chapter 4 Flashcards
Information systems create opportunities for:
Intense social change,
threatening existing distributions of power,
money,
rights,
obligations
New kinds of crime
What are the 5 moral dimensions of the information age?
information rights and obligations,
property rights and obligations,
system quality,
quality of life,
accountability and control.
The introduction of new information technology has a ripple effect, raising issues what are they
The introduction of new information technology has a ripple effect, raising new ethical, social, and political issues that must be dealt with on the individual, social, and political levels.
Key technology trends that raise ethical issues
Technology trends that raise ethical issues include doubling computer power, rapidly declining data storage costs, networking advances, data analysis techniques, profiling, mobile device growth, and tracking of individual cell phones. Profiling involves combining data from multiple sources to create dossiers of detailed information on individuals, while nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA) involves combining data from multiple sources to find obscure hidden connections.
Moral Dimensions of Information Systems
Privacy
Intellectual Property
Accountability, Liability and Control
System and Data Quality
Quality of Life
Computer Crime and Abuse
Employment
Equity and Access
Health Risks
privacy and freedom in the Internet age
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
What challenges does the Internet bring to privacy?
Cookies
- Identify browser and track visits to site
- Super cookies (Flash cookies)
Web beacons (Web bugs)
- Tiny graphics embedded in e-mails and Web pages
- Monitor who is reading e-mail message or visiting site
Spyware
- Surreptitiously installed on user’s computer
- May transmit user’s keystrokes or display unwanted ads
- Google services and behavioral targeting
Property rights: Intellectual property
Intellectual property: intangible property of any kind created by individuals or corporations
Three main ways that intellectual property is protected:
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
Challenges to intellectual property rights
Digital media different from physical media (e.g., books)
Ease of replication
Ease of transmission (networks, Internet)
Difficulty in classifying software
Compactness
Difficulties in establishing uniqueness
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
Makes it illegal to circumvent technology-based protections of copyrighted materials
What is an acceptable, technologically feasible level of system quality?
Flawless software is economically unfeasible.
Three principal sources of poor system performance:
Software bugs, errors
Hardware or facility failures
Poor input data quality (most common source of business system failure)
Quality of life: Equity, access, boundaries
Balancing power, rapid change, maintaining boundaries, and balancing dependence and vulnerability
Employment
Reengineering work resulting in lost jobs
Computer crime
Computer crime: commission of illegal acts through use of computer or against a computer system—computer may be object or instrument of crime
