Dataethics: Normative principles and their regulatory challenges

Abstract

This chapter explores the ethical concerns raised by the digital collection and use of Big Data. It starts by summarizing the digital processes by which data are collected and the ways algorithms work, which provide the source of the ethical issues the chapter reviews. The chapter then looks at the impact of these processes on two key ethical values: namely autonomy and equality. These values lie behind many core constitutional principles. With regard to the former, the chapter discusses how autonomy is undermined by a lack of data privacy, which leads to manipulation and domination. So far as the latter is concerned, the authors show how equality is undermined by discrimination and a lack of fairness as well as a lack of accountability. The chapter then addresses some of the main related regulatory challenges. While conventional constitutional principles justify going beyond self-regulation by the corporations themselves, the digital sector can elude the standard, state-based, constitutional mechanisms associated with liberal constitutionalism. As such, it requires the development of global and social forms of constitutionalism, though these too face both practical and ethical challenges.