2005, John Ellsworth, Father of Deceased Soldier

¶ … 2005, John Ellsworth, father of deceased soldier Justin Ellsworth, made national news when he asked to be granted access to his deceased son's e-mails. Twenty-year-old Justin had been killed in Fallujah on November 13, 2004, by a roadside bomb. The least, Mr. Ellsworth could do, the father felt, was to collect these e-mails that his son had written whilst in Iraq and fashion them into some sort of memorial. Yahoo! refused. They had promised privacy to their clients and they could not break the promise regardless of the situation. It was only after a Michigan probate court ordered them to release the e-mails that Yahoo complied.

The case reveals two types of ethics. Yahoo! On the one hand epitomized the deontological way of thinking that norms of right and wrong exist and cannot be breached regardless of the situation. The judge, however, took the family's happiness into account and, by so doing, manifested a Utilitarian code of ethics.

The case made ripples, and as it did so people took sides. Interestingly enough, the sides that people took invariably reflected their religious and political affiliations.

The Christian Science monitor, for instance, seemed to incline towards Yahoo! It quoted sources commending Yahoo! For their act.

Many bloggers were horrified.

"We thought we had absolute privacy and now we have learned that after our death, a family member could possibly wrangle access to [our] personal space," one blogger lamented on drudge.com.

"If the soldier had wanted his family to read his e-mail, then he would have CC'd or BCC'd them," another wrote. (Leach, 2005)

The Monitor also quoted legal experts, such as Gerald Ferrera, executive director of the Cyberlaw Center at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass. who opined that "I would hope that the Yahoo! position here would become a trade practice - that e-mail would only be released if a judge approved it," (Leach, 2005)

The deontological approach questions what is the best thing to do, namely what is right or wrong in this situation. Examples of this approach would be the Biblical Law or Kantian moral theory which are both different to utilitarianism in that they do not depend on end-results -- namely happiness -- for practice, but rather exist as an imperative namely, that they applies to all situations regardless of the end result. What you do in one situation, you should always do regardless of the particular situation. In other words, a person should never kill regardless of situation. The ethics must be unconditional (with no exceptions) and it must be universal (applicable to all beings). According to the deontological, Yahoo would have been in the right since Yahoo had set for itself certain principles; it had publicized these principles, and had promised its clients that it would not publish their e-mails. The deontological ethics sets for itself clear ways of right and wrong and, rarely, if ever breaks these.

The Utilitarian coda, on the other hand, would have considered how many people would have been made happiest by Yahoo allowing the family access to the e-mails. This is hard to say since Justin's e-mails may have caused more suffering than joy depending on the content of the e-mails. An instance that Henry Perritt, dean of Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology point out is that "You might have a situation where someone is carrying on an affair and doesn't want his family to know about it if he should die," (Leach, 2005). Given, however, that his family would have gained pleasure from reading them, Utilitarian philosophers would have argued that certainly more people than the one (being Justin) would gain contentment and, therefore, the e-mails should be made public. Elaborating on this situation, it may even be likely that Justin had done heroic and inspiring acts and his family may have decided to publicize these acts in written form. Even more people, consequently, would now be positively affected by publication of the e-mails and the impact multiplies were the effect to become viral spreading via social media through mediums such as You Tube, chat groups, links such as Twitter, Facebook, and so forth. Justin, without his knowledge, may, by release of his e-mails, inspire a world force of good that would, according to the Utilitarian approach, be reason enough for publicizing his correspondence even where he, himself, not to wish to do so.

Ferrera and Darrow (2005) compare e-mail to a first-class letter, and, sometimes, some letters are invaluable. Such was the case with In re Mc- Cormick's Estate, where a military serviceman, who was later killed in action, sent a letter to his minor children. Both as a motion picture company and a music publishing company contracted for the rights to use the letter and the court had to decide whom the economic proceeds should go to (the mother or the children or whether they should be shared).

An e-mail may, sometimes, contain an original idea of innovation or an invention or it may be another Freud who is writing his ideas by e-mail. If this Freud were later to die, his correspondence would be extremely significant and may be invaluable in more ways than one. The Utilitarian approach, therefore, is that certainly his e-mail should be revealed. Finally, as Hu (2004) writing in CNET noted: "Soldiers killed in action may also have important information in their e-mail accounts to help families settle personal matters, such as closing out accounts or other housekeeping matters."