Ethics Newsline®

Is it ethical to take box cutters onto airplanes?

Nat Heatwole thinks it is. The 20-year-old student admits that he planted packages — box cutters, bleach, molding clay, and matches among the items — found on two domestic flights earlier this month.

The FBI thinks it isn’t. In a Baltimore courtroom last week, they accused Heatwole of carrying concealed dangerous weapons onto the planes — a federal violation that could send him to prison for up to 10 years. Judge Susan Gauvey set a preliminary hearing for November 10, releasing him without bail in the meantime.

On one point, both sides agree: He broke the law. He deliberately put knives, matches, bleach, and modeling clay shaped like explosives into plastic bags and hid them below the sinks in the airplanes’ lavatories. But Heatwole contends that his actions, which he felt were needed to prove that airport security is seriously flawed, were acts of civil disobedience. Were they?

Civil disobedience is one of the few circumstances where lawbreaking may be ethical. Its tradition stretches back to Henry Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi. It also finds a welcome at Guilford College, the Quaker school in Greensboro, North Carolina, where Heatwole is a student. Civil disobedience requires of its practitioners not only that they be willing to break the law, but that they accept the penalties for doing so, using the occasions of arrest and imprisonment to call public attention to bad law, unjust policy, or (in this case) inadequate implementation.

Heatwole did that. He made no effort to hide. In fact, having planted the last package, he promptly emailed the Transportation Security Administration, explaining what he had done and providing precise details, including dates and flight numbers, on where to find the goods. As though to confirm his contention of blundering at the TSA, it took officials nearly five weeks to locate the packages (actually discovered by maintenance workers doing lavatory repairs) and arrest Heatwole. In fact, once one of the packets had been found, the TSA ordered a systemwide search of U.S. airliners — only to call it off once his apparently misplaced email resurfaced in the TSA’s information systems.

So Heatwole’s point has been made. But what about the ethics of his action? Looking at this dilemma from the outside, you can make a powerful moral case that the need to make a fuss about security trumps any allegiance to government institutions whose failings may put citizens at real risk from real terrorists. On the other hand, you can make a powerful moral case for working within the nation’s system of laws to make corrections — as a member of a loyal opposition, rather than as a high-handed vigilante. And while you can argue for the need to improve safety in the long term, you can also understand the annoyance of those who feel their short-term travel plans were disrupted by some kid with a grievance.

And you can draw some analogies. About the time Heatwole was planting his packages, ABC News was testing the nation’s post-9/11 security by secretly shipping 15 pounds of depleted uranium from Jakarta to Los Angeles. It slipped through undetected.

Was that civil disobedience? I don’t think so, since the risk was wholly different. No news network, given its power with the public, faces any serious threat of getting ten years in prison. That doesn’t give ABC a clean bill of ethical health, however: News organizations that depend on making news rather than simply reporting it — creating incidents to report, rather than reporting what’s already there — can find themselves discounted by the public as unethical, sensationalist, and untrustworthy.

Which brings us back to the question of punishment. Heatwole knew the risk he faced and took it. What should Judge Gauvey do? She may, in fact, have no alternative but to punish him to the full extent of the law. To do any less would set up a curious legal defense for those smuggling weapons onto planes. If caught, they would have a handy escape hatch in the argument that they were just exercising their civilly disobedient right to test the system. “I was just checking you out,” they could say. “I’m not a terrorist after all!”

That’s presumably true in Nat Heatwole’s case. But will it be true if others of more malicious intent succeed in smuggling weapons aboard? Or will they have been emboldened by this back-door defense, which would give them immense advantage if they succeed but risk only negligible punishment if they fail?

Watching Heatwole’s trial and sentencing, we in the public will face a justice-versus-mercy dilemma of its own. We’ll long to set a smart, upstanding kid free. But we’ll demand the establishment of a firm expectation of justice in crimes of this sort. That may leave us facing the bizarre spectacle of sending Heatwole to prison for doing the right thing — and thanking him, as he goes, for strengthening the security system by behaving illegally. Of such ambiguous challenges is ethics made.

(c)2003 Institute for Global Ethics

“I can’t say we have fear in our hearts. But we have a sense of ‘Who will it be tomorrow?’ You begin to think about whether it’s worth writing so sharply, maybe some fact shouldn’t be used.”

– Rimma Mikharyeva, deputy editor of the Togliatti Review, an investigative newspaper in Russia that prints tough exposés on business, politics, and organized crime. Mikharyeva’s colleague, editor-in-chief Aleksei Sidorov, 31, was stabbed to death earlier this month, presumably for the paper’s coverage, reported the New York Times. Sidorov’s predecessor was assassinated 18 months ago; 13 journalists have been murdered in Russia since 2000. (“A Prosperous Russian City Is Also Fatal for Journalists,” New York Times, Oct. 23)

TALLAHASSEE, Florida
Florida Governor Jeb Bush last week sparked a fiery debate over governmental separation of powers after overriding a court order allowing a man to remove the feeding tube that keeps alive his brain-damaged wife.

