Section Nine: Legal, moral, ethical and cultural issues Flashcards
Chapter 44 – Computing related legislation
Computing related legislation
Legislation relating to privacy can be broadly categorised into laws intended to protect personal privacy and those which have been passed in the interests of national security, crime detection or counter-terrorism.
Some laws relate specifically to computing, for example:
- the Data Protection Act (1998) which is designed to ensure that personal data is kept accurate, up-to-date, safe and secure and not used in ways which would harm individuals
- the Computer Misuse Act, which makes it an offence to access or modify computer material without permission
- The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 Other laws such as the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988) have a more general application, covering the intellectual property rights of many types of work including books, music, art, computer programs and other original works.
Chapter 44 – Computing related legislation
The Data Protection Act 1998
The Data Protection Act says that anyone who stores personal details must keep them secure. Companies with computer systems that store any personal data must have processes and security mechanisms designed into the system to meet this requirement.
The act includes a number of principles:
- data must be processed fairly and lawfully
- data must be adequate, relevant and not excessive
- data must be accurate and up to date
- data must not be retained for longer than necessary
- data can only be used for the purpose for which it was collected
- data must be kept secure
- data must be handled in accordance with people’s rights
- data must not be transferred outside the EU without adequate protection
All data users must register with the Data Commissioner.
Chapter 44 – Computing related legislation
The Computer Misuse Act 1990
The Computer Misuse Act has three main principles, primarily designed to prevent unauthorised access or ‘hacking’ of programs or data.
The Computer Misuse Act (1990) recognised the following new offences:
- Unauthorised access to computer material
- Unauthorised access with intent to commit or facilitate a crime
- Unauthorised modification of computer material
- Making, supplying or obtaining anything which can be used in computer misuse offences
Chapter 44 – Computing related legislation
The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988
This Act is designed to protect the creators of books, music, video and software from having their work illegally copied.
The Act makes it illegal to use, copy or distribute commercially available software without buying the appropriate licence. When a computer system is designed and implemented, licensing must be considered in terms of which software should be used. If you use commercial software called for example TestSoft to create a series of multiple choice tests called ReviseHistory, it may not be permissible to sell your finished product without paying TestSoft a fee for every copy you sell. Similarly, if your school buys a copy of ReviseHistory, they may not be permitted to install it on more than one computer without buying a multi-user licence for a certain number of users.
If you buy a music CD or pay to download a piece of music, software or a video, it is illegal to
- pass a copy to a friend
- make a copy and then sell it
- use the software on a network, unless the licence allows it
The software industry can take some steps to prevent illegal copying of software:
- The user must enter a unique key before the software is installed
- Some software will only run if the CD is present in the drive
- Some applications will only run if a special piece of hardware called a ‘dongle’ is plugged into a USB port on the computer
However, although a piece of software such as an applications package, game or operating system is protected, algorithms are not eligible for protection. If you come up with a much better sorting algorithm than anyone else, for example, you cannot stop others from using it.
Chapter 44 – Computing related legislation
The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988
This Act is designed to protect the creators of books, music, video and software from having their work illegally copied.
The Act makes it illegal to use, copy or distribute commercially available software without buying the appropriate licence. When a computer system is designed and implemented, licensing must be considered in terms of which software should be used. If you use commercial software called for example TestSoft to create a series of multiple choice tests called ReviseHistory, it may not be permissible to sell your finished product without paying TestSoft a fee for every copy you sell. Similarly, if your school buys a copy of ReviseHistory, they may not be permitted to install it on more than one computer without buying a multi-user licence for a certain number of users.
If you buy a music CD or pay to download a piece of music, software or a video, it is illegal to
- pass a copy to a friend
- make a copy and then sell it
- use the software on a network, unless the licence allows it
The software industry can take some steps to prevent illegal copying of software:
- The user must enter a unique key before the software is installed
- Some software will only run if the CD is present in the drive
- Some applications will only run if a special piece of hardware called a ‘dongle’ is plugged into a USB port on the computer
However, although a piece of software such as an applications package, game or operating system is protected, algorithms are not eligible for protection. If you come up with a much better sorting algorithm than anyone else, for example, you cannot stop others from using it.
Chapter 44 – Computing related legislation
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000
This Act regulates the powers of public bodies to carry out surveillance and investigation, and covers the interception of communications. It was introduced to take account of the growth of technology, the Internet and strong encryption, and additions have been made regularly between 2003 and 2010, with the latest draft bill put before Parliament in November 2015.
