Comment by spokey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spokey | Hacker News Reader

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> It is unethical to use this software on one’s children without letting them know.

I disagree. If you had written "spouse" or "significant other" or really any other adult I'd agree with you, but I don't think you can make that absolute statement when it comes to (minor) children.

Letting the child know about the monitoring software would be the good and trusting thing to do, but "unethical" overstates the case significantly. I can imagine cases where it would reflect poor judgment or be inappropriate to snoop in this way, but I can readily imagine scenarios where it would be unethical NOT to secretly monitor a child's communication.

Part of a parent's job is to keep their children out of trouble until the child is old enough to do that for themselves. (Another part, as you suggest, is teaching the child how to do just that.) Absolute statements about privacy kind of go out the window when you are talking about a relationship and responsibility of that nature.

It is not hard to imagine a child (not every child, but certainly some, especially in the "tween" age range) that has the capacity and desire to hide some communication from his or her parents but lacking the judgment and life-skills to keep themselves safe from harm when doing so.

Suppose your child is engaged in inappropriate or damaging behavior such bullying/being bullied, involved in self-harm/cutting, drug abuse, illegal activities, or things even more sinister. If your child has the desire to hide that activity from you, you could tell your child about the monitoring software but then they'll be careful to find another channel to communicate about this activity. Alternatively you could not tell them about the software and have some additional insight into their world whether they want you to have it or not.

Look, it wouldn't be my first course of action, I wouldn't do it without provocation, and I would be very very careful how I made use of the information, but I wouldn't hesitate to violate my minor child's privacy if I thought it was important to protecting her well being. Monitoring text messages is nothing, I'd read her diary if necessary.

So moral absolutes apply to adults but not children? There is never a case when spying on an adult could save their life?

I'm not sure about your examples. If you suspect your child may be suicidal, talk to him or her. If you do NOT suspect bullying or cutting, how do you know that spying is justified? I think you're "begging the question."

It is a fine line to me to say a parent is spying on one of their children. That said, I would probably let my child know.

That's a bit of a strawman, I'm pretty sure that's not what I said.

This much I know: an absolute right to privacy does not apply to children.

Like you I mean this in the ethical sense: there are (IMO) beyond doubt cases where it is ethical for a custodial parent to invade the privacy of a child, possibly without the child's knowledge or consent. But I suspect this is also a legal fact virtually everywhere, which suggests to me that this may not be a controversial perspective.

I'd be surprised to find and interested in understanding the perspective of a parent that disagrees.

This seems like a no-brainer to me: at some stage kids just aren't capable of managing their own lives. I would take action to stop my (hypothetical) 13-year-old child from cutting just as I would take action to stop my 3-year-old child from playing with knives. The actions would be different. Talking about it would certainly be a preferred option, probably the preferred option, in dealing with the 13-year-old. If it came to monitoring, telling the child that their communication will be monitored would be preferable to not telling them. But I certainly wouldn't just throw up my hands as say "c'est la vie" if those things didn't work and I certainly wouldn't hesitate to invade the child's privacy if I thought it would have a positive impact in the long run.

I did not and cannot make a universal statement about "moral absolutes", only about the "right to privacy".

Personally I'm not sure whether or not an absolute right to privacy applies to adults. You make one argument against it (for their own protection). Personally I disagree with that, I think that if you are a mentally competent adult eventually society has to give you the flexibility to harm yourself if you choose to, but I can understand where that argument is coming from. There are other arguments against an absolute right to privacy that I think are more widely accepted, such violating an adult's privacy for the protection of others, but that's a slippery slope to go down.

Also, re:

> If you do NOT suspect bullying or cutting, how do you know that spying is justified?

one of us must be misunderstanding the other. I'm in 100% agreement with you. If I did not suspect an issue that could be helped by "spying", I wouldn't be doing it.

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