post the picture, causing a business crisis for his employer, causing Taco Bell to lose untold sales and presumably putting his job at risk. He’s pretty dumb. 2. You know, a 1% chance that I’m going to be buying and eating a taco that has been ore-licked by an idiot is still too high for me, and, I bet, the FDA. 3. Yeah, food adulteration and tampering is hilarious. Now we know why you and The Mad Licker are friends, you idiot. (By the way, over a hundred readers “liked” this fatuous comment. What does that tell us?)

  • Aj Hackett, one of the hundred plus who think Wes is brilliant, wrote: One reason why I dislike this post so much is that you don’t know any side of this story. You only have a picture and you’re reading too much into it. What happened to “innocent until proven guilty”? You talk of freedom of speech and differences of opinion, yet you ignore one of the nation’s founding creeds. I do believe that Wes Abdi is correct in saying that you…should be the one to prove that this employee was ignoring his duty in properly handling food items. Once again, “innocent until proven guilty.” So prove it.
What? There is a posted photo of a Taco Bell employee licking food! There aren’t two sides; there is only one that matters: the side of the tacos being licked. No one’s reading too much into the photo at all, A.J., and may I add, what the hell’s the matter with you? The picture is what the law calls res ipsa loquitur. It speaks for itself. The existence of such a photo is proof that an employee licked the food, thought it was funny, and posted it so everyone could see the care and professionalism of those entrusted with handling the meals of Taco Bell customers. It is also proof that Taco Bell has at least one irresponsible idiot handling food. Nobody is “reading too much into it.” Meanwhile, your reference to “one of the nation’s founding creeds” is ignorant, misplaced, and mistaken, and your high school needs to be torn down and its teachers sent off to work at Taco Bell. “Innocent until proven guilty” is not a founding creed in any way; it is a convention of the justice system, and simply establishes who has the burden of proof in criminal prosecutions by the government. It has absolutely no application to private or public conclusions about an individual’s guilt when evidence is overwhelming. Nor does criticism of the photo or subsequent negative consequences being inflicted on the Mad Licker and his accomplices in any way relate to free speech. He’s free to post the photo: it’s still up, in fact. Free speech means the government isn’t allowed to stop anyone from posting photos that prove they are mentally deficient and that Taco Bell’s food might have god-knows-what done to it before we eat it.
  • Rebekah Becky Majors-Manley, another Wes fan, writes this stunner:  EXACTLY WES- TELL THAT KID THAT THIS OLD MOM OF 5 SONS THINKS IT IS A SCREAM AND HILARIOUS. TELL HIM HE IS MY HERO OF THE WEEK. I WOULD HIRE HIM IN A RED HOT MINUTE FOR HAVING FUN WHILE WORKING- VERY IMPORTANT TO HAVE FUN ON THE JOB. PEOPLE FORGET HOW IMPORTANT FUN IS- !LIFE IS SHORT AND THEN YOU DIE. HAVE FUN AND NEVER STOP LAUGHING. TACO BELL WILL SURVIVE IT-LOL. Look out, World…Rebekah has raised five sons who think like her.

There is no reason to expound further on what is unethical about posting a photo of yourself licking food that may or may not have ended up in a customer’s lunch, to the detriment of your employer and horror of its customers. If that isn’t immediately apparent, you’re either beyond hope, like Rebekah, Wes, A.J., and the unidentified photographer, or you work at Taco Bell.______________Pointer: tgtFacts and Graphic: Consumerist

 

 

Now THAT’S An Ad Hominem Attack

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

"How do I rebut your argument? Here's how, you, brain-damaged Hell-spawn!"

“How do I rebut your argument? Here’s how, you, brain-damaged Hell-spawn!”

David Plouffe at least has done something useful, if not ethical.

We get a lot of accusations here—aimed at me and also between warring commenters—of using ad hominem attacks. Ad hominem attacks are indeed unethical, not because of the negative descriptions of the target they involve, which may well be accurate and fair, but because they are a dishonest and unfair debate tactic. The motive behind a true ad hominem attack is to avoid dealing with the substance of what an adversary claims, argues or asserts by attacking the person, character or background of the adversary.  The intention is to avoid the implications of a fact or illuminating opinion by asserting: “This person is bad, so don’t listen to what he has to say.”  It is a logical fallacy, of course. Whether an individual is bad or not doesn’t change the facts; a bad person may have performed a brilliant analysis, uncovered the wisdom of the ages, or uncovered the key perception that solves enduring mysteries. It is unethical for one seeking to rebut the argument to attack the arguer as if it’s the same thing. When successful, ad hominem attacks deflect the real debate and turn it into a debate about something else, focusing on the original speaker, now feeling the need to defend his honor rather than his position. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Pop Star Katy Perry

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

When is a sincere apology unethical? Here’s a good example.

Abused and Abuser. Someone please tell Katy Perry which is which.

