In the last few months as I’ve traveled on airplanes, trains, and buses here and overseas, I’ve been party to the unrestrained intimacies of perfect strangers. As a helpless bystander to other people’s high-decibel, one-sided cell phone calls, I’ve been scorched by expletives, strangled by inanities, and seared by complaints. I’ve overheard a high-tech sales manager excoriating the stupidities of his boss, a medical executive from Toronto trying to hire a part-time dentist, a soldier from California bidding his girlfriend goodbye as he shipped out overseas, an executive fending off questions from her mother about a misfired job offer, and a teenager railing about the geeks, jerks, and wimps in her life.

I should be, then, the perfect buyer for a cell phone jammer. These pocket-sized electronic devices emit radio signals that block cell phone connections within, typically, a 30-foot radius. Annoyed by the interminable loquacity of a nearby cell-bellower? Just press the button on your pocket jammer. The offending phone, overwhelmed by competing signals from your little box, drops the call, leaving the flummoxed user stabbing at now-dead keys in a futile effort to reconnect. Within seconds, a blissful silence reigns — and the victim, thinking it’s just a dead spot, never knows what’s happened.

But there’s a problem: The devices are illegal in the United States. Because they broadcast on frequencies purchased by cell phone companies exclusively for their customers’ use, they are subject to the Communications Act of 1934, which prohibits people from “willfully or maliciously interfering with the radio communications of any station licensed or authorized” to operate. Also prohibited is the “manufacture, importation, sale or offer for sale, including advertising, of devices designed to block or jam wireless transmissions.”

Yet jammers are flooding into the United States. You can easily find them for sale on the Web. There’s one disguised as a pack of Marlboros and another made to look like a small cell phone. Some blast out only the U.S. frequencies, while others take down European phones as well. Some are as cheap as $50, while others approach $1,000. They’ve already built up a subculture of commentary on blogs and in the news media, where you’ll find extensive explanations about how they work, which are the best, why the French government has licensed them in certain environments (like restaurants and concert halls), and how the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, which has oversight in this area, has yet to level any fines for their use.

What are we to make of the ethics of all this? Am I alone in thinking of travel not as a wasteland to be endured between destinations but as a positive, useful, productive space for reflection, reading, and writing? Am I wrong to prefer a glorious stillness over the half-life of invasive gossip? Do I have as much right to an unpolluted soundscape as to a smoke-free atmosphere? Given a human anatomy that can close eyes but not ears, must I simply suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous conversations? Or should I, like Hamlet, “take arms against a sea of troubles / And by opposing end them” — by pushing that little button in my pocket?

My answer to Hamlet is no, but not for the obvious reasons. It’s not simply that the devices currently are illegal, though that’s a powerful reason for eschewing jammers. Nor is it simply that jammers produce indiscriminate punishment, disabling every nearby phone and perhaps preventing emergency messages from getting through. Even if I could target my jammer onto a sole suspect, do I have the moral right to fight the invasive by invading someone else’s world?

No, the reason I won’t join the jammers is that the problem is not in the technology but in ourselves. The point is not what’s filling the external atmosphere, but what’s absent from the ethical consciousness. What we’re seeing is the convergence of three trends in our culture: a sense of self-importance oblivious to the consideration of others, a fear of solitude that equates it with emptiness, and a collapse of the dignity of the private.

Why do these trends raise ethics issues? Because each centers on the core moral value of respect. Inconsiderateness is a lack of respect for others. A fear of emptiness is a lack of respect for thought, reflection, and inner peace. And a refusal to separate the private from the public — to babble away about anything and everything without concern for who may be listening — invites a moral nudity that betrays a lack of self-respect.

Bottom line? We won’t correct invasive cell-phoning through jammer vigilantes. Nor, given the impossibility of legislating morality, will we do it through laws. Our recourse lies in ethics. As with so many new technologies, the devices enter the market before the ethics enters our hearts. Needed is a ringing, clear code of cell phone ethics — subscribed to by corporate executives, adopted by the professions, taught in the schools, promoted by the media. More than a list of don’ts, this code needs to encourage positive behavior, rooted in values that already are in place.

I’ve already written the opener: “As a responsible cell phone user, I promise to….” Now all we need are five or 10 crisp bullet-points. Email me your suggestions. Let’s see whether, by thinking together, we can begin building a code of cell phone ethics that someday will make a difference.

©2007 Institute for Global Ethics

“If you don’t have television, you don’t have crowds.”

“It’s hard to make arguments that the bulk of what is being provided by the U.S. is very effective for counter-terrorism operations. A lot of the military assistance has been much more useful for a potential war with India.”