Governor Bush (R), acting on a one-time-only law hastily passed by the Florida Legislature, barred Michael Schiavo from allowing his wife Terri, who went on life support 13 years ago, to die.

Bush’s move, which came six days after the feeding tube was removed, overrides a series of court decisions favoring Schiavo, who said his wife told him she did not want to be kept alive artificially, though she never filled out a living will documenting that wish.

Terri Schiavo’s parents and siblings have fought her husband over removing the feeding tube, which was reinserted last week on Gov. Bush’s order, reported the New York Times. They argue that she still has cognitive functions. Medical authorities reject that argument, saying Terri Schiavo is in a vegetative state.

Last week’s flare-up in the case came after a final court ruling in favor of Michael Schiavo. Acting to stop him, the Florida Legislature, which had heard no evidence in the case, rushed through a contentious bill, voting 23-to-15 to authorize Gov. Bush to disregard the court rulings, reported the Times.

Bush, who in the past has voiced support for Schiavo’s parents, last week said his involvement in the case was “unique.” “I don’t think you’ll see me or the Legislature on a regular basis passing laws that deal with individuals or handfuls of people,” he told reporters.

The legislature and Bush came under sharp criticism last week from legal quarters, with many lawyers condemning their actions in the case as a stark violation of separation-of-powers principles.

“Courts get to decide particular cases, not legislatures,” Florida State University law professor Steven Gey told the Times.

“What if the courts decide, as I’m fairly sure they will, that the statute is unconstitutional?” University of Florida law professor Lars Noah asked the Times. “Could the Legislature then instruct the governor to ignore that judicial order?”

WASHINGTON
Last week’s arrest of a college student who deliberately broke the law to challenge airport security focused attention on the morality of tactics used by a growing number of people exposing potentially deadly security flaws, according to a report last week from USA Today.

Nathaniel Heatwole, a college sophomore, emailed the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in September to say he had planted box cutters, bleach, modeling clay, and matches on six planes.

Heatwole’s email went unnoticed, according to USA Today, until last week, when the items were discovered on two Southwest Air flights, prompting his arrest on federal charges.

Heatwole told the TSA he was simply pointing out the flaws of their safety procedures, insisting that his motives were good.

Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House of Representatives’ aviation subcommittee, last week spoke up in support of Heatwole, saying the student “has helped bring public attention to what has quietly been brushed aside in Congress.”

The TSA, which last week said it will change the way it screens email, said Heatwole’s motives are irrelevant. “Those who choose to game the system are diverting resources away from the war on terror and putting passengers at risk,” TSA spokesman Brian Turmail declared.

“There are those who, for whatever reason, decided to game the system,” Turmail told USA Today. “A lot of these gamers are in some ways the computer hackers of the air transportation system.”

It is a metaphor that many would embrace, pointing out that their efforts are designed to find flaws in a weak system in the aims of strengthening it.

“My first rule is do no harm,” explained former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) security specialist Steve Elson, a constant air-safety gadfly who has taken it upon himself to test screening procedures by trying to smuggle harmless objects in lead-lined film bags onto airplanes.

Such people — trouble makers in the TSA’s view, but a type of whistle-blower in the eyes of supporters — “are putting themselves at tremendous risk, but they know something stinks and they’d like to clean it up,” retired FAA security agent Brian Sullivan told USA Today.

Louis Clark, executive director of the Government Accountability Project watchdog group, said that ethos is becoming increasingly widespread, noting that his group has logged triple the normal number of such cases in the past two years.

“There is this dramatic increase since Sept. 11, particularly in issues of security and health issues,” Clark told USA Today. “I’ve heard people say Sept. 11 has jogged them into a greater sense of ethics and responsibility for their society.”

LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador
Petroleum giant ChevronTexaco went on trial last week in a tiny Ecuadorian town in a case pitting 30,000 impoverished locals against a powerful firm accused of polluting their land and rivers and causing disease and death.

Texaco entered Ecuador in the early 1970s. When the company abandoned its operations 20 years later, it left with 1.5 billion barrels of crude and roughly $20 billion in profits, reported the New York Times.

It also left behind a mixed legacy of a much-strengthened Ecuadorian economy and oil industry, but a shattered environment pitted with contaminated water, sludge, and petroleum, according to the Times.

Locals sued Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, over the damage, saying it had destroyed their homelands and led to alarming rates of cancer among their population.

Texaco spent $40 million to cap more than 200 pits, and built schools and health care facilities in a clean-up process deemed completed by Ecuador’s government in 1998, noted the Times.

