From: Valence (valence10@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Jun 23 2003 - 06:33:02 BST
Hey Steve,
Up late working and I thought I'd take a quick crack at your post before I
went to bed...
STEVE
> Help me dear MOQers. Was there anything immoral about what I perceived to
> be a violation of my privacy in the airport panty raid?
RICK
Let's see...
STEVE
> Last week I graded AP Statistics exams in Lincoln, Nebraska. While
waiting
> for my connecting flight in Chicago on my way to Philadelphia, I told my
> wife about my experiences getting through security in Omaha. Before
> approaching the ticket counter, government employees were searching bags
> that were to be checked. I happened to draw a full search in the random
> process. The consequences were that my suitcase was completely emptied
and
> searched.
RICK
Under the MoQ, a society is entitled to protect itself against 'barbarian'
threats like terrorism so there's nothing immoral about the idea of airport
security as far as I can tell. As for how the search targets are selected,
I would think that so long as search subjects are chosen on a reasonable
basis (ie. an Intellectual basis) they would be moral. That is, searches
should be administered exhaustively (ie. everyone gets searched), randomly,
or on the basis of probable cause or reasonable suspicion, etc. I would
think that except in the most dire circumstances, targeting search subjects
on a 'biological' basis (ie. profiling of race, ethnicity, etc) would be MoQ
immoral.
STEVE
Unlike the big city airports that I usually use, at Omaha this
> search was carried out directly in front of the line for ticketing which
was
> almost entirely comprised of fellow participants in the AP exam reading.
>
> So this dude with latex gloves had to go through all my dirty laundry to
see
> if I was hiding a bomb in my Calvin Kleins right in front of my
colleagues.
RICK
Using Sam's Individual (or Person centered) model of the 4th-level, it's
easy to draw the conclusion that, lacking any overriding immediacy, the
airport guards were immoral in not taking reasonable measures to insure your
personal privacy. Pirsig's vision of the 4th-level makes privacy rights a
bit more enigmatic in my mind. I would think that Pirsig's 4th level would
protect individual privacy only to the extent necessary to protect an
individual's capacity to carry out his function as a 'source of ideas'.
However, I'm not sure what that extent would be, so it doesn't help me
unravel your question. Alternatively, I could also imagine that Pirsig
might say that "privacy" is a 3rd-level creature, a high-Quality social
pattern of values. But that seems to make it a matter of social relativism,
so I'm not sure it helps much either.
STEVE
> Although lucky for me I had not packed any pornography or my penis
enlarging
> pump, the experience was particularly embarrassing for me.
RICK
And here I thought that was one of those 'never leave home without it' kind
of products.
STEVE
> My wife seemed to suggest that I was just being uptight, and my discomfort
> was merely a cultural construct, and that there is no absolute standard
for
> what is appropriate for security personnel to do.
>
> I was too tired to have much a conversation about it with my wife at the
> airport, and I wasn't sure what to say anyway to her cultural relativism.
RICK
In general, MoQ conclusions are implicitly qualified by "all other things
being equal" so there's really no 'absolute' standard. But I would think
that if a security guard (or any law enforcement officer for that matter)
exercised his official, social power for reasons that aren't rationally
(intellectually) related to his mandate, or for no reason at all (just to
hassle) it would be MoQ immoral in any culture. So I would try saying
something like this: The procedures used by airport security personnel
should always be rationally related to the goal of increasing security and
reasonable calculated to make efforts that preserve individual privacy (of
course, what is 'reasonable' in this sense will slide depending on social
conditions, so your wife still isn't entirely off).
hope that helps some
take care
rick
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a
philosopher. - Ambrose Bierce
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