The Act:
- enables certain public bodies to demand that an ISP provide access to a customer’s communications in secret
- enables mass surveillance of communications in transit
- enables certain public bodies to demand ISPs fit equipment to facilitate surveillance
- enables certain public bodies to demand that someone hand over keys to protected information
- allows certain public bodies to monitor people’s Internet activities
* prevents the existence of interception warrants and any data collected with them from being revealed
in court
Chapter 44 – Computing related legislation
Analysing personal information
According to the head of a 2006 Royal Academy study into surveillance, Google is within a few years of having sufficient information to be able to track the exact movements and intentions of every individual, via Google Earth and other software they are developing.
It is predicted that small computers will become embedded in everything from clothes to beermats. Consequently, we will be interfacing with computers in everything we do, from meeting chip-wearing strangers to entering smart buildings or sitting on a smart sofa, and each of these interfaces will end up on a Google database.
It is a vision of a world without privacy.
Already, Google collects and stores data about millions of emails every day. Here are some extracts from the information they post on their website, which users must agree to if they wish to use Google software.
Organisations, including governments and security agencies, collect huge amounts of data about private citizens, often supplied by Internet companies such as Google, as well as by telephone companies.
With the aim of detecting terrorist or other illegal activities, the US Government collects, stores and monitors metadata about all electronic communications in the US. Metadata includes information such as the telephone number called, date, time and duration of call.
In one month in 2013, the unit collected data on more than 97 billion emails and 124 billion phone calls from around the world. Edward Snowden is a famous ‘whistle-blower’ who informed the world about these practices.
Chapter 44 – Computing related legislation
Case Study: Edward Snowden
Snowden leaked the details of surveillance being carried out by the US Government, European Governments and Telecommunication companies in June 2013. The material was leaked to the Guardian and Washington Post.
The US Department of Justice sought to charge Snowden with two violations of the Espionage Act and the theft of government property. However, the US have faced significant difficulties in charged Snowden. The US Department of Justice tried to extradite him from Hong Kong where he had fled, but this attempt was denied over inconsistencies in the paper work. From this point, Snowden claimed asylum in Russia where he resides to this day.
Snowden is a divisive figure with some calling him a hero and patriot, whilst others call him a dissident and traitor.
Chapter 45 – Ethical, moral and cultural issues
The economic impact of the Internet
The Internet has its origins in the 1960s with ARPANET, the first North American wide area network. In 1974, two engineers called Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf devised a protocol for linking up individual networks into what they termed the Internet – the “internetworking of networks”.
In the 1980s Tim Berners-Lee, working for CERN in Geneva, invented, or designed, the World Wide Web. He wrote his initial Web proposal in March 1989 and in 1990 built the first Web browser, called WorldWideWeb. His vision was that “all the bits of information in every computer in CERN, and on the planet, would be available to me and to anyone else. There would be a single global information space.”
Berners-Lee had little interest in money and gave away his technology for nothing, but one of the most significant consequences of his invention was a complete reshaping of the economy throughout the world. Has it created jobs, or simply created the “1% economy” in which the top Internet companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Instagram and others have accumulated huge wealth at the expense of
thousands of workers?
Chapter 45 – Ethical, moral and cultural issues
Amazon
Amazon started as an online bookstore in 1994 but soon diversified into DVDs, software, video games, toys, furniture, clothes and thousands of other products. In 2013 the company turned over $75 billion in sales, and it now accounts for 65% of all digital purchases of book sales. As a consequence of their domination, in 2015 there were fewer than 1,000 independent bookstores in Britain, one third less than in 2005. Where a bookshop employs 47 people for every $10 million in sales, Amazon employs 14 to
generate the same revenue.
Chapter 45 – Ethical, moral and cultural issues
eBay
eBay, essentially an electronic platform bringing together buyers and sellers of goods, grew from a user base of 41,000 trading goods worth $7.2 million in 1995, to 162 million users trading goods worth $227.9 billion in 2014.
Chapter 45 – Ethical, moral and cultural issues
Google
In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Stanford University Computer Science postgraduate students, created Google. There were already several successful search engines like Yahoo and AltaVista on the market, but Page and Brin came up with a game-changing algorithm, which they called PageRank, for determining the relevance of a Web page based on the number and quality of its incoming links. The idea was that you could estimate the importance of a Web page by the number and status of other web pages that link to it. Every time you make a search, the Google search engine becomes more knowledgeable and thus more useful. Even more valuable to Google is the fact that Google learns more about you every time you search.
By 1998, Google was getting 10,000 queries every day. By 1999, they were getting 70 million daily requests. Their next step was to figure out how to make money out of their free technology, and they came up with AdWords, which enabled advertisers to place keyword-associated ads down the right hand side of the page. The image below shows what comes up when a user in Dorchester searches for “Paintball”, with the nearest companies, sponsored advertisements and a map with their locations appearing on the right of the screen.
