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Ethical and Social issues in Information systems :information_source: -…
Ethical and Social issues in Information systems :information_source:
What Ethical,Social and Political issues are raised by information system?
Recent cases of failed ethical judgement in business
General Motors Inc (2015)
- General motors CEO admits the firm covered up faulty ignition switches for more than a decades, resulting in the deaths of at least 114 customers. More than 100 Million vehicles worldwide need to be replaced.
Takata Corporation (2015)
- Takata executive admit they covered up faulty airbags used in Millions of cars over many years. to date, 100 Million cars need airbags replaced.
in this regard, systems raise new ethical questions for both individuals and societies because they create opportunities for intense social change and threaten existing distributions of power, money, rights and obligations
Ethics - refer to the principles of
right
and
wrong
that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviours.
FIVE MORAL DIMENSIONS OF THE INFORMATION AGE
1) information rights and obligations 2) property rights and obligations 3) system quality 4) quality of life 5) accountability and control
KEY TECHNOLOGY TRENDS THAT RAISE ETHICAL ISSUES
1) Computing power doubles every 18 months 2) Data storage costs rapidly decline 3) Data analysis advances 4) Networking advances 5) Mobile device growth impact
ADVANCES IN DATA ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES
PROFILING
- Combining data from multiple sources to create dossiers of detailed information on individuals
EXAMPLE 1 - Several thousand of the most popular websites allow
Double Click
(owned by Google), an internet advertising broker, to track the activities of their visitors in exchange for revenue from advertisements based on visitor information Doubleclick gathers.
EXAMPLE 2 -
LexisNexis Risk Solutions
(formed ChoicePoint) gathers data from police, criminal, and motor vehicle records, credit and employment histories, current and previous addresses, professional licenses and insurance claims to assemble and maintain dossiers on almost every adult in the United States
NONOBVIOUS RELATIONSHIP AWARENESS (NORA)
- Combining data from multiple sources to find obscure hidden connections that might help identify criminals or terrorists
What specific principles for conduct can be used to guide ethical decisions?
BASIC CONCEPTS
1) RESPONSIBILITY - is a key elements of ethical action it means that you accept the potential costs, duties and obligations for the decisions you make
2) ACCOUNTABILITY - is a feature of systems and social institutions: it means that mechanism are in place to determine who took action and who is responsible
3) LIABILITY - extends the concept of responsibility further to the area of laws
4) DUE PROCESS - is a related feature of law-governed societies and is a process in which laws are known and understood and ability exists to appeal to higher authorities to ensure that the laws are applied correctly
Five-step Process in Ethical Analysis
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
Candidate Ethical Principles
1) Utilitarian Principle - take the action that achieves the higher or greater value
2) Risk Aversion Principle - take the action that produces the least harm or potential costs
3) Ethical "No Free Lunch" Rule - Assume that virtually all tangible and intangible objects are owned by someone unless there is a specific declaration otheriwse
Professional Codes of Conduct - are promulgated by associations of professionals such as American Medical Association (AMA), the American Bar Association (ABA), the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Real World Ethical Dilemmas
Example - 1) Many companies use voice recognition software to reduce the size of their customers support staff by enabling computers to recognize a customer`s responses to a series of computerized questions. 2) Many companies monitor what their employees are doing on the internet to prevent them from wasting company resources on nonbusiness activities. 3) Facebook monitors its subscribers and then sells the information to advertisers and app developers.
Why do contemporary information systems technology and the internet pose challenges to the protection of individual privacy and intellectual property?
Privacy and Freedom in the Internet Age -
Privacy
is the claim of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance or interference from other individuals or organizations, including the state. claims to privacy are also involved at the workplace
Internet Challenges to Privacy -
Example 1
- Websites track searches that have been conducted, the websites and web pages visited, the online content a person has accessed and what items that person has inspected or purchased over the web
COOKIES
are small text files deposited on a computer hard drive when a user visits websites. cookies identify the visitor`s web browser software and track visits to the websites
EXAMPLE - if you purchase a book on Amazon.com and return later from the same browser, the site will welcome you by name and recommend other books of interest based on your past purchases
Internet Challenges to Privacy -
Example 2
- There are now even more subtle and surreptitious tools for surveillance of internet users. So called
super cookies or flash cookies
cannot be easily deleted and can be installed whenