Who needs stories if you can get the data?

ISPs in the era of big number crunching

Mireille Hildebrandt

pp. 371-390

in: The new ethical responsibilities of internet service providers, Philosophy & Technology 24 (4), 2011.

Abstract

In this article, I will investigate to what extent democracy and the Rule of Law require that ISPs as "common carriers' that provide "mere conduit" pre-empt extensive monitoring of the content they carry. I will trace this duty as a moral duty that is bound up with the framework of constitutional democracy, arguing that such monitoring affords unprecedented data-mining operations that could stifle our account of ourselves as moral agents in the novel infosphere.