By 2014, Google had joined Amazon as a winner-takes-all company, with 1.5 billion daily searches and revenues of $50 billion.
Chapter 45 – Ethical, moral and cultural issues
Computers in the workforce
A 2013 paper by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne entitled “The future of Employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerisation?” estimates that 47% of total US employment is at risk. They examine the impact of future computerisation on more than 700 individual occupations, and note the shifting of labour from middle-income manufacturing jobs to low-income service jobs which are less susceptible to computerisation. At the same time, with falling prices of computing, problem-solving skills are becoming relatively productive, explaining the substantial employment growth in occupations involving cognitive tasks where skilled, well-educated labour has a comparative advantage.
Thus there is a polarization of labour, with growing employment in high-income cognitive jobs and low- income manual labour, and the disappearance of middle-income occupations. Driverless cars developed by Google are an example of how computerisation is no longer confined to routine manufacturing tasks. The possibility of drones delivering your parcels is no longer in the realms of science fiction. In the 10 jobs that have a 99% likelihood of being replaced by software and automation within the next 25 years, the authors include tax preparers, library assistants, clothing factory workers, and photographic process workers.
In fact, jobs in the photographic industry have already all but vanished. In 1989, when Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, Kodak employed 145,000 people in research labs, offices and factories in Rochester US and had a market value of $31 billion. In 2013 the company filed for bankruptcy and Rochester became virtually a ghost town.
Meanwhile, in 2010, a young entrepreneur called Kevin Systrom started up Instagram, which enabled users to create photos on their smartphones with filters to give them, for example, a warm, fuzzy glow.
Twenty-five thousand iPhone users downloaded the app when it launched on 6th October 2010. A month later, Systrom’s Instagram had a million members. By early 2012, it had 14 million users and by November, 100 million users, with the app hosting 5 billion photos. But when Systrom sold Instagram to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012 (less than two years after the startup), Instagram still only had thirteen full-time employees working out of a small office in San Fransisco. It is a good example of a service that is not providing any jobs at all in the winner-takes-all economics of the digital marketplace.
Chapter 45 – Ethical, moral and cultural issues
User generated content
In his book “The Cult of the Amateur”, Andrew Keen argues that “MySpace and Facebook are creating a youth culture of digital narcissism; open-source knowledge-sharing sites like Wikipedia are undermining the authority of teachers in the classroom, the YouTube generation are more interested in self-expression than in learning about the outside world; the cacophony of anonymous blogs and user-generated content is deafening today’s user to the voices of informed experts and professional journalism; kids are so busy self-broadcasting themselves on social networks that they no longer consume the creative work of professional musicians, novelists, or filmmakers.”
Keen asserts that a thriving music, video and publishing economy is being replaced by the multi-billion dollar monopolist YouTube. The traditional copyright-intensive industries accounted for almost 510 billion euros in the European Union during the period 2008-2010, and generated 3.2% of all jobs, amounting to more than 7 million jobs. What will happen if large numbers of these jobs disappear?
Chapter 45 – Ethical, moral and cultural issues
Algorithms and ethics
Computer scientists and software engineers who devise the multitude of algorithms used by YouTube, Facebook, Amazon and Google, and by organisations from banks and Stock Exchanges to the Health Service and the police, have significant power and therefore the responsibility that goes with it. In some US cities, algorithms determine whether you are likely to be stopped and searched on the street. Banks use algorithms to decide whether to consider your application for a mortgage or a loan. Algorithms are applied to decision-making in hiring and firing, healthcare and advertising. It has been reported, for example, that some algorithms which decide what advertisements are shown on your browser screen classify web users into categories which include “probably bipolar”, “daughter killed in car crash”, “rape victim”, and “gullible elderly”. Did the programmer who wrote that algorithm have any qualms about his work?
When algorithms prioritise, they “bring attention to certain things at the expense of others”.
Facebook’s ‘News Feed’ product filters posts, stories and activities undertaken by friends. Content for the Newsfeed is selected or omitted according to a ranking algorithm which Facebook, with its billion-plus user base, continually develops and tests to show users the content they will be most interested in. But it has been suggested that these social interactions may influence people’s emotions and state of mind; the emotions expressed by friends via online social networks may influence our own moods and behaviour. Clearly, then, those who devise the ranking algorithms potentially have the ability to influence the emotional state of people using Facebook. Should computer scientists consider the institutional goals of a prospective employer, or the social worth of what they do, before accepting a job? Phillip Rogway, Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, found that on a Google search of deciding among job offers, not one suggested that this was a factor