Abused and Abuser. Someone please tell Katy Perry which is which.

Pop singing star Katy Perry registered an ethically responsible objection via Twitter regarding the Chief Keef song “Hate Being Sober.” She wrote,

“Just heard a new song on the radio called ‘I hate being sober’ I now have serious doubt for the world.”

Me too, Katy.  The artist responsible for this paean to intoxication, however, took offense, and decided to rebut Katy’s tweet with an obscene, abusive, misogynist attack:

“Dat bitch Katy Perry Can Suck Skin Off Of my Dick Ill Smack The Shit out her”

Thus chastened (or intimidated?), Perry apologized to him, writing that she really liked the song, and wasn’t “a hater”: Continue reading →

The Kaitlyn Hunt Affair

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments
Child abuser?

Child abuser?

Once again, the ethical complexities of applying statutory rape and age of consent laws to relationships between non-adults and just barely adults has led to an ethics train wreck. The worst example in recent years has been the epic criminal system abuse of Genarlow Wilson, which if you are unfamiliar with his story and its aftermath, you should catch up here and here. The Kaitlyn Hunt case,however, has potential to be an epic of its own.

It appears that Floridian teen Kaitlyn Hunt was involved in a consensual, same-sex relationship with another girl in her school while both she and her partner were minors. They had started dating at the beginning of the school year, and the relationship had been known to both parents for months. Clearly the parents of the younger girl did not approve, for when Kaitlyn turned 18—the other girl was 15—they filed a criminal complaint with police. Continue reading →

Resolving An Ethics Alarms Ethics Conflict

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

poof-smallI just took down a post, something I have only done four times previously. This decision, unlike the others, was the resolution of a genuine ethics conflict, created in part by the recent discussions here.

Tonight I received a terse demand, phrased as a request but with a time deadline,* from a former commentary subject insisting that I remove a critical post here from nearly a year ago. The post was not factually incorrect, nor  did it make any factual assertions that could support a credible defamation claim. My commentary was pure opinion, though a fairly harsh one. I have pledged, following the inspirational example of Ken at Popehat and also attorney/blogger Marc Randazza, not to countenance web censorship involving bogus legal threats, and thus drafted and came within a finger-stroke of sending a rejection of the demand, and a strongly worded one.

Then I re-read the post at issue. It was a criticism of a tweet from a professional that I believed, and believe, had the effect of unfairly impugning an entire workplace and the identifiable colleagues of the tweeter. The tweet was wrong, but I realized that I was also wrong to highlight it here. I have been writing quite a lot lately about the inherent Golden Rule violation of web-shaming individuals for single and isolated unethical acts that fall short of illegality or such outrageous callousness or cruelty that there is a duty to warn others. I think there is a toxic cultural trend, fed by the power of the internet, that will soon make web bullies and assassins of us all, and potential victims as well. I want to fight that trend, not contribute to it. I think, in the case of that post, I was on the side that I now believe is the wrong one. It was a stupid and thoughtless tweet. It did not justify a web-shaming on Ethics Alarms. Continue reading →

Further Refining The Naked Teacher Principle: The Firing of Olivia Sprauer,

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments
But she's not naked!

But she’s not naked!

It will be therapeutic, I hope, to  take a breather from considering the steadily increasing seriousness of the various government scandals, as well as reviling the increasingly desperate spin being employed to try to deflect them, and to focus on something both far removed and of vital national interest. Of course, that means buckling down and refining the Naked Teacher Principle, which in its formal explication, is that a responsible high school teacher has a duty to take reasonable care that her students do not see her in the nude, and if she does not, and her students do see her in the nude, she has no standing to complain when the school deems her unable to maintain the proper and necessary credibility and dignity necessary for teaching.

Now comes the news that at Martin County High School, in Florida, a ninth-grade English teacher of otherwise good repute named Olivia Sprauer has been fired for being shown on the web modeling bathing suits, and offering her services to photographers for less clothed presentations. Should the Naked Teacher Principle or any of its variations apply? Continue reading →

How Amy Bouzaglo Makes Us Better People

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments
Run away! But pay attention!

Run away! But pay attention!

I’m not going to take back every negative thing I’ve ever said about reality shows, but there is no getting around it: now and then an episode of one of them is a better training film for good ethics than  “Leave It To Beaver,” “Star Trek, The Next Generation,” and “Father Knows Best” combined.

A case in point was a recent episode of “Kitchen Nightmares,” a Fox reality show that sends chef and restaurateur Gordan Ramsay to turn around failing eateries, usually by his browbeating them into basic management competence and the use of fresh ingredients. This time, however, Ramsay was pitted against the proprietors of Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro in Scottsdale Arizona, specifically the eponymous Amy Bouzaglo, a textbook narcissist who dominates her much older husband and partner, abuses employees, and treats all criticism and constructive suggestions as a personal attack. Continue reading →