Big Idea 5: Beneficial and Harmful Effects Flashcards
Explain how an effect of a computing innovation can be both beneficial and harmful.
People create computing innovations. The way people complete tasks often changes to incorporate new computing innovations.
**Not every effect of a computing innovation is anticipated in advance.
A single effect can be viewed as both beneficial and harmful by different people, or even by the same person.**
Advances in computing have generated and increased creativity in other fields, such as medicine, engineering, communications, and the arts.
Explain how a computing innovation can have an impact beyond its intended purpose.
Computing innovations can be used in ways that their creators had not originally intended:
- The World Wide Web was originally intended only for rapid and easy exchange of information within the scientific community.
- Targeted advertising is used to help businesses, but it can be misused at both individual and aggregate levels.
- Machine learning and data mining have enabled innovation in medicine, business, and science, but information discovered in this way has also been used to discriminate against groups of individuals.
Some of the ways computing innovations can be used may have a harmful impact on society, the economy, or culture.
Responsible programmers try to consider the unintended ways their computing innovations can be used and the potential beneficial and harmful effects of these new uses.
It is not possible for a programmer to consider all the ways a computing innovation can be used.
Computing innovations have often had unintended beneficial effects by leading to advances in other fields.
Rapid sharing of a program or running a program with a large number of users can result in significant impacts beyond the intended purpose or control of the programmer.
Describe issues that contribute to the digital divide.
Internet access varies between socioeconomic, geographic, and demographic characteristics, as well as between countries.
**The “digital divide” refers to differing access to computing devices and the Internet, based on socioeconomic, geographic, or demographic characteristics.
The digital divide can affect both groups and individuals.
The digital divide raises issues of equity, access, and influence, both globally and locally.
The digital divide is affected by the actions of individuals, organizations, and governments.**
Explain how bias exists in computing innovations.
**Computing innovations can reflect existing human biases because of biases written into the algorithms or biases in the data used by the innovation.
Programmers should take action to reduce bias in algorithms used for computing innovations as a way of combating existing human biases.
Biases can be embedded at all levels of software development.**
Explain how people participate in problem-solving processes at scale, and in your answer, explain what crowdsourcing and citizen science is.
Widespread access to information and public data facilitates the identification of problems, development of solutions, and dissemination of results.
Science has been affected by using distributed and “citizen science” to solve scientific problems.
Citizen science is scientific research conducted in whole or part by distributed individuals, many of whom may not be scientists, who contribute relevant data to research using their own computing devices.
- Not useful if it requires high-skill, fancy equipment, or lots of money in order for
individuals to contribute to scientific research. (Best to use citizen science for
tasks that can help reduce time or improve efficiency.)
Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining input or information from a large number of people via the Internet.
Human capabilities can be enhanced by collaboration via computing.
Crowdsourcing offers new models for collaboration, such as connecting businesses or social causes with communities.
Explain how the use of computing can raise legal and ethical concerns. In your answer, explain plagiarism, Creative Commons, open source, open acess
Material created on a computer is the intellectual property of the creator or an organization. Is work that people own (ex: painting, program code, etc.).
Ease of access and distribution of digitized information raises intellectual property concerns regarding ownership, value, and use.
Measures should be taken to safeguard intellectual property.
- The use of material created by someone else without permission and presented as one’s own is plagiarism and may have legal consequences.
**Some examples of legal ways to use materials created by someone else include:
- Creative Commons—a public copyright license that enables the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work. This is used when the content creator wants to give others the right to share, use, and build upon the work they have created.
- Open source—programs that are made freely available and may be redistributed and modified.
- Open access—online research output free of any and all restrictions on access and free of many restrictions on use, such as copyright or license restrictions.
The use of material created by someone other than you should always be cited.**
Creative Commons, open source, and open access have enabled broad access to digital information.
As with any technology or medium, using computing to harm individuals or groups of people raises legal and ethical concerns.
Computing can play a role in social and political issues, which in turn often raises legal and ethical concerns.
The digital divide raises ethical concerns around computing.
Computing innovations can raise legal and ethical concerns. Some examples of these include:
- The development of software that allows access to digital media downloads and streaming.
- The development of algorithms that include bias.
- The existence of computing devices that collect and analyze data by continuously monitoring activities.
