Don't let Net become social judge

A friend once asked me how I knew right from wrong when I didn't subscribe to any religion. Without a religious doctrine to guide me, he wondered what I used as a moral and social yardstick to coexist harmoniously with others in society.

I laughed. It was such an odd question, I thought. Who wouldn't know right from wrong? But when I thought about it, I understood why he would be puzzled.

My moral compass is guided by what is legally accepted--to keep myself out of jail--and above all, a strong belief that everyone has a right to choose the life they want to live, and to live the life they choose.

In a nutshell, I'm pro-choice. I may not believe what someone else chooses to believe and I may not live the life they have chosen to live, but as long as they do not encroach on mine with their own belief systems, I pass no judgment on theirs.

So when I read about two recent incidents where the private lives of two students were captured on cameras and broadcast without their knowledge, I wondered if this marked the start of a trend where the Internet will be exploited as an instrument of judgment.

College student Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge to his death last month after his roommate streamed a video of Clementi making out with a male partner via a Webcam in the room. The 18-year-old was described as a shy and talented violinist who had yet to make public knowledge of his sexuality and couldn't handle the humiliation from the video stream.

Last week, here in Singapore, news broke that two first-year female students from a local junior college were secretly filmed behaving intimately in a toilet cubicle. The video was then circulated to other students in the school, one of whom reportedly said: "What I saw disgusted me."

The two girls left the college, with one scheduled to resume her studies at another local junior college next year.

While the two incidents may have started out as silly school pranks gone wrong, I'm concerned it may escalate to a startling trend where religious, political and social extremists may turn to the Internet as a platform to drive the message that their belief systems should be everyone else's--even if it means intruding on someone's privacy.

It's especially worrying when a recent survey by AVG revealed 82 percent of kids in 10 Western countries have an online presence before the age of two--thanks to the emergence of photo-sharing Web sites such as Facebook. When your personal space is extended into the cyberworld, more of your privacy can be invaded.

During a town hall with young Americans this week, U.S. President Barrack Obama described Clementi's suicide and cyberbullying as heartbreaking. "Our heart breaks...when we read about some of these other young people who are doing nothing to deserve the kind of harassment and bullying that just completely gets out of hand."

Obama noted that while there were laws to address such harassment, "the law doesn't always change what's in people's hearts".

It's easy to argue that the young like Clementi should learn to toughen up in this harsh 21st century highly-connected world where our lives can be captured online and criticized by anyone across the globe. But the truth is that, as Obama points out, societal conditions don't always match up with what goes on in cyberspace.

Facing the harsh cruelty of text-based words, while harsh, will never be as severe as the humiliation someone like Clementi would have to face each time he attends classes or walks into a dining hall filled with sniggering peers.

The Internet was built to be a communication tool and not to be a tool that we use to judge others.

Don't do unto others what you don't want done unto you, and judge not so you shall not be judged. Isn't that what some religions preach?