Critics say the company did an incomplete job, imperiling thousands and cowing the government with warnings that pursuing the lawsuit would threaten investment by other oil firms.

Last year, the 2d U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York refused to dismiss the lawsuit against ChevronTexaco, clearing the way for last week’s opening arguments in the tiny Ecuador border town.

The case could set an important precedent for other multinationals doing business in nations with weak environmental protection laws — laws that the U.S.-based firm argued should trump its more-costly standard practices back home.

“It’s an important case,” Alejandro Garro, an expert in Latin American law at Columbia University, told the Times. “Once the judgment becomes final in Ecuador, then the plaintiffs, whatever judgment they get, will go to the United States to enforce that judgment.”

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

TORONTO
A survey by Deloitte & Touche LLP has found that Canadian chief operating officers (COOs) are more concerned about terrorist attacks than are their U.S. counterparts.

The survey involved 600 COOs in 16 countries and found that 35 percent of Canadian COOs were concerned about terrorist attacks, compared to 27 percent of their U.S. counterparts.

Among the COOs surveyed, Canadian executives were the second most concerned about terrorist attacks after the Japanese, of whom 42 percent expressed similar concerns.

The Globe & Mail is reporting that Carl Steidtmann, the chief economist of Deloitte & Touche, has concluded that Canadian concerns may stem from the fact that the United States — the largest business and trading partner of Canada — is also the country that was the target of the 9/11 attacks.

Mr. Steidtmann also said the fact that Canadian companies have to establish a more global orientation due to the small home market makes them more vulnerable.

WASHINGTON
Saying he is tired of watching tuition rates outpace inflation, a Republican lawmaker last week pushed for legislation that would withhold federal funds from universities and colleges that fail to curb the costs of getting an education.

Rep. Howard McKeon (R-Calif.) wants the measure to be rolled into the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. His action is garnering both praise and criticism, reported the New York Times.

McKeon’s controversial proposal would halt the flow of some federal funds for universities that raise tuition at a rate more than twice that of inflation for two years in a row. Schools that do so would be required to explain their reasons, as well as their plans to avoid further steep hikes.

If a university violates the guideline for a third consecutive year, federal assistance, including Perkins Loans and work-study grants, would be cut off. However, Pell grants and Stafford loans, which go directly to students, would be unaffected, reported Georgetown’s Hoya campus paper.

“I’m not just trying to make enemies for nothing,” McKeon, a senior member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said last week. “What I’m hoping is that we really get the attention of thousands of schools across the country, that they understand that this is a serious issue.”

“Our nation’s students, the future of our country, are being priced out of the promise of higher education,” McKeon said. “The cost of college just keeps going up.”

If McKeon’s standards went into effect today, 24 percent of the nation’s post-secondary institutions — public universities, private colleges, and for-profit trade schools — would be put on the watch list, according to an analysis from the American Council on Education.

Universities say McKeon’s proposal is unfair by failing to take into account double-digit hikes in costs the schools cannot control, including healthcare premiums and utility costs, reported the Times.

A new analysis from the College Board found across-the-board tuition hikes in higher education: 14 percent at both public universities and community colleges, and 6 percent at private universities — all far above the rate of inflation. Those hikes were partially offset by a record disbursement of financial aid: $105 billion in grants and loans, the Times reported.

NEW BEDFORD, Massachusetts
The coastal Massachusetts city of New Bedford, increasingly seen as a home port for heroin traffickers, last week took one more step toward implementing a controversial program that would test its school children for drug use.

The city, stricken this year by nine homicides, including the murder of a 14-year-old boy at a crack house, has been inching toward adopting the voluntary drug testing program, reported the Boston Globe last week.

The program calls on parents to voluntarily sign up their middle- and high-school students for random drug tests to be conducted at school. The anonymous results would be sent only to parents, not to the students’ schools nor to law enforcement. Students who test positive, as well as their parents, would attend follow-up workshops.

While the program has been gaining support in the community, some caution that it could consume limited school funds and erode civil rights, especially if authorities subpoenaed the drug test results for investigative or criminal use, noted the Globe.

“We’re not out to violate anyone’s civil rights,” said New Bedford mayor Frederick Kalisz, Jr. “We’re out to protect future generations.”

While the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld enforced drug testing of students in extracurricular programs, it has not ruled on the constitutionality of random testing for the student population. Many experts say that since the New Bedford program is voluntarily, it likely would pass muster, according to the Globe.

LONDON
Saying they are frustrated by a lack of help from some school heads, U.K. teachers at 25 schools have taken steps to keep violent students out of their classrooms, voting to refuse to teach disruptive pupils.

The industrial actions follow mounting incidents and greater awareness of violent outbursts by students, including punching, head-butting, biting, and shooting, reported the BBC.

