Background
Justin Ellsworth was a 20 year old U.S Marine who died in the service of his country. He was killed in Falluja, Iraq, by a roadside bomb as he was helping civilians to evacuate before a planned military offensive in the city against the Iraqi insurgents. Infantry who are at the front line are not given a Marine e-mail account and they usually send their correspondences via webmail services such as Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL. In this case, Justin was using a Yahoo account. Naturally, the family of Justin Ellsworth wanted to find out what their son had to say and therefore tried to access his email account but to their utter dismay, Yahoo denied their request, citing their company’s terms of service which prohibit the company from disclosing their users’ private communication to third parties. As a policy, Yahoo cannot disclose a user’s email password to anyone other than the account holder and if the account is not used in 90 days, it is deleted. Thus, the family was requested to go to the courts and prove their identity as well as their relationship with Justin before they could be given access to his email account (Hu, 2004).
The battle of Ellsworth’s family against Yahoo prompts the question of whether companies should relax their policies on special circumstances such as in the Ellsworth case. For some, Yahoo did the right thing in denying the family access as granting such a request would compromise the privacy, not just of Justin, but of all account holders even in future. Yet for others, the request should have been honored if only to ease the emotional pain that Justin’s family was going through. Ethically speaking, should Yahoo have been forced to turn over Justin Ellsworth’s email to his parents?
Utilitarian Cosideration
The utilitarian view or utilitarianism is a moral principle which argues that, “how right or how wrong an action is, should be determined only by the ensuing results.” More accurately, it should be determined by the amount of happiness that it produces. The more happiness and benefits it produces for all, the more justified it is (Gensler, Spurgin & Swindal, 2004).
The greatest happiness principle which is the basis of the utilitarian view holds that the rightness of all actions is directly proportional to their promotion of happiness. If this school of thought is applied to the Justin Ellsworth case, then one would be justified in saying that Yahoo was wrong in denying Justin’s family access to his e-mail account. Their actions cannot be right because they produced the opposite of happiness to the Ellsworth family. They caused unhappiness, brought about pain and deprived pleasure to the family. Regardless of moral obligations, the aim of any action should be to promote pleasure and maximum benefits for all concerned parties. Yahoo’s refusal to grant email access to the family on account of their policy cannot be a welfare enhancing policy due to the emotional pain it caused the family and as such, it is morally wrong (Gensler et al, 2004).
The utilitarian morality recognizes that human beings have the ability to sacrifice their own good for the greater good of others. So Yahoo should have relaxed their standards, sacrificed their own good, if only to promote the greater good of the family- and sacrifice is by itself a good. If an action can increase the total sum of happiness for others, then it is justifiable. Granted, the Yahoo actions were intended for good, but which is the greater good? Following rules for rule’s sake or promoting the good of everyone? Rules are supposed to benefit everyone and where they don’t, they should be done away with. Between moral obligations and benefit to mankind, benefit is assigned a higher quality (Gensler et al, 2004). So in this respect, Yahoo should have been forced to turn over Justin Ellsworth’s email account to his parents.
Deontological Consideration
The deontological point of view differs significantly from the utilitarian school of thought. Deontologists argue that how right or how wrong an action is, should be determined by the intrinsic qualities of the action itself and not the promotion of ‘the greater good’ or any other such consequence. Morality should be its own point and all duties should be performed for their own sake, not for the sake of others (Moreland & Craig, 2003). Thus according to the deontological viewpoint, Yahoo did the right thing in denying the Ellsworth family access to their son’s email account.
Regardless of the consequences, such an action would mean that each time there is such a request, the concerned parties would have to bend their rules to accommodate these requests. This defeats the purpose of why the policy was set up in the first place. The idea of a privacy policy is so that no one can access another’s private information and the agreement to the terms of service means that the account holders understand this and agree to it. Yahoo had no choice but to honor their terms of service since it was the right and moral thing to do. Justin Ellsworth was entitled to his privacy and Yahoo being bounded by duty, cannot violate that right even though the account holder is dead and regardless of the consequences. Granted, the action is hurtful, but rules are put in place for a reason, to be followed. We cannot bend rules and norms each time we feel like just because we wish to promote some good. Such activities are in essence, violations of others’ rights; in this case Justin’s right to privacy and by extension, other people’s rights who might find themselves in such a situation.
The Ellsworth case is undoubtedly unfortunate but waiving the policy based on some greater good defeats the purpose of such policies. Yahoo is duty bound not to reveal anything to the family but at the same time, there is need for a law that caters for such eventualities.
References
Moreland, J.P & Craig, W.L (2003) Philosophical foundations for a Christian worldview Nottingham: InterVarsity Press
Gensler, H.J, Spurgin, E.W, Swindal, J (2004) Ethics: Contemporary readings. New York: Routledge
Hu, J. (2004). Yahoo denies family access to dead marine’s e-mail. CNET News. Web.