For more information, see this week’s Research Report.

by Rushworth M. Kidder

The world’s battle with pirates off the coast of Somalia came to a head last weekend with reports of two rescue efforts. One was a complete success. In the other, a hostage died. Were both — or either — ethically right?

The success came on Sunday, when a team of U.S. Navy Seals rescued Richard Phillips, the captain of the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama, from a lifeboat where he was being held by three Somali pirates. The shootout, which left his captors dead, came after U.S. negotiators refused the pirates’ offer to free Capt. Phillips in return for their own freedom.

The less successful venture came on Thursday, when French soldiers stormed the Tanit, a 41-foot yacht seized by pirates five days earlier. The commandos freed four French hostages and killed or captured the five pirates on board. But the yacht’s owner, Florent Lemacon, was killed during the attack. French government officials repeatedly had warned the two families aboard the yacht, which was headed for Zanzibar, not to sail through the Gulf of Aden, where the attack took place.

Behind these events lie several ethical premises. On the first set, we probably can all agree:

• Premise: Piracy is criminal, with no moral justification.
• Premise: Maintaining sea lanes free from piracy is essential to international trade.
• Conclusion: Nations should take vigorous steps to eliminate piracy, by force if necessary.

The second set is more complex:

• Premise: Ransom should never be paid, and pirates should always be punished.
• Premise: Protecting the lives of innocent hostages is of overriding importance.
• Conclusion: Nations should …?

Here’s where the moral sledding gets tough. These premises are at odds with each other. Should nations put the needs of the whole community above the safety of their own citizens? Or should they refuse to put at risk the lives of noncombatants — innocent people who have not signed up for military service? Must they be willing to sacrifice hostages in order to convince thugs that no effort will be spared to eradicate piracy? Or must they value the tangible life of each citizen above the abstract principles of international trade?

The challenge of this individual-versus-community dilemma, of course, is that both sides are right. The case on the individual side was made last week by James Christodoulou, who was held hostage for 56 days last November when his ship was taken by Somali pirates. The CEO of Industrial Shipping Enterprises Corp., Christodoulou described to National Public Radio the patient steps that he took — and the ransom his company paid — to negotiate the safe release of his crew. Christodoulou says that as CEO he feels the lives and safety of a crew are “my primary concern — and, believe me, I would do anything that I had to to make sure that they were returned home.”

From this individualist perspective — and presumably from that of Capt. Phillips’s family in Vermont — the only ethical position is to “do anything” to protect innocent lives first, and to worry about dealing with global piracy later. It’s a perspective that a rule-based Kantian thinker could applaud. If the principle is that you always avoid killing or causing death, then you would want everyone in the world to hold to that principle regardless of the immediate consequences for piracy, shipping, or international affairs. You would, in other words, always negotiate instead of risk an attack.

From the point of view of the community, however, it is enormously important to stamp out piracy. The BBC, reporting that piracy may have cost the world $60 million to $70 million in higher prices for goods shipped internationally, cites Kenyan government estimates that pirates received $150 million in ransom over the past year. Result: Pirates buy faster boats, more powerful weapons, and sophisticated navigational systems. That kind of cash also makes piracy ever more alluring — and tougher to stamp out.

From this perspective, then, the only ethical position is to defend the entire community, even at the cost of the occasional sacrifice of an innocent noncombatant. Here the ends-based utilitarian thinkers would be comfortable. Wanting to do the greatest good for the greatest number, they would argue that sometimes a small amount of bad (like a hostage death) may be necessary. So you would always attack if negotiations stalled — and never let pirates go unpunished.

Was it right, then, for the French soldiers to attack last week, even though it resulted in a death? Does the fact that Monsieur Lemacon ignored the warnings make his life less valuable than if he had turned back? Or is all human life equally valuable? In the end, was his death an unfortunate but necessary sacrifice to deter piracy and save future French lives?

And was it right for the Navy Seals to attack despite the fact that it turned out well? If Capt. Phillips had died, would the attack have been wrong? Is the nation right to insist on signaling a tough line on piracy? Or should the Navy have accepted the pirates’ offer of Phillips’s freedom for their own — a bargain Mr. Christodoulou probably would have snapped up?