WASHINGTON
The controversy over U.S. attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey’s stand on torture continued to simmer late last week, with moral arguments being waged by both supporters and detractors.

As the business week closed in Washington, Mukasey’s chances appeared to improve as two powerful Judiciary Committee Democrats, senators Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Charles Schumer (N.Y.), broke ranks and announced support for his nomination, Bloomberg reports.

According to the Los Angeles Times, their support may have hinged on the results of a closed-door meeting in which Mukasey was reported to have told Schumer that if Congress were to pass a law banning so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, President Bush would have no choice but to obey it.

Mukasey’s nomination at first appeared to be a shoe-in but ran into trouble two weeks ago when Democrats balked at his reluctance to declare that waterboarding, a technique that recreates the effects of drowning, constitutes torture and therefore is unconstitutional.

But Mukasey’s characterization of the practice as “repugnant” seemed to satisfy some of his critics on both sides of the aisle, including Republican senator John McCain (Ariz.), who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, reports the Financial Times.

Mukasey had asserted that without first-hand knowledge of the scope and extent of enhanced interrogation techniques, which are classified, he could not make a specific determination of legality, according to reports from USA Today and the Chicago Tribune.

The Judiciary Committee is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to send the nomination to the floor of the full Senate.

BOSTON
U.S. medical students receive insufficient instruction about military medical ethics and a physician’s moral responsibilities under the Geneva Conventions, according to a report last week from Harvard Medical School.

The Harvard Crimson reports that of 1,700 medical students surveyed nationwide, a third did not know that the Geneva Conventions require doctors to treat the sickest first, regardless of nationality.

A similar proportion did not know that depriving prisoners of food and water for extended periods was prohibited by the Conventions, reports the Washington Post.

Only about 37 percent of the medical students correctly affirmed that the Geneva Conventions apply irrespective of whether war had been formally declared.

According to a summary of the findings in TIME magazine, more that a quarter of respondents said they would, if ordered, threaten detainees by deceptively telling them they were to be given psychotropic drugs, or pretend to give a lethal injection that was actually harmless saline. Six percent said they would actually kill a detainee with a lethal injection if so ordered.

TIME quotes Dr. Steve Miles, a medical ethicist and author, as saying it may not be necessary to teach medical students chapter and verse of ethics and law as they apply to torture. Instead, he contends, there is a more overarching skill that doctors need: the ability to say no, whether to a commander who wants a prisoner tortured or to an HMO that wants to conceal the benefits of an expensive new treatment.

“Every doctor is going to wind up in a dual-loyalty situation,” Miles told TIME. “The answer is to remember that a doctor’s first objective is to relieve suffering — not to cause it.”

More than 70 percent of military doctors are directly recruited from civilian medical schools, according to the study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the International Journal of Health Services.

WASHINGTON
A coalition of privacy and consumer groups last week called on the federal government to create the Internet equivalent of a “do not call” list.

They want a “do not track” list to prohibit marketing firms from tracking Web surfers’ habits and preferences, according to Wired magazine.

The ethical issue at stake is the balance between good business — profits from personalized pitches based on surfers’ Internet tracks — and privacy, reports the Boston Herald.

Web marketers currently use vast databases to fuel the $20-billion online advertising business.

Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, one of the groups calling for the list, told the San Francisco Chronicle that data collection amounts to “wholesale commercial surveillance.”

He also argued that consumers generally are unaware of how much information is compiled about their surfing habits.

“What they see, what they do, what kind of searches they do is all harvested, tabulated, and spread across the vast media without consent,” Chester said.

In related news, the head of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week warned Internet marketing firms that they should start posting more conspicuous details about how much information is gathered from Web surfers and how it will be used. FTC commissioner Jon Leibowitz said the government does not intend to enforce such privacy rules “at this point,” but he left the door open for government lawsuits if there is continued evidence of “problematic practices,” reports technology news service CNET.

WASHINGTON
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) last week imposed a $1 million fine on Mitchell Wade, a former defense contractor who admitted bribing disgraced former congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.).

The fine, the second-largest in the FEC’s history, followed an investigation into charges that Wade secretly funneled funds from his company to the campaign committees of U.S. congressman Virgil Goode (R-Va.) and former congresswoman Katherine Harris (R-Fla.), according to a report from UPI.

Federal law limits corporate contributions to political campaigns and prohibits corporations from reimbursing employees for contributions. It also bars corporations from coercing employees into making political donations.

Both Goode and Harris have denied any wrongdoing and have not been charged in the case, reports CBS News.