Describe the risks to privacy from collecting and storing personal data on a computer system. In your answer, explain the definition of personal identifiable information.
Personally identifiable information (PII) is information about an individual that identifies, links, relates, or describes them. Examples of PII include:
- Social Security number
- Age
- Race
- Phone number(s)
- Medical information
- Financial information
- Biometric data
Search engines can record and maintain a history of searches made by users. Websites can record and maintain a history of individuals who have viewed their pages. Devices, websites, and networks can collect information about a user’s location. Technology enables the collection, use, and exploitation of information about, by, and for individuals, groups, and institutions. Search engines can use search history to suggest websites or for targeted marketing.
Disparate personal data, such as geolocation, cookies, and browsing history, can be aggregated to create knowledge about an individual.
PII and other information placed online can be used to enhance a user’s online experiences. PII stored online can be used to simplify making online purchases.
Commercial and governmental curation of information may be instrumental if privacy and other protections are ignored.
Information placed online can be used in ways that were not intended and that may have a harmful impact. For example, an email message may be forwarded, tweets can be retweeted, and social media posts can be viewed by potential employers.
PII can be used to stalk or steal the identity of a person or to aid in the planning of other criminal acts.
Once information is placed online, it is difficult to delete.
Programs can collect your location and record where you have been, how you got there, and how long you were at a given location.
Information posted to social media services can be used by others. Combining information posted on social media and other sources can be used to deduce private information about you.
Explain how computing resources can be protected and can be misused. In your answer, explain the definition of authentication, multifactor authentication, encryption, decryption, symmetric key encryption, public key encryption, computer virus and malware.
**Authentication measures protect devices and information from unauthorized access. Examples of authentication measures include strong passwords and multifactor authentication.
A strong password is something that is easy for a user to remember but would be difficult for someone else to guess based on knowledge of that user.
Multifactor authentication is a method of computer access control in which a user is only granted access after successfully presenting several separate pieces of evidence to an authentication mechanism, typically in at least two of the following categories: knowledge (something they know), possession (something they have), and inherence (something they are).**
Multifactor authentication requires at least two steps to unlock protected information; each step adds a new layer of security that must be broken to gain unauthorized access.
**Encryption is the process of encoding data to prevent unauthorized access. Decryption is the process of decoding the data.
Two common encryption approaches are:
- Symmetric key encryption involves one key for both encryption and decryption.
- Public key encryption pairs a public key for encryption and a private key for decryption. The sender does not need the receiver’s private key to encrypt a message, but the receiver’s private key is required to decrypt the message.**
Exclusion Statement (EK IOC-2.B.5): Specific mathematical procedures for encryption and decryption are beyond the scope of this course and the AP Exam.
Certificate authorities issue digital certificates that validate the ownership of encryption keys used in secure communications and are based on a trust model.
Computer virus and malware scanning software can help protect a computing system against infection. A computer virus is a malicious program that can copy itself and gain access to a computer in an unauthorized way. Computer viruses often attach themselves to legitimate programs and start running independently on a computer.
All real-world systems have errors or design flaws that can be exploited to compromise them. Regular software updates help fix errors that could compromise a computer system.
Users can control the permissions programs have for collecting user information. Users should review the permission settings of programs to protect their privacy.
Explain how unauthorized access to computing resources is gained. In your answer, explain the definition of phishing, keylogging, rouge access point, and DDoS.
**Malware is software intended to damage a computing system or to take partial control over its operation.
Phishing is a technique that attempts to trick a user into providing personal information. That personal information can then be used to access sensitive online resources, such as bank accounts and emails.
Keylogging is the use of a program to record every keystroke made by a computer user in order to gain fraudulent access to passwords and other confidential information.
Data sent over public networks can be intercepted, analyzed, and modified. One way that this can happen is through a rogue access point. A rogue access point is a wireless access point that gives unauthorized access to secure networks.
A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt
the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the
target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic.**
**A malicious link can be disguised on a web page or in an email message.
Unsolicited emails, attachments, links, and forms in emails can be used to compromise the security of a computing system. These can come from unknown senders or from known senders whose security has been compromised.
Untrustworthy (often free) downloads from freeware or shareware sites can contain malware.**
