Chapter 4: Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

Question 1

What are ethics?

Answer 1

Ethics are principles of right and wrong that free moral agents use to make choices

Question 2

What are the five moral dimensions of the information age?

Answer 2

1. Information rights and obligations
2. Property rights and obligations
3. System quality
4. Accountability and control
5. Quality of life

Question 3

What are the key technology trends raising ethical issues?

Answer 3

1. Doubling computer power every 18 months
2. Data storage costs rapidly decrease
3. Data analysis advances: profiling accuracy
4. Networking advances: cost of data accessibility dropped
5. Mobile devices proliferate
6. Increased reliance on AI in decision making, ignoring ethics

Question 4

What is responsibility?

Answer 4

Responsibility is accepting potential consequences of your decisions.

Question 5

What is accountability?

Answer 5

These are mechanims that can determine who took action and who is responsible

Question 6

What is liability?

Answer 6

The possibility to recover damages done to you by other actors

Question 7

What is due process?

Answer 7

A process where laws are known and appeal is possible

Question 8

What are the steps in an ethical analysis?

Answer 8

1. Identify and describe facts clearly
2. Define conflict and identify higher-order values involved
3. Identify stakeholders
4. Identify options you can reasonably take
5. Identify consequences of your options

Question 9

What is the golden rule?

Answer 9

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Question 10

What is Kant’s categorical imperative?

Answer 10

If an action is not right for everyone to take it is not right for anyone to take

Question 11

What is the slippery slope rule?

Answer 11

If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take at all

Question 12

What is the utilitarian principle?

Answer 12

take action that achieves highest value for most people

Question 13

What is the ethcial no-free-lunch rule?

Answer 13

Assume all objects are owned by someone else unless specified otherwise

Question 14

What is the risk-aversion principle?

Answer 14

Take action that creates the least harm/lowest costs

Question 15

What is privacy?

Answer 15

Privacy is the claim of individuals to be left alone. Information systems make privacy invasion cheap, profitable and effective

Question 16

What is the Fair Information Practices act?

Answer 16

This is a set of principles governing collection and use of individual information

Question 17

What is the General Data Protection Regulation?

Answer 17

This is a framework for protection personally identifiable data

Question 18

What is a safe harbor?

Answer 18

private self-regulating policy that meets objectives of regulation but does not involve government enforcement

Question 19

What is a web beacon?

Answer 19

An image that keeps records of online clickstreams

Question 20

What are cookies?

Answer 20

When user visits a website, a small text file is placed on website server on his computer that identify visistor’s web browser software as well as other information

Question 21

What is adware?

Answer 21

Calls out websites to send ads to users

Question 22

What is spyware?

Answer 22

This is intrusive software that tracks browsing habits

Question 23

What are opt-out models?

Answer 23

These models of consent allow data collection until user asks not to be tracked anymore

Question 24

What are opt-in models?

Answer 24

These are models where every user has to give consent before websites are able to track user

Question 25

What is intellectual property?

Answer 25

These are products of the mind created by individuals/groups.

Question 26

What is copyright?

Answer 26

Copyright protects the owners of IP from having their work copied

Question 27

What is a patent?

Answer 27

A patent grants exclusive monopoly on ideas behind an invention for a period of time. Key concepts:

originality, novelty and invention

Question 28

What are trademarks?

Answer 28

Marks, symbolds etc used to distinguish products in the marketplace

Question 29

What are trade secrets?

Answer 29

Any intellectual work product used for business purposes can be classified as a trade secret. Grants badly protected monopoly.

Question 30

What is the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA)?

Answer 30

This act makes it illegal to avoid technology-based protections of copyrighted materials.

Question 31

Three principal sources of poor system performance?

Answer 31

1. Software bugs and errors
2. Hardware/ facility failures caused by natural/other causes
3. Poor input data quality

Question 32

What is computer crime?

Answer 32

Commission of illegal acts by using a computer

Question 33

What is computer abuse?

Answer 33

commission of acts that are legal but considered unethical

Question 34

What is the digital divide?

Answer 34

Division between higher- and lower income families where higherincome families do have access to computers and the internet and poor families don’t

Question 35

What are consequences of information systems for the quality of life?

Answer 35

1. Market power concentration Big Tech
2. Inequity in access to digital tools
3. Job loss and Job reengineering
4. Reduced response time to competition
5. Reduced boundaries work, family and leisure
6. Physical, mental and cognitive health risks.