Communications of the ACM

Home/Magazine Archive/November 2022 (Vol. 65, No. 11)/The Blood Price of Unrestricted Privacy/Abstract

Letters to the editor

The Blood Price of Unrestricted Privacy

By CACM Staff
Communications of the ACM, November 2022, Vol. 65 No. 11, Pages 8-9
10.1145/3563965
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Letters to the Editor, illustration — Credit: Getty Images

Reinhard von Hanxleden ends his May 2022 Communications Viewpoint "Information: 'I' vs. 'We' vs. 'They'" (p. 45) by pointing out the unthinking application of unconditional criteria to privacy "seems like a dead end in the long run." It has already proven to be a "dead end" with a Germanwings airliner crash into a cliff in France caused by the copilot. His doctor had given him a sick note, which the copilot threw away, and the doctor was prevented by strict legal prohibitions from communicating his findings of unfitness for flying to the authorities or the airline. The blood price was 199 lives, not including the copilot.

This type of event is entirely foreseeable, as shown by legal requirements in other countries for doctors to communicate their findings if they find a pilot unfit to fly. It is not unreasonable to infer similar tragedies have happened without coming to light or because of a lack of imagination by monomaniacal zealots.

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