The point: Like so much in our world today, these are not right-versus-wrong issues but right-versus-right dilemmas. Case by case and nation by nation, policymakers, military officers, and law enforcement personnel will continue to sit around tables and discuss how best to respond to piracy. At times they’ll vote to attack and at times to negotiate. And at no time will either group have the moral standing to say flatly to the other side, “You’re wrong!” Nor, as citizens, will we.

©2009 Institute for Global Ethics

Questions or comments? Write to newsline@globalethics.org.

A reader comments on last week’s commentary, in which Rushworth Kidder examined whether technology will speed prospects for emerging from the recession:

An interesting perspective: this notion of technology and power for good and harm. It may be that we are chasing the wrong lesson from this recession. Is the economic context really the problem, or the massive predisposition for materialism and consumerism we are addicted to as a measure of happiness?… Perhaps the GDP has seen its day as an indicator of who we are, and we need some broader index, which includes economic health, but also well-being, health, education, security, education, crime rates, jobs, environmental health, etc.

A Gross Well-Being Index? Then we can see if we are in a real recession or not, or maybe we have been in one longer than we think.

– Paul Maillet
Ottawa, Canada

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

“The only thing this proves is that the prosecution messed everything up…. You may be innocent on corruption charges which were never brought up. But you are still guilty of not disclosing some of your major gifts to the public.”

– From a blog entry by Colleen Walsh, one of the jurors who convicted former Alaskan senator Ted Stevens of conviction in a trial whose verdict has now been vacated following revelations of prosecutorial misconduct. Walsh and others were cited in a New York Times piece examining the difference between having Stevens’ corruption conviction thrown out and being found innocent.

Source: New York Times, Apr. 11.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Apr. 13 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 6.

British anti-terror chief resigns after exposing secret documents to photographers; incident videotaped by bystander leads to probe of death during G-20 demonstrations; Mexican drug cartels producing slick YouTube videos to glorify their leaders and scare opponents; BBC is hit with complaints after graphic footage of horse killing; first photos of coffins of returning war dead are published following lifting of 18-year ban

VARIOUS DATELINES
Ethics dilemmas relating to life through a lens were featured in world-press reports last week. Among the coverage:

• Bob Quick, Britain’s chief anti-terror officer, resigned last week after he inadvertently exposed top-secret documents to press photographers while getting out of a vehicle. Details of the documents, which covered a planned anti-terror raid, were legible when magnified, reports the Associated Press. Police implored the news media not to publish or broadcast any details of the raid, which was carried out ahead of schedule because of the disclosure. According to the AP, there were no reports of publication prior to the police action.
• The multitude of cameras trained on any prominent public event led to the escalation last week of a probe into the death of a man during the G-20 Summit in London. Ian Tomlinson, a 47-year-old newspaper vendor, was walking through the area when he was hit and pushed to the ground by a police officer near protests; Tomlinson was not taking part in the protests. After his death, police statements made no mention of any contact between Tomlinson and police. But a video taken by a bystander showed Tomlinson being shoved and struck by a policeman who had masked himself and obscured his badge. The video was circulated on the Internet and subsequently published by the U.K. Guardian, leading to an upgrade in the priority of the probe. The police officer who allegedly attacked Tomlinson identified himself and has been suspended, reports the Times of London.
• YouTube has become a popular site for slickly produced videos that glorify various Mexican drug cartels, according to a report from USA Today. Reporter Rick Jervis writes: “The videos on YouTube and Mexican-based sites are polished — professional singers croon about cartel leaders while images of murdered victims fade one into the next. In the comment area, those loyal to the opposing cartels trade insults and threats.” A YouTube official would not specifically comment on the cartel videos when contacted by the paper, although she did indicate that the company has, in the past, alerted law enforcement about crimes depicted in videos posted to the online service.
• The BBC was flooded with complaints about a documentary that contained a graphic scene of a horse being killed. The program showed a horse in Siberia being choked to death before being stabbed through the heart. The BBC presenter who served as host of the show said the scene, while upsetting, was necessary to accurately depict the plight of a remote community in which killing and eating of horses is commonplace, as well as part of a struggle against nature in which people “do not have the luxury of being able to keep an animal when it is no longer useful.”
• For the first time since the reversal of an 18-year ban on photographing caskets of returning war dead, the military last week allowed media at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to cover the arrival of an airman killed in Afghanistan, ABC News reports. In February, Defense secretary Robert Gates lifted the ban, which had been criticized by some as a political effort to hide the full effects of war. Now, news media may cover the arrival of flag-draped caskets when families consent, reports the Wilmington News-Journal.