When school leaders fail to back teachers’ concerns over letting violent students stay in the classrooms, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) says it will take matters into its own hands.

The NASUWT has helped teachers hold ballots affecting 25 schools this year, blocking menacing students from remaining in the classroom — efforts the organization says are supported by parents whose students also face dangers from their violent classmates.

U.K. Education minister Ivan Lewis says the government also is joining the effort to protect students and teachers by launching services “to make sure that parents are held accountable for the behavior of their children.”

Services include parenting contracts, health and child care information, and a 24-hour parental advice hotline, reported the BBC.

HELSINKI, Finland
The Reuters news agency reports that a new law being considered in Finland would allow parents to track their children’s whereabouts, in some cases without their consent, via signals sent from their cell phones and monitored by global positioning technology.

The proposed law is scheduled to be debated by the Finnish parliament in early November. The initiative is expected to have an impact in the rest of the European Union as well, according to Reuters, since it “is based on the EU’s directive on privacy and electronic communications.”

Juhapekka Ristola, a Finnish transport and communications ministry official, told the news agency, “Roughly similar legislation will be a reality in the European Union area in the near future.”

The law, if passed, would allow parents to locate their children via tracking signals sent back from their cell phones without their kids’ consent if the child is under 15 years of age, according to Reuters. Tracking people over 15 would require the consent of the child. In the case of an emergency, no consent would be required.

Finland’s two largest cell phone operators, TeliaSonera and Elisa, already offer the ability to locate users of its service via their handsets.

LONDON
Britain’s police ranks, struggling to recover from allegations of racism, were put on notice again last week with at least four resignations and three suspensions over racist behavior.

The officers, whose behavior included commending Hitler’s “right idea” and donning a Ku Klux Klan-style hood to threaten harassment against a British-Asian recruit, were recorded by an undercover BBC reporter.

The reporter’s story, which aired last week, prompted three resignations and two suspensions at the Greater Manchester Police and one resignation and one suspension at the North Wales Police, reported the Reuters news agency.

British police were given a black eye in 2000, when Greater Manchester Police’s chief constable, David Wilmot, said his force was “institutionally racist,” reported the Guardian. Wilmot’s charge was accompanied by widespread criticism of the police after a failed investigation into the 1993 murder of black student Stephen Lawrence.

Last week, Greater Manchester’s deputy chief constable Alan Green pledged swift punishment for any officer exhibiting racist behavior. “We will be unrelenting in our actions against racism, both inside and outside the Greater Manchester police service,” Green pledged.

Mark Daly, the undercover reporter, was arrested in June after the police were tipped off about his work. Daly faces a hearing next month on charges that he “gained his salary by deception and damaged a bullet-proof vest by hiding a pinhole camera in it,” according to the Guardian.

From Personnel Today and the U.K Health & Safety Executive:

“Exclusive research by Personnel Today and the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) has revealed the extent of the U.K.’s stress overload — an estimated 1,554,256 working days lost to stress every year. Worryingly, it is a problem that is getting worse, with more than half of U.K. organizations reporting an increase in workplace stress.

“A massive 83 percent of HR professionals say they believe stress is holding back the U.K.’s efforts to close the productivity gap, while 60 percent claim it is adding to staff retention problems.

“The ‘Stress in the U.K. Workplace’ survey, based on responses from almost 700 senior HR practitioners, suggests that stress-related illness now accounts for around 11 percent of all sickness absence.

“HR has a fundamental role to play in combating stress after nearly half the employers questioned said the culture in their business was causing stress. The main causes cited by respondents are all basic management failures that must be addressed by the HR function. These problems include unreasonable demands on staff, a lack of support and training, poor relationships at work, and poorly defined job roles.

“Meanwhile, a separate survey of UK employees, based on questions developed by Personnel Today, highlights the pressures of the modern workplace with 35 percent of staff admitting they felt unsupported by managers.

“The National Employee Benchmarks Survey, by BMRB, questioned almost 2,000 employees and found that more than half of the U.K. workforce feels under pressure to work long hours. The issue of stress has reached such proportions that 42 percent worry about their job outside working hours, 40 percent feel they cannot report concerns over excessive pressure, and 19 percent dread going into work.

“A quarter of the workforce admitted that worrying about work was affecting their sleep while just over a third of all employees in the UK said they felt overwhelmed by their workload….

“The results of the ‘Stress in the U.K. Workplace’ survey will now be used by the HSE to fine-tune its Stress Management Standards, which are due to be phased in next year….”

You Have Not Done Enough

“You have not done enough, you have never done enough, so long as it is still possible that you have something to contribute.”

– Dag Hammarskjöld (Swedish economist and philosopher, U.N. secretary general, 1905-1961)