“Just wrong”, “disgusting”, “grotesque”: How to deal with public rejection of new potentially life-saving technologies

Abstract

This chapter begins by explaining how PAM was supposed to work and how public expressions of moral repugnance led to the project being shut down. It then introduces and explains the psychology of moral repugnance and discusses a taxonomy of kinds of moral repugnance that might result from the roll out of a new or disruptive technology for security purposes. A major contribution of this chapter is the discussion of what these different kinds of repugnance should mean for new disruptive technology proposals. Using PAM as the central example, the chapter works through a taxonomy of kinds of repugnance to identify the responses that would be appropriate for teams to use when researching and implementing new technologies. The chapter closes with some words of advice about managing public perception of disruptive new security technologies.