Ch 4 Questions Flashcards
What are the five moral dimensions?
1) Information Rights
2) Property Rights
3) Accountability and Liability
4) System Quality
5) Quality of Life
What are information rights?
Rights to keep information private.
European laws are much more stringent than here in the United States.
What are property rights? What laws were created to protect these rights?
Information systems help make it easier to steal (digital property)
Ex. Music, movies, magazines, books, corporate secrets, patents
Create laws to protect property:
1) Copy rights
2) Intellectual property type laws
What is accountability and liability?
Someone is responsible for making good on a wrong they have committed.
Harder to judge who is liable when identity is stolen or privacy is invaded.
What is system quality?
Standards.
Software does not have standards and yet it controls everything.
Data quality and errors are a moral dimension of information systems.
What is quality of life?
Negative social costs can be extremely harmful to society and individuals.
What is safe harbor?
A private, self-regulating policy and enforcement mechanism that meets the objectives of government regulators and legislation but does not involve government regulation or enforcement.
Working with the European Commission, the US Department of Commerce developed a safe harbor framework for US firms.
US businesses would be allowed to use personal data from EU countries if they develop privacy protection policies that meet EU standards.
What is the European directive on data protection?
In Europe, privacy protection is much more stringent than in the United States.
The directive requires companies to inform people when they will collect information about them and disclose how it will be stored and used.
Customers must provide informed consent before any company can legally use data about them, and they have the right to access the information, correct it, and request that not further data be collected.
Ethical Issues: Computing Power Doubles Every 18 Months
More organizations depend on computer systems for critical operations and become vulnerable to system failures.
Ethical Issues: Data Storage Costs Rapidly Decline
Organizations can easily maintain detailed databases on individuals.
There are no limits on the data collected about you.
Ethical Issues: Data Analysis Advances
Companies can analyze vast quantities of data gathered on individuals to develop detailed profiles of individual behavior.
Large-scale population surveillance is enabled.
Ethical Issues: Networking Advances
The cost of moving data and making it accessible from anywhere falls exponentially.
Access to data becomes more difficult to control.
Ethical Issues: Mobile Device Growth Impact
Individual cell phones may be tracked without user consent or knowledge.
The always-on device becomes a tether.
What did Enron do wrong? What laws were created to make sure this does not happen again?
Enron executives used fraudulent accounting practices to inflate the company’s revenues and hide debt in its subsidiaries.
Arthur Andersen went under, over 85,000 employees and only around 21 were engaged in fraudulent acts with Enron.
Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 - reduced corporate fraud and increased investor protections.
Give 3 examples of legislation that has been put in place to protect different areas subject to theft.
1) Healthcare Data - HIPPA
2) Identity Data - Fair Credit Reporting Act
3) Financial Data - Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
