Chapter 4: Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems Flashcards
What are Ethics
- principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviours -> use IS to investigate decision-making
- IT can be used to achieve social progress but also to commit crimes
IS raise ethical questions because they create opportunities for
- intense social change, threatening existing distributions of power, money, rights and obligations
- new opportunities for crime: attacking companies
- new kinds of crime: blackmail, stealing data, industry espionage
Five moral dimensions of the information age
- information rights and obligations: right to know what kind of data is stored
- accountability and control: who is accountable for which system?
- property rights and obligations: easy video/music sharing
- system quality: standards of data and system quality
- quality of life: monitoring, pressure on employees, remote work -> which values should be preserved
Key technology trends that raise ethical issues
- doubling of computing power every 18 months (vulnerability to errors as more organisations depend on computer systems for critical operations)
- rapidly declining data storage costs (organisations can easily maintain detailed databases on individuals)
- networking advances and the internet (copying data from one location to another and accessing personal data from remote locations are much easier)
Advances in data analysis techniques
- profiling: combining data from multiple sources to create dossiers of detailed information on individuals
- non-obvious relationship awareness (NORA): combining data from multiple sources to find obscure hidden connections that might help identify or terrorists
Basic concepts for ethical analysis
- responsibility
- accountability
- liability
- due process
Principles to guide ethical decisions
Five-step ethical analysis
a. identify and clearly describe the facts
b. define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher-order values involved
c. identify the stakeholders
d. identify the options that you can reasonably take
e. identify the potential consequences of your options
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, it is not right for anyone
Slippery slope rule
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 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
Professional codes of conduct
- promulgated (made known) by associations of professionals
- promises by professions to regulate themselves in the general interest of society
Information rights: privacy and freedom in the internet age
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
Internet challenges to privacy
- new challenges for the protection o individual privacy
- Cookies: identify browser and track visit to site, super cookies (flash cookies)
- small text files deposited on computer hard drive when a user visits websites
- cannot directly identify visitors’ names and addresses but can be combined
Spyware
- can secretly install itself on an internet user’s computer by piggybacking on larger applications
- may transmit user’s keystrokes or display unwanted ads
Google services and behavioural targeting
- nearly 80 percent of global internet users use google search (largest collector of online user data)
- enormous impact on online privacy
Intellectual property
tangible & intangible products of the mind created by individuals created by individuals or corporations
Four ways that intellectual property is protected
a. Copyright: statuatory grant protecting intellectual property from being copied for the life of the author, plus additional 70 years
b. Patents: grants creator of invention an exclusive monopoly based on ideas behind invention for 20 years
c. Trademark: marks, symbols and images used to distinguish products in the marketplace
d. Trade secret: intellectual work or product belonging to business, not in the public domain
Challenges to intellectual property rights
- digital media different from physical media (ease of replication, ease of transmission, ease of alteration)
- Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) (makes it illegal to circumvent technology-based protections of copyrighted materials)
computer-related liability problems: If software fails , who is responsible?
- if seen as part of machine that injures or harms -> software producer and operator
- if seen as similar to book, difficult to hold author/publisher responsible
Computer crime and abuse
- computer crime: commission of illegal acts through use of computer or against a computer system (computer may be object or instrument of crime)
- computer abuse: unethical acts, not illegal -> spam: junk mail, high costs for businesses in dealing with spam
Employment: trickle-down tech and re-engineering job loss
- reengineering work resulting in lost jobs: threatens middle-class, white -collar jobs
- others argue that new tech has created more jobs than destroyed
Health risks
- repetitive stress injury (RSI)
- carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS): largest source is computer keyboards
- computer vision syndrome (CVS): eyestrain and headaches related to screen use
technostress: aggravation, impatience, fatigue
