مسائل اخلاقی در ردیابی تلفن همراه در یک رویداد

Early in 2007, the CSIR conducted an experiment to track the cellular telephones of a small group of people as they moved to and from an event, to test the viability of using such tracking to provide the participants with useful traffic information. This project raised a number of ethical issues, which prompted this paper and which we discuss here. These include: • the ethics of modelling data, including the treatment of research participants; • privacy and surveillance issues related to tracking the movement of people; • the risks inherent in being tracked vs the benefits of being tracked; and • the ethics related to sending messages to drivers. We have reviewed the literature on ethics and used the results to assemble a check list of relevant ethical issues, adding a few of our own (i.e. a deontological ethics approach), against which the conduct of this research project was assessed. We also provide an overview of the experiment and the results obtained.

Early in 2007, the CSIR conducted an experiment to track the cellular telephones (cell phones) of a small group of people as they moved to and from an event, to test the viability of using such tracking to provide the participants with useful traffic information. This project raised a number of ethical issues, which prompted this paper. We have conducted a survey of the relevant literature on the ethics of modelling and of surveillance. From these, we have assembled several tables that could be used as “check lists” for assessing the ethics of an operational research projects in general, and of surveillance projects in particular. We then describe our project and assess it against these check lists. Of course, check lists are not necessarily required for a project to be executed ethically and they alone cannot guarantee that a project will be executed ethically, but they can give one peace of mind that one is probably doing the correct thing. We hope that this paper contributes towards an understanding of good practice in operational research (OR).

We have reported here on an experiment conducted by the CSIR to track the cell phones of a small group of people as they moved to and from the event, to assess the viability of using such tracking to provide the participants with useful traffic information. More relevantly, we have reported on the ethical issues raised by such tracking. We have conducted a review of the ethics of modelling and of surveillance, considering issues such as: • definition of, and approaches to, ethics; • implicit adherence to ethics through the use of professional good practices for one's discipline; • ethical transgressions in research; • codes of professional ethics; • best-practice guidelines; • treatment of research participants; • barriers to ethics in practice; and • ethics related to surveillance. We then used the results of the review to assemble check lists of relevant ethical issues, adding a few of our own, against which the conduct of a research project could be assessed (i.e. a deontological ethics approach). Of course, check lists are not necessarily required for a project to be executed ethically—in our case, we used virtue ethics and consequentialism intuitively for the project. Such deontological ethics alone cannot guarantee that a project will be executed ethically, but they can give one peace of mind that one is probably doing the correct thing. The project was subsequently described and assessed against these check lists. The assessment led to the following conclusions: • In general, there was compliance with professional codes and best-practice guidelines, covering modelling, surveillance, data collection, and treatment of research participants. • The project team followed the two principles suggested by Gallo [12], the responsibility principle and the sharing and cooperation principle (see Section 2.1). • The treatment of research participants was done in an ethical way with clearance by a research ethics committee, voluntary participation and informed consent. • Confidentiality issues, such as whether or not one remembers that one has given consent, were identified and possible solutions proposed. • Risk of harm to the participants was minimal but could increase in the case of a larger scale project, such as not meeting the expectations of participants. • Although we did not assess the utility of traffic messages sent to drivers, we nevertheless identified several ethical issues that should be considered. It should be borne in mind that the authors reviewed the literature on ethics, and ethics of research, modelling and surveillance in particular, after the completion of the E-PTA experiment. Instead, they had to rely on the useful recommendations of a research ethics committee and their professional judgement. Despite this, the various ethical principles and guidelines listed in the literature were fairly adhered to. Like Gass [8], we feel quite strongly that a code of ethics is required for modellers but through our training and experience we probably “just knew what was right and what was wrong” concerning ethics (see Section 2.1). Having said this, we believe that our exposure to the formal notions of ethics has been extremely beneficial and it is, therefore, highly recommended to all our colleagues engaged in the quantitative disciplines. Some of the barriers to ethics listed in Table 5 are not to be underestimated. For example, the subjective nature of what is virtuous, or what constitutes good or bad, or how one should weigh consequences can be functions of time and space, of culture or religion. We also understand that a direct discussion of ethical issues may be considered taboo by some colleagues and met with resistance. However, we currently have the advantage of having much more information available to us than all previous generations put together to enable us to invest some time to reflect on ethics in our professions.