Sources: Guardian, Apr. 11 — AP, Apr. 10 — Times of London, Apr. 10 — USA Today, Apr. 10 — BBC, Apr. 9 — Wilmington News-Journal, Apr. 7 — ABC News, Apr. 6.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 2 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 4, 2008 — Related Newsline story, July 7, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 25, 2008 — Related Newsline story, June 11, 2007.

Department says move is unrelated to case of former Sen. Ted Stevens, in which conviction was tossed because of allegations of prosecutorial misconduct

WASHINGTON
The head of the Ethics Office of the U.S. Justice Department was replaced last week in the aftermath of the prosecution of former Alaska senator Ted Stevens.

H. Marshall Jarrett was replaced by Mary Patrice Brown, a lawyer in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington as head of the Office of Professional Responsibility. Jarrett is taking another post within Justice.

The Justice Department says the move was planned in advance and unrelated to the Stevens case, in which a federal judge voided a corruption verdict against the senator, claiming prosecutorial misconduct, the Washington Bureau of the Chicago Tribune reports.

After the verdict was set aside, the Justice Department declined to re-open the case.

According to the New York Times, the judge singled out the Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigated allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in the case.

In a highly unusual move, the judge named a private lawyer as a special prosecutor to conduct an independent criminal probe into possible wrongdoing of prosecutors, including allegations that they withheld evidence that should have been turned over to the defense, the Times reports.

Stevens was convicted of a variety of corruption charges and lost his re-election bid by a narrow margin. In the aftermath, reports the Wall Street Journal, many are questioning whether a citizen is essentially at the mercy of overly zealous prosecutors.

“My question is what happens to the rest of us?” asked former federal prosecutor Todd Foster in an interview by the Journal. “What happens when the person doesn’t have the resources Sen. Stevens had? What happens to those cases that don’t reach the attorney general?”

That view was reflected in an editorial published last week in the New York’s Newsday: “The power to prosecute is the power to destroy. It’s been said before but bears repeating, because when prosecutors go astray, obtaining justice becomes all but impossible. Former Alaska Sen. Ted Sevens is the latest example.”

The editorial concludes that “insidious, and potentially corrupting, is the desire to win. Prosecutors are judged by their conviction rate, and zeal is prized. But winning shouldn’t be the most important goal. Seeing justice done has to command the top spot.”

Sources: Wall Street Journal, Apr. 10 — Chicago Tribune, Apr. 9 — New York Times, Apr. 8 — Newsday, Apr. 8.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Apr. 6 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 10, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 3, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 27, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 4, 2008.

Court decisions mean your MySpace rants are public, as is your trash; in other news, one university is rethinking privacy rules after a student death

VARIOUS DATELINES
Privacy issues made headlines last week. Among them:

• A California college student has learned the hard way that a rant she posted on her MySpace public profile not only can be seen by anyone with a computer, but also is fair game to be cited in the local newspaper. PC Magazine reports that Cynthia Moreno, who lives in Coalinga, California, wrote a blog entry in which she detailed how much she despised her hometown. The remarks, bearing Moreno’s full name, were reprinted in the newspaper. Moreno sued for invasion of privacy, citing among other factors that she had eventually removed the entry, reports PC Magazine. But justice Bert Levy of the Superior Court of Fresno County dismissed her claim: “Under these circumstances, no reasonable person would have had an expectation of privacy regarding the published material,” he wrote in his opinion. “By posting the article on MySpace.com, Cynthia opened the article to the public at large. Her potential audience was vast…. That Cynthia removed the [piece] from her online journal after six days is also of no consequence.”
• In a case that the Scripps News Service describes as a “classic contest over the constitutional right to privacy,” Canada’s Supreme Court ruled last week that police have the right to sift through garbage once it reaches someone’s property line. The case involved Russell Patrick, a Calgary man who threw away material that police say contained evidence that he was running a drug operation out of his house. Police obtained a warrant based on the evidence taken from his trash. The Supreme Court rejected the defendant’s claim that his privacy was violated, with justice Ian Binney writing: “When Patrick’s conduct is assessed objectively, he abandoned his privacy interest when he placed his garbage for collection at the rear of his property where it was accessible to any passing member of the public.”
• Strict policies governing student privacy are being re-evaluated at the University of Kansas, according to a report from UPI. A 19-year-old freshman with a history of alcohol problems was found dead in his bed. Because of privacy policies, the student’s parents were not told that several conduct violations that had been charged against the student were alcohol-related. Campus officials say they are rethinking the privacy rules, according to the Kansas City Star.

Sources: PC Magazine, Apr. 10 — UPI, Apr. 10 — Scripps News Service, Apr. 9 — Kansas City Star, Apr. 7.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Apr. 6 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 16 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 23 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 16 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 9.

Is media frenzy proper given tragedy and gravity of the case?

TORONTO
A medical-ethics debate in Canada has highlighted some unsettling questions related to medical and journalistic ethics.

The incident centers on two babies, one dying of a congenital disease and another in need of a heart transplant, possibly from the dying baby, Kaylee Wallace.

According to a report from the Canadian Press, the incident was played out in real time on TV networks, news websites, and reported in detail in newspapers. The intensely public nature of the case concerned some ethicists, who told the press that they felt great unease about how the incidents unfolded.

“These are not the kinds of decisions that have to be taken in the newspapers,” Trudo Lemmens, a professor of health law and bioethics at the University of Toronto, told the Calgary Herald.

Ethicist Margaret Somerville also weighed in on the case in the Herald: “I guess one of the things you could ask is: Is having this media frenzy around this (case), is it a sufficient respect for that baby’s life and death?”

Chief among the ethics concerns, reports the Montreal Gazette, is the fact that the family of the dying donor infant became friendly with the family of the prospective recipient baby. Although the hospital insists that the planned recipient was at the top of the transplant list, reports the Gazette, the very public nature of the relationship between the families likely will raise “unfortunate doubts about the fairness of transplant systems.”

Late last week, the case was further complicated when Kaylee did not die as expected after doctors removed her life support. As this issue of Newsline went to press, she was breathing on her own and had a strong heartbeat, according to a report from the Toronto Star.

If Kaylee does survive, however, she faces a bleak long-term prognosis, and there was no immediate word whether another donor could be located for the infant in need of the heart transplant.

Sources: Montreal Gazette, Apr. 10 — National Post, Apr. 9 — Calgary Herald, Apr. 9 — Canadian Press, Apr. 9.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Jan. 12 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 22, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 25, 2008 — Related Newsline story, June 30, 2008 — Related Newsline story, June 16, 2008.

Even though their purpose was ostensibly to prevent long-term damage, assisting in activities such as waterboarding is contrary to ethics codes, report says

WASHINGTON
Health workers violated medical ethics when they helped interrogate terror suspects held in secret CIA prisons, the International Committee of the Red Cross said last week.

In a report based on interviews with 14 prisoners, the Red Cross charges that the medical workers, thought to be physicians or psychologists, monitored prisoners and advised interrogators when it was safe to continue the interrogation, according to the Reuters news agency.

National Public Radio says the Red Cross determined that the medical monitors were involved in interrogations that involved beatings, sleep deprivation, immersion in cold water, and waterboarding.

Legal-news site The Jurist says the report acknowledges that although the purpose of the medical personnel was to prevent lasting damage from the interrogation, the harsh interrogations themselves are contrary to international law and medical participation therefore runs contrary to ethics codes.

In the case of the alleged participation of health personnel in the detention and interrogation of the 14 detainees, the Jurist cites the report: “Their primary purpose appears to have been to serve the interrogation process, and not the patient. In so doing the health personnel have condoned and participated in ill-treatment.”

Among specific allegations cited in the report, according to the Voice of America, is a claim that medical personnel were present during waterboarding, and in once instance monitored a detainee’s blood-oxygen level to determine whether it was safe to continue with the interrogation.

The document says medical workers also monitored health effects of shacking prisoners in stress positions for long periods.

Sources: The Jurist, Apr. 10 — Reuters, Apr. 7 — Voice of America, Apr. 7 — NPR, Apr. 7.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Jan. 12 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 5 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 22, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 25, 2008 — Related Newsline story, June 23, 2008.

He also rules out waterboarding; says future interrogations will involve “dialogue only”

WASHINGTON
Weighing in on an ethics issue that has divided the United States and some European governments and prompted criticism from human rights groups, CIA director Leon Panetta last week said that the agency no longer operates any secret overseas prisons.

Panetta also said the agency no longer will use private contractors to conduct interrogations or provide security for the detention sites that remain, the Washington Post reports.

Addressing another hot-button issue, Panetta also pledged that the harsh interrogation techniques used by the Bush administration no longer will be employed. Instead, CNN reports, Panetta decreed that the agency will use only techniques approved by the Army Field Manual.

The CIA’s so-called “black sites” were used to detain terror suspects captured in military actions launched by President Bush after the 9/11 attacks. The secret prisons, allegedly located in parts of Central and Eastern Europe as well as in the Horn of Africa, became the target of protests by human rights groups and others, according to Britain’s Sky News.

Inflaming the criticism was the eventual admission that three suspects were subjected to waterboarding at the sites, notes Sky News.

Now, Panetta says, prisoners held by the CIA will be subject to “dialogue only” interrogations, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The CIA retains its right to imprison terror suspects before turning them over to the military, according to the Times, but Panetta said that the agency currently has no one in custody.

Sources: Washington Post, Apr. 10 — Los Angeles Times, Apr. 10 — Sky News, Apr. 10 — CNN, Apr. 9.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 9 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 26 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 19, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 25, 2006 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 11, 2006.

Critics charge that reduction in services is political; others contend that it’s simply a matter of facing reality

SAN FRANCISCO
Deep spending cuts to social services in San Francisco, a city known as a haven for the disadvantaged, are igniting an ethics debate over how the city will cope with an economy predicted to get worse before it gets better, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

Monitor contributor Christopher D. Cook reports that mayor Gavin Newsom has proposed a target 25-percent reduction in funding to all city departments, resulting in the anticipated closure of several antipoverty programs.

In an odd reversal, notes Cook, San Francisco is moving politically to the right of the federal government, which is pledging trillions for social programs.

Liberal leaders tell the Monitor that the city is using the financial crisis as an excuse to wax conservative.

“The shock of the deficit is being used to make some of the changes that more-conservative forces in the city have been trying to make — privatization, reduction in services to the most needy, cutting health services that are primary care services,” city supervisor John Avalos, who represents a largely working-class district, told the Monitor.

But supervisor Sean Elsbernd disagrees: “These are horrible cuts across the board — they’re not disproportionately impacting the poor. Every San Franciscan is going to feel the effects of this budget…. There needs to be a recognition that we’re not in this budget situation just because of the downturn, but because of our spending practices over the years.”

The New York Times last week ran a similar piece examining how social-services cuts are prompting ethics debates in several U.S. states, including Arizona, where many elderly citizens live and rely on such service for daily support.

Sources: New York Times, Apr. 11 — Christian Science Monitor, Apr. 10.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Apr. 6 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 19 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 5 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 27, 2006.

Gallup finds that “self-reported importance of religion and church attendance have remained steady”

From Gallup:

“Despite suggestions that the economic recession might cause religiosity among Americans to increase, there has been no evident change over the past 15 months in either Americans’ self-reported church attendance or the importance of religion in their daily lives….

“It is not an unreasonable conjecture that the current recession would cause Americans to increasingly turn to religion as a surcease from their economic or personal sorrow. But that does not appear to be the case. Even as the percentage of Americans who are negative about the economy has increased, particularly from September through December of last year, there have been no significant changes in the percentages of Americans who say religion is important in their daily lives, or who report attending church weekly or almost every week.

“Although there have been week-to-week fluctuations on these measures among Democrats, independents, and Republicans, there has also been no systematic change in religious adherence evident among any of these partisan groups over the last 15 months.

“In general, as is seen in the accompanying charts, Republicans are the most religious of the three partisan groups, and have remained so over the past year. Independents are slightly more religious than Democrats, but the same relative patterns of religiosity among these groups have continued since January of last year….”

For the full press release from Gallup, Mar. 23, click here.

“Corruption is nature’s way of restoring our faith in democracy.”

– Sir Peter Ustinov quotes (English actor and writer, 1921-2004)