Wade’s company, a defense contractor called MZM, allegedly received federal contracts steered to the firm by Cunningham, reports the Copley News Service. Cunningham, who admitted that Wade bribed him, is now serving an eight-year prison term.

Wade also was called to testify in federal court in San Diego against another contractor charged with bribing Cunningham, according to the Associated Press.

Wade is expected to be sentenced in the Cunningham bribery case early next year.

VARIOUS DATELINES
Business stories hinging on ethics issues made headlines last week:

• Siemens, the German engineering and technology conglomerate that has been shaken by charges that it took millions of dollars in bribes, has established a new program under which whistleblowers will receive leniency. The Agence France-Presse reports that Siemens sent a letter to staff saying, “The company will impose no heavy sanctions, such as firing or demand of compensation, against staff who, before January 31, 2008, completely and honestly inform of violations or irregularities in accounts.” But the company reserved the right to impose lighter sanctions, such as ethics training, warnings, or job changes.
• The United Kingdom has become a less-attractive destination for business as a result of growing doubts about its corporate ethics, according to a new study. London’s Daily Telegraph reports that the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitive Index, which measures the attractiveness of national business climates based on the perceptions of top executives, ranked Britain ninth. While the United Kingdom did well in such measures as economic stability, market size, innovation, and education, Forum senior economist Jennifer Blanke told the Telegraph that Britain’s ranking for corporate ethics plunged during the latest survey period due to a series of highly publicized scandals. “The message from chief executives and top managers within UK is that on this one question of business’s ethical behavior, there’s something amiss,” she said. The United States finished first in the survey, Canada came in 13th, and Australia placed 19th. At the bottom of the list, finishing in places 129 through 131, respectively, were Zimbabwe, Burundi, and Chad.
• The fallout from the collapse of the subprime lending market claimed the job of Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O’Neal, who resigned under pressure last week after his firm reported the biggest loss in its history, reports Forbes. Subprime mortgages and financial vehicles related to them have been at the center of financial and ethics controversies since late summer, when housing prices fell and interest rates rose, creating a series of defaults among borrowers, many of whom had been granted mortgages despite shaky credit records.

VARIOUS DATELINES
The intersection of economics and ethics in developing nations across Africa was the subject of several stories from the world press last week:

• A new survey by an anticorruption group based in Kenya says that fighting graft is the biggest concern among voters there amid the run-up to presidential and legislative elections on December 27. Reporting from Nairobi, the Voice of America says corruption is a larger concern than poverty, unemployment, or taxes among the 2,400 Kenyans who responded to the poll, which was conducted by the Africa Center for Open Governance. Some Kenyans interviewed for the piece maintained that corruption is the root cause of poverty there and must be eradicated before the economy can grow.
• The speaker of Nigeria’s House of Representatives and her aide resigned last week in the wake of a corruption scandal that has brought the government there to a standstill. Reuters Africa reports that an internal investigation last month concluded that House speaker Patricia Etteh and her deputy Babangida Nguroje violated House rules by awarding contacts worth $5 million for the renovation of their official residences and for a fleet of cars. According to the Reuters report, the House of Representatives has been unable to debate a single piece of legislation since June because it has been consumed with the contracts controversy.
• Sierra Leone’s newly elected president tells the BBC that he will crack down on corruption. Ernest Bai Koroma won the first election since the withdrawal of United Nations peacekeepers after a decadelong civil war. He told the BBC: “If assets of public officials are declared and at the end of their term of service there is a substantial increase, you should give an account of how you are able to increase your assets. I’m not saying that nobody should increase their assets, but when it goes beyond magical proportions then an explanation should be given.” According to the report, rampant corruption in Sierra Leone has fueled poverty and conflict for decades. Koroma campaigned on an anticorruption platform.

SAN FRANCISCO
Clothing retailer Gap, Inc., is drawing up a pledge to label its products “sweatshop free,” a move that is believed to be one of the largest commitments by a major retailer to end child labor, reports the U.K. Guardian.

The initiative follows newspaper reports claiming that one of the firm’s largest Indian suppliers subcontracted to employers using children as young as 10 to make garments.

According to the Guardian, Gap’s plan includes labeling its garments so that consumers can directly track online where the clothing was made.

Gap has recalled clothing traced back to a supplier whose subcontractor allegedly employed children in an embroidery unit in New Delhi, according to a report from the Times of India.

The San Francisco-based retailer says it will meet with 200 suppliers in India to reinforce a zero-tolerance policy on child labor, reports San Francisco television station KPIX.

