Ethics

Introduction A SOC alert does not knock politely. It arrives like a crowd of people shouting different instructions in a language only half understood. One alert maybe says “ransomware detected,” another could flag “unusual login,” and the logs you trust most are blank. Analysts glance at dashboards, shrug, and whisper to each other over Teams while the CISO insists on updates every five minutes. Virginia Satir’s work gives us a lens for understanding this chaos. She mapped how people respond to stress, communicate under pressure, and shape collective outcomes. Her stances, emotional congruence, and relational awareness offer a way to train teams not just to follow procedures, but to survive pressure without fracturing. ...

There is a certain bleak poetry in a security audit. The word audit evokes clipboards, compliance spreadsheets, and the faint smell of burnt patience. But beneath the bureaucracy lies something far more interesting: an act of seeing. A real audit, not compliance theatre, but the kind that leaves everyone quietly re-evaluating their life choices, is less about ticking boxes than about mapping the hidden currents that actually keep an organisation secure. Which is why it belongs not in the company of frameworks, but in the orbit of Virginia Satir, Eyal Weizman, and Trevor Paglen. ...

Picture a journalist, a scientist, or even your neighbour declaring with solemn authority: “I am being objective.” Dignified, is it not? Objective, impartial, fact-driven, like a well-polished broom sweeping all bias into the corner. Only, as with most magical brooms, it has a particular corner it prefers: the one that keeps the powerful comfortable and the inconvenient quiet. Objectivity can sometimes be used to avoid confronting ethical dilemmas. And claiming objectivity is rarely neutral. Like neutrality, it carries consequences. Often, it shields those already in power while quietly silencing the vulnerable. ...

In 1991, The Tech at MIT published an interview with Joseph Weizenbaum, the computer scientist best known for creating ELIZA and later becoming one of the field’s sharpest internal critics. Speaking with Diana ben‑Aaron, he dissected the role of computers in education, their entanglement with the military, and the ethical evasions of scientists. Three decades later, his words are less a time capsule and more a mirror, the issues he named have not only persisted but mutated into modern forms, from AI hype cycles to tech‑military partnerships dressed up in start‑up chic. This post is a “then/now” rendering of that interview: his points in their original spirit, and how they look in the world of 2025. ...

Ten years ago, Nonprofit AF , in Weaponized data: How the obsession with data has been hurting marginalized communities, warned that nonprofits’ data obsession could dehumanise and harm marginalised communities, reducing lived experiences to reductive metrics, ignoring power dynamics, and prioritising funder dashboards. Now it’s 2025. Technology, AI, data regulation, and global politics have changed, but many threats have only intensified. What changed? What has improved Stronger legal guardrails (sometimes) Since GDPR (2018), Europe and other jurisdictions have enacted data protections that at least nominally strengthen consent and individual’s rights. Data-sharing rules and transparency mandates force nonprofits to be somewhat more accountable. ...