Throughout The Maze Runner, different aspects of the movie can be related to information privacy. The invasion of privacy is one of the primary concepts highlighted throughout the film. The test subjects, or gladers, had their memory wiped by W.C.K.D. against their will which was an invasion of their privacy. When they arrive to The Glade, they no longer have recollection of their identity and it takes days before they retrieve it. W.C.K.D.'s goal with the experiment was to find the cure to a deadly virus called The Flare which has caused a global pandemic.

Chapter 5 of Ethics for the Information Age discusses our privacy, how valuable our data is and how companies make a profit off of their customer's data. If the experiment were to succeed and W.C.K.D. finds a cure to The Flare, the organization would make an enormous profit since they are the only one with a cure to the global pandemic. Today, amidst the up and coming COVID-19 vaccine, it is estimated that the leading company, Pfizer, will rake in about $8 billion in sales with the vaccine [1]. The main reason the organization would be able to develop this cure is due to them taking the test subjects and wiping their memories against their will, which is an extreme invasion of privacy.

Privacy has different harms and benefits depending upon the perspective one is taking. In this case, from W.C.K.D.'s point of view, the gladers are sacrificing their privacy in order to potentially find a cure to The Flare, which would be greatly beneficial to society. From the gladers' point of view, their memories and identity are stolen from them and they were put in a random maze with zero recollection of anything happening prior, which was incredibly harmful to their psych. The rights and regulations related to information privacy continues to be highly debated because of how much the harms and benefits vary.

References

[1] Haensel, Brett. "Now that Pfizer is the vaccine front-runner, should you buy the stock?", (Fortune, November 11, 2020), https://fortune.com/2020/11/11/pfizer-stock-should-i-buy-covid-vaccine-markets/ (December 5, 2020)