According to an analysis from the Economist, since the beginning of the decade Gap has positioned itself as one of the world’s most ethical retailers, enforcing strict codes on working conditions and severing ties with factories that do not meet its standards.

The Economist piece notes that “policing contractors and subcontractors in faraway places is not easy. A big proportion of the company’s clothes are made in India, which has become the world’s capital of child labor. Of the estimated 218 million laborers worldwide who are younger than 14, some 40-50 million are in India, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), a United Nations agency, and they account for around 20 percent of the country’s GDP. Gap says it employs 90 people across the globe to supervise compliance with its rules.”

Governments often are reluctant to draw attention to the problem, adds the Economist. India’s commerce minister last week suggested that stories about child labor were being used to justify protectionism.

Still, critics interviewed for the analysis maintain that if firms are able to effectively monitor the quality of their products, they should be able to police their production.

VARIOUS DATELINES
Moral angles on the news were prominent in reports last week covering Asian issues:

• Over the weekend, Pakistan’s military leader declared a state of emergency and began rounding up about 1,500 opponents from the military, judiciary, and opposition parties, CNN reports. President Pervez Musharraf said the move was necessary to combat terrorism, but critics contend it was aimed at dismantling the Supreme Court, which had shown reluctance to certify the results of Musharraf’s recent re-election. Pakistan has been in more or less a continual state of turmoil for years, in large part because of endemic corruption and resultant political strife.
• A progress report compiled by the European Commission says Turkey has not done enough to stanch corruption, modernize its judiciary, stem the power of the military, or guarantee freedom of expression. The International Herald Tribune reports that the assessment is a blow to hopes that Turkey, which straddles Asia and Europe, can join the European Union.
• In the same way that “blood diamonds” were stigmatized by the press and Hollywood, there is a growing movement to have one of Myanmar’s exports labeled as “blood rubies,” according to a report from the Scotsman. In the aftermath of the brutal crackdown on protesters in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, pressure groups are becoming more vocal in criticizing trade in a gem they claim benefits a repressive government. So-called blood diamonds — gems mined in war zones and used to fund insurrection — have recently been regulated by governments and by agreements among gem-dealing firms. According to the Scotsman, the European Union last week said it would consider a possible ban on rubies from Myanmar.
• The world’s biggest trade show for producers of pharmaceutical ingredients, held in Milan, Italy, was attended by a variety of Chinese firms, including several whose owners were in jail or accused of a variety of infractions ranging from supplying steroids to violating patent law, according to a report from the New York Times. Times reporters covering the event in Milan say that while the rogue firms are not representative of all Chinese companies, they do point to a larger problem: Pharmaceutical ingredients exported from China often are not certified or inspected by Chinese regulators. The Times claims it identified 82 Chinese firms at the trade show that said they made and exported pharmaceutical ingredients but were not certified by China’s Food and Drug Administration.

From the Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive:

“A new Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive Healthcare Poll finds a substantial decrease from 2006 in those who support asking people with unhealthy lifestyles to pay more for healthcare. This latest poll shows thirty-seven percent of U.S. adults think it is fair that those with unhealthy lifestyles pay higher insurance premiums than those with healthy lifestyles, compared to a majority (53%) who felt that way just about a year ago (July 2006). Similarly, one-third (35%) say it is fair for those with unhealthy lifestyles to pay higher deductibles or co-payments for their medical care, compared to half (53%) in 2006….

“Overall, males (51%) are stronger proponents of increased healthcare costs than are females (32%). ‘Fairness’ appears to be a key concept for those who agree that people with unhealthy lifestyles should pay more — it is their choice to live that way, so others should not have to pay for it (80%) and they tend to incur more medical costs than those who live a healthy lifestyle (82%). Many also believe that higher costs could encourage people to live healthier lifestyles, which would be better for society overall (75%).

“When it comes to two main components of an ‘unhealthy lifestyle’ — namely smoking and obesity — the public tends to take a stronger stance against smoking. A clear majority (57%) favors higher health insurance costs for smokers, while only a third (36%) favors the same for those who are overweight….

“There is almost no public support for employers having the right to fire employees for smoking (7%) or being seriously overweight (4%). About one third agree that they should be able to require employees to attend smoking cessation (29%) or weight loss (30%) programs, but most adults believe employers should not have the right to take any of these actions….

“Katherine Binns, Division President for Healthcare Research at Harris Interactive, comments, ‘…Companies are instituting wellness programs which involve health-risk assessments and fitness coaches, but should remember that obese people, whose healthcare is among the costliest, are protected by federal law.’…”

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.”

– Samuel Butler (British writer, 1835-1902)