preview

Should Justin Ellsworth's Parents Have Been Given Access to His Email?

Good Essays

Should Justin Ellsworth's Parents have been given access to his email? Table of Contents Pg. 3 Introduction Pg. 3 Utilitarian Pg. 4 Deontological Pg. 5 Yahoo’s Stance and overall outcome Pg. 5 Conclusion Pg. 6 References The question was posed; Should Justin Ellsworth's Parents have been given access to his email? Justin Ellsworth was a US Marine killed in Iraq. After his death, his parents wanted access to his emails. Yahoo, his email service provided declined their request stating that their privacy policy prohibited them from disclosing the contents of his email to anyone. Now I was asked to review this from a utilitarian and deontological view. Utilitarian Utilitarian ethics is the idea that …show more content…

Deontological Deontological ethics is an approach to ethics that judges the morality of an action based on the action's adherence to a rule or rules. It is similar to rule utilitarian ethics but with a few differences. In deontological ethics rules are followed no matter what. There is not exceptions to the rule, there is no questions as to whether or not the rule provides the greater good, the rule is there for a reason so no matter what it is followed to the letter no exceptions. With this in mind we should look at the question again. Should Justin Ellsworth's Parents have been given access to his email? The privacy policy says that Justin’s emails are to be deleted after his death and no one else is allowed to look at them. The rule is there to protect his privacy, and he agreed to it when he signed up for the account so using deontological ethics then his parents are not allowed to have access to his emails and they will be deleted from the Yahoo server, plain and simple. Yahoo’s Stance and overall outcome Yahoo is taking the stance of deontological ethics. They are saying that he agreed to the privacy setting when he signed up for the account, and by these terms that they agreed on with Justin, their hands are tied so to speak. There is nothing that they can do and if they violate their policy then they will break their contract and will be in violation of their own policy.

Get Access