Ethics
Principles of right and wrong
that individuals, acting as free moral agents,
use to make choices to guide their behavior.
Taxonomy of IT Ethical Issues 5 Moral Dimensions
Information rights & obligations
Property rights & obligations
Accountability & control
System quality
Quality of life
Taxonomy of IT Ethical Issues 3 Layers of Impact
Individual
Society
Polity
5 Moral Dimensions Information rights & obligations
Individuals - privacy: control information about individuals
Organizations - confidentiality: control information about organizations
5 Moral Dimensions Property rights & obligations
Intellectual Property in the digital age
5 Moral Dimensions Accountability & control
Accountable for harm and responsibility to control risk of harm
5 Moral Dimensions System quality
Reasonable expectations of system and data quality
5 Moral Dimensions Quality of life
Impact on non-work factors that affect general well-being of individuals and societies.
Technology Trends That Raise Ethical Issues
Doubling of computer power: More organizations depend on computer systems for critical operations
Rapidly declining data storage costs: Organizations can easily maintain detailed databases on individuals
Networking advances and the Internet: Copying data
NORA Technology- Nonobvious Relationship Awareness
can take information about people from disparate sources and find obscure, nonobvious relationships. It might discover, for example, that an applicant for a job at a casino shares a telephone number with a known criminal and issue an alert to the hiring m
Privacy:
Claim of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance or interference from other individuals, organizations, or state.
Claim to be able to control information about yourself
Fair Information Practices (FIP):
Set of principles governing the collection and use of information
Basis of most U.S. and European privacy laws
Based on mutuality of interest between record holder and individual
Restated and extended by FTC in 1998 to provide guidelines for protecting on
COPPA:
privacy protection for online users who are children
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act:
privacy protection for bank customers
HIPAA:
privacy protection for medical records
Notice/awareness (core principle):
Web sites must disclose practices before collecting data
Choice/consent (core principle):
Consumers must be able to choose how information is used for secondary purposes
Access/participation:
Consumers must be able to review, contest accuracy of personal data
Security:
Data collectors must take steps to ensure accuracy, security of personal data
Enforcement:
Must be mechanism to enforce FIP principles
Cookies
Tiny files downloaded by Web site to visitor's hard drive
Identify visitor's browser and track visits to site
Allow Web sites to develop profiles on visitors
Web bugs
Tiny graphics embedded in e-mail messages and Web pages
Designed to monitor who is reading message and transmit information to another computer
Spyware
Surreptitiously installed on user's computer
May transmit user's keystrokes or display unwanted ads
Intellectual property
Intangible property of any kind created by individuals or corporations
Trade secret:
Intellectual work or product belonging to business, not in the public domain
Copyright:
Statutory grant protecting intellectual property from being copied for the life of the author, plus 70 years
Patents:
Grants creator of invention an exclusive monopoly on ideas behind invention for 20 years
Ethical Analysis: 5 Step Process
Identify and clearly describe the facts
Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher-order values involved
Identify the stakeholders
Identify the options that you can reasonably take
Identify the potential consequences of your options
Make your
Golden Rule:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative:
If an action is not right for everyone to take, it is not right for anyone
Descartes' Rule of Change:
If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take at all
Utilitarian Principle:
Take the action that achieves the higher or greater value
Risk Aversion Principle:
Take the action that produces the least harm or least potential cost
Ethical "no free lunch" rule:
Assume that virtually all tangible and intangible objects are owned by someone unless there is a specific declaration otherwise - someone must pay