Communication Rhetoric and Digital Media Program, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA.
Oxford College of Emory University, 810 Whatcoat Street, Oxford, GA, 30054, USA.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2019 Jun;25(3):869-898. doi: 10.1007/s11948-017-9938-7. Epub 2018 Jan 9.
Academia-intelligence agency collaborations are on the rise for a variety of reasons. These can take many forms, one of which is in the classroom, using students to stand in for intelligence analysts. Classrooms, however, are ethically complex spaces, with students considered vulnerable populations, and become even more complex when layering multiple goals, activities, tools, and stakeholders over those traditionally present. This does not necessarily mean one must shy away from academia-intelligence agency partnerships in classrooms, but that these must be conducted carefully and reflexively. This paper hopes to contribute to this conversation by describing one purposeful classroom encounter that occurred between a professor, students, and intelligence practitioners in the fall of 2015 at North Carolina State University: an experiment conducted as part of a graduate-level political science class that involved students working with a prototype analytic technology, a type of participatory sensing/self-tracking device, developed by the National Security Agency. This experiment opened up the following questions that this paper will explore: What social, ethical, and pedagogical considerations arise with the deployment of a prototype intelligence technology in the college classroom, and how can they be addressed? How can academia-intelligence agency collaboration in the classroom be conducted in ways that provide benefits to all parties, while minimizing disruptions and negative consequences? This paper will discuss the experimental findings in the context of ethical perspectives involved in values in design and participatory/self-tracking data practices, and discuss lessons learned for the ethics of future academia-intelligence agency partnerships in the classroom.
学术机构与情报机构之间的合作因各种原因而不断增加。这些合作可以采取多种形式，其中之一是在课堂上，利用学生来代替情报分析师。然而，课堂是一个伦理道德复杂的场所，学生被视为弱势群体，而当在传统的目标、活动、工具和利益相关者之上叠加多个目标、活动、工具和利益相关者时，情况会变得更加复杂。这并不一定意味着必须回避学术机构与情报机构在课堂上的合作，但必须谨慎和反思性地进行这些合作。本文希望通过描述 2015 年秋季北卡罗来纳州立大学教授、学生和情报人员之间一次有目的的课堂相遇来为这一对话做出贡献：这是一次作为研究生政治学课程一部分的实验，涉及学生使用国家安全局开发的一种分析原型技术，即参与式感知/自我跟踪设备。该实验提出了以下问题，本文将对此进行探讨：在大学课堂上部署原型情报技术会带来哪些社会、伦理和教学方面的考虑，又该如何解决这些问题？如何以对各方都有益、同时最小化干扰和负面影响的方式，在课堂上开展学术机构与情报机构之间的合作？本文将在设计价值观和参与式/自我跟踪数据实践中涉及的伦理观点的背景下讨论实验结果，并讨论未来课堂上学术机构与情报机构合作的伦理问题的经验教训。
