Technology & Ethics

Critical examinations of AI, cybersecurity, and emerging technologies through an ethical lens.

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Digital Habeas Corpus: Do We Still Own Our Data Selves?

A century ago, courts debated whether the state could detain a body without due process. Today, the question looks eerily similar—but the “body” in question is digital. Every person now trails a data double: a shifting dossier of clicks, purchases, health metrics, and geolocation pings. Banks use it to judge creditworthiness, insurers to price risk, employers to screen candidates. Increasingly, this second self is more decisive than the flesh-and-blood one. Yet unlike our physical bodies, our data selves enjoy no clear legal protection.

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The Crypto-Cathedral: When Markets Masquerade as Faith

In a converted warehouse in Lisbon, hundreds of people stand in rapture before a glowing ticker screen. Prices scroll where an altar might have stood, and when a coin surges, cheers echo like hymns. What began as financial speculation now resembles something older, more primal: a congregation. Blockchain, with its rituals, myths, and prophets, has become for many a surrogate faith. The question is not whether crypto is money. It is whether crypto is church.

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Pandemic Patents: Who Owns the Cure in a Borderless Crisis?

When the next pandemic strikes, the question of who lives and who waits may hinge less on hospital capacity than on the fine print of intellectual property law. Vaccines, antivirals, and monoclonal antibodies can now be developed in record time. But as the world learned in 2020, innovation without access leaves millions unprotected. The scramble for cures in a borderless crisis is no longer just a matter of science—it is a battle over ownership.

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Synthetic Voices, Real Consequences

Not long ago, a scammer needed a convincing email or a stolen credit card number. Today, they may only need your voice. With off-the-shelf tools, a few minutes of audio—scraped from a podcast, a TikTok clip, or even a voicemail—can be spun into a synthetic voice nearly indistinguishable from the original. Fraud has always adapted to new technology. What makes synthetic voices different is how deeply they blur the boundary between identity and imitation.

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Passwordless, Priceless? The Hidden Risks of a Biometric Internet

For decades, the humble password has been the gatekeeper of our digital lives. Clumsy though it was—reused, forgotten, scribbled on sticky notes—it had one advantage: it could be changed. When compromised, you could burn it down and start again.

Now, tech companies promise a sleeker, safer future: the passwordless internet. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are pushing “passkeys”—cryptographic tokens tied to a device or biometric signature. Instead of typing in “P@ssw0rd123,” you log in with a fingerprint, a face scan, or a hardware key. Faster, frictionless, more secure.

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Trial by Algorithm: Who Gets Care When AI Triage Sets the Rules

In hospitals around the world, triage has long been the most human of judgments. A nurse in an emergency department glances at a patient, listens to their breath, weighs symptoms against instinct and experience. Decisions are made in seconds, and those decisions often determine survival.

Now, increasingly, algorithms are stepping into that role. Machine learning models can parse vast datasets of vitals, lab values, and historical outcomes in milliseconds. Advocates argue that AI-driven triage reduces bias, speeds up intake, and frees clinicians for higher-level care. In pilot programs from London to Lagos, early results suggest improved throughput and fewer missed critical cases.

Yet moving from pilot to policy is not merely a technical step—it is an ethical threshold. The question is not simply can algorithms triage effectively? but should they be entrusted with choices that are, at their core, moral judgments?

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The Global South’s Hidden Vaccine Innovation Hubs

When the world thinks of vaccine breakthroughs, the mental map tends to orient northward—to gleaming laboratories in Boston, Basel, or Berlin. Yet, over the past decade, a quieter revolution has been underway in places rarely associated with cutting-edge biotechnology. From Dakar to Hyderabad, São Paulo to Cape Town, the Global South has cultivated vaccine innovation hubs that are not merely adapting imported science, but generating their own.

This shift didn’t happen by accident. Three interwoven forces have driven it: the urgent public health needs of low- and middle-income countries, the gradual decentralization of vaccine production technology, and a wave of scientists trained abroad who are returning home. Together, these trends are rewriting the geography of medical innovation.

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Biometric Borders: The Future of Travel or the End of Freedom?

At a growing number of airports, your face is now your boarding pass. A quick scan, a green light, and you’re waved through—no fumbling for IDs, no manual checks. To the weary traveler, it feels like a glimpse of the future: seamless, frictionless, efficient.

But this future carries a shadow. As biometric border systems spread—using fingerprints, iris scans, and facial recognition to verify identity—the convenience they promise comes with a question few passengers stop to ask: What happens to all that data, and who controls it?

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Algorithmic Borders: The Rise of Digital Immigration Control

The first checkpoint may no longer be a uniformed officer with a passport stamp. Increasingly, it is a silent algorithm, running on a remote server, deciding — in milliseconds — whether you will be waved through, delayed, or denied.

From visa applications to airport security screening, artificial intelligence is becoming the invisible gatekeeper of human mobility. Governments frame these systems as efficiency upgrades: faster queues, fewer errors, more “objective” decisions. But efficiency can also conceal a shift in power — and accountability — from human judgment to machine logic.

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