At the risk of diminishing the heroic status of all those who work in humanitarian organizations – of all those who toil hour upon hour in an effort to save every last life possible on this Kurtz-ridden planet – let me confess that on occasion, right in the middle of the work day even, my computer screen begins to show articles about the Philadelphia Eagles football team.  Once in a while, articles about the fascinating life of celebrities also pop up.  My computer tends to do this more often during the football season, but also during the approach to the NFL draft, training camp, and, well, on just about every day I’m in the office and hence tiring myself to the bone to save the world or, on days when that seems too tall an order, reading over the 12^th draft of the office annual plan, sorting the pens in my desk drawer by color, etc.

For those who regularly read humanitarian agency reports, you probably understand.  The brain needs a break.  It needs regular refuge from the horror.  I unwind with dose of the Eagles, the greatest team never to win a SuperBowl.  Since about two weeks ago, though, my respite has been effectively cancelled by Amina and her nameless invaders.  Surrounding an article about the contract extension of a promising young running back, peeking from the banner, the blitzkrieg begins.  Starving babies.  Grotesquely contorted, ribcage-clad babies.  The enlarged skulls of the emaciated.  Faces in pain, eyes set right on mine.

This isn’t just disaster porn twanging my heartstrings. This is disaster porn combined with new technology, meaning I can’t just turn the page because some big aid agency, let’s call them HAL, has its hooks into my cookies.  Click to a new story.  There’s Amina. Click again.  Here’s that misery-distended face and the floating caption: “No child should be this hungry.” Click again, and one of these kids rolls up from below my screen, like horror-movie fog seeping under a door, asking for £10 now.

Such is the brave new world of Google.  I must have looked at HAL’s website recently, and they know it, so now they are hitting me up with a retargeting campaign.  Where are the ethical limits on exploiting the privacy of web users?  I don’t know.  All major agencies use this technology to enhance fundraising results.  It’s called prospecting.   And like prospecting, one tries to pick a spot that looks good.

In other words, it makes sense to show your appeals to somebody who has recently read stories about aid, or articles about the places we work, or visited our websites.  Note that the NGO also purchases the target audience and the frequency with which its ads appear.  Once per week?  Every two days?  Fairly often?  Where does one draw the line?  Again, I can’t say exactly where the line should be, but surely it should be drawn before creating the appearance of stalking me, and long before any sane person would prefer to set fire to his cash, stocks and bonds rather than allowing even once cent to end up in HAL’s pocket.

Of course, this isn’t just about new technology.  It’s an old one as well.  There are standards.  There have been papers and conferences and workshops and all manner of effort to ensure that photographs and imagery used by humanitarian agencies is respectful of our beneficiaries.  There’s even a code of conduct that is designed to eliminate the merchandizing of starving babies.

I can hear one potential response:  Mind your own business.  Nobody elected you the moral police of UK’s humanitarian aid community.   Is it good enough to leave this up to the market?  Do we leave it up to the public?  Is stalking and exploitation OK because it has proven results?  The cash flows (even if I doubt HAL ever bothers to calculate the cost of pissing so many people off).

But what about my God given right to self-righteous moralizing?  After all, one might expect humanitarians to be slightly less mercenary than bloodsucking automated telephone sales companies.  [Insert fist thumping].  One might expect them not to exploit children!  [Insert more strident fist thumping]. And this campaign might poison the well of public generosity for all of us.    No wait, it’s worse than that. [Insert preachy voice].  This cynically mawkish and manipulative appeal might spark the end of humanitarian assistance as we know it.

Or, it may also be true that none of us are any better; that we simply cling to our own set of arbitrary distinctions that allow us to feel that we’re different.