CHAPTER 4 ETHICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS Flashcards
WHAT ETHICAL, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL ISSUES ARE RAISED BY INFORMATION SYSTEMS?
Information technology is introducing changes for which laws and rules of acceptable conduct have not yet been developed. Increasing computing power, storage, and networking capabilities–including the Internet–expand the reach individual and organizational actions and magnify their impacts. The ease and anonymity with which information is now communicated, copied, and manipulated in online environments pose new challenges to the protection of privacy and intellectual property. The main ethical, social, and political issue raised by information systems center around information rights and obligations, property rights and obligations, accountability and control, system quality, and quality of life.
WHAT SPECIFIC PRINCIPLES FOR CONDUCT CAN BE USED TO GUIDE ETHICAL DECISIONS?
Six ethical principles for judging conduct include the Golden Rule, Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative, Descates’ rule or change, the Utilitarian Principle, the Risk Aversion Principle, and the ethical “no free lunch” rule. These principles should be used in conjunction with an ethical analysis.
WHY DO CONTEMPORARY INFORMATION SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY AND THE INTERNET POSE CHALLENGES TO THE PROTECTION OF INDIVIDUAL PRIVACY AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY?
Contemporary data storage and data analysis technology enables companies to easily gather personal data about individuals from many different sources and analyze these data to create detailed electronic profile about individuals and their behaviors. Data flowing over the Internet can be monitored at many points. Cookies and other Web monitoring tools closely track the activities of Web site visitors. Not all Web sites have strong privacy protection policies, and they do not always allow for informed consent regarding the use of personal information. Traditional copyright laws are insufficient to protect against software privacy because digital material can be copied so easily and transmitted to many different locations simultaneously over the Internet.
HOW MANY INFORMATION SYSTEMS AFFECTED EVERYDAY LIFE?
Although computer systems have been source of efficiency and wealth, they have some negative impacts. Computer errors can cause serious harm to individuals and organizations. Poor data quality is also responsible for disruptions and losses for business. Jobs can be lost when computers replace workers or tasks become unnecessary in reengineered business process. The ability to own and use a computer may be exacerbating socioeconomic disparities among different racial groups and social classes. Widespread use of computers increases opportunities for computer crime and computer abuse. Computers can also create health problems, such as RSI, computer vision syndrome, and technostress.
Principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviors.
Ethics
Five moral dimension of information age
1.) Information rights and obligations
2.) Property rights and obligations
3.) Accountability and control
4.) System quality
5.) Quality of life
Information systems raise new ethical questions because they create opportunities for:
1.) Intense social change, threatening existing distributions of power, money, rights, and obligations
2.) New kinds of crime
Combining data from multiple sources to create dossiers of detailed information on individuals.
Profiling
Combining data from multiple sources to find obscure hidden connections that might help identify criminals or terrorists.
Nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA)
Ethics analysis: A five-step process
1.) Identify and clearly describe the facts.
2.) Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher-order values involved.
3.) Identify the stakeholders.
4.) Identify the options that you can reasonably take.
5.) Identify the potential consequences of your options
Accepting the potential costs, duties, and obligations for decisions.
Responsibility
Mechanisms for identifying responsible parties.
Accountability
If an action is not right for everyone to take, it is not right for anyone.
Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative
Laws are well known and understood, with an ability to appeal to higher authorities.
Due process
Permits individuals (and firms) to recover damages done to them.
Liability
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Golden Rule
If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take.
Descartes’ Rule of Change
Take the action that achieves the higher or greater value.
Utilitarian Principle
Take the action that produces the least harm or potential cost.
Risk Aversion Principle
Assume that virtually all tangible and intangible objects are owned by someone unless there is a specific declaration otherwise.
Ethical “No Free Lunch” Rule
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.
Privacy
Consumers must be able to choose how information is used for secondary purposes.
Choice/consent (core principle)
Consumers must be able to review, contest accuracy of personal data.
Access/participation
Websites must disclose practices before collecting data
Notice/awareness (core principle)
Data collectors must take steps to ensure accuracy, ___________ of personal data.
Security
Must be mechanism to enforce FIP principles.
Enforcement
Tiny files downloaded by Web site to visitor’s hard drive. Identify visitor’s browser and track visits to site.
Cookies
Tiny graphics embedded in e-mail messages and Web pages. Monitor who is reading e-mail message or visiting site.
Web beacons (Web bugs)
Three main ways that intellectual property is protected
1.) Trade secret
2.) Copyright
3.) Patents
Intellectual work or product belonging to business, not in the public domain
Trade secret
Surreptitiously installed on user’s computer. May transmit user’s keystrokes or display unwanted ads.
Spyware
Intangible property of any kind created by individuals or corporations.
Intellectual property
Statutory grant protecting intellectual property from being copied for the life of the author, plus 70 years
Copyright
Grants creator of invention an exclusive monopoly on ideas behind invention for 20 years
Patents
What is an acceptable, technologically feasible level of system quality?
Flawless software is economically unfeasible.
Three principle sources of poor system performance:
1.) Software bugs, errors
2.) Hardware or facility failures
3.) Poor input data quality (most common source of business system failure)
Although computing power decentralizing, key decision making remains centralized.
Balancing power
Businesses may not have enough time to respond to global competition.
Rapidity of change
Computing, internet use lengthens work-day, infringes on family, personal time.
Maintaining boundaries
Public and private organizations ever more dependent on computer systems.
Dependence and vulnerability
Commission of illegal acts through use of compute or against a computer system - computer may be object or instrument of crime
Computer crime
Unethical acts, not illegal
Computer abuse
Certain ethnic and income groups in the US less likely to have computers or Internet access.
Digital divide
Largest source is computer keyboards. Carpel Tunnel Syndrome (CTS)
Repetitive stress injury (RSI)
Eyestrain and headaches related to screen use.
Computer vision syndrome (CVS)
Aggravation, impatience, fatigue.
Technostress
Pressure on the median nerve through the wrist’s bony structure produces pain.
Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS)
Implemented a World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty that makes it illegal to circumvent technology-based protections of copyrighted materials.
Digital millennium copyright act (DMCA)
A set of principles governing the collection and use of information about individuals. Principles based on the notion of a mutuality of interest between the record holder and the individual.
Fair Information Practices (FIP)
The rights that individuals and organizations have with respect to information that pertains to them.
Information rights
Consent given with knowledge of all the facts needed to make a rational decision.
Informed consent
Model of informed consent in which a business is prohibited from collecting any personal information unless the consumer specifically takes action to approve information collection and use.
Opt-in
Model of informed consent permits the collection of personal information until the consumer specifically requests the data not to be collected.
Opt-out
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.
Safe harbor
