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The growing complexity of the digital ecosystem in combination with increasing global risks has created the following dilemma. Overemphasizing cybersecurity may violate fundamental values
like equality, fairness, freedom, or privacy but neglecting cybersecurity could undermine citizens’ trust and confidence in the digital infrastructure as well as in policy makers and state authorities. In order to increase our understanding of this dilemma, this contribution aims to provide an overview on value conflicts in cybersecurity based on a systematic review on the ethical, legal and
technological literature on cybersecurity. It shall be emphasized that a focus on the opposition of cybersecurity vs. privacy is insufficient for understanding the ethical complexity of cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity is of capital importance in a world where economic and social processes increasingly rely on digital technology. Although the primary ethical motivation of cybersecurity is prevention of informational or physical harm, its enforcement can also entail conflicts with other moral values. This contribution provides an outline of value conflicts in cybersecurity based on a quantitative literature analysis and qualitative case studies. The aim is to demonstrate that the security-privacy-dichotomy—that still seems to dominate the ethics discourse based on our bibliometric analysis—is insufficient when discussing the ethical challenges of cybersecurity.
Furthermore, we want to sketch how the notion of contextual integrity could help to better understand and mitigate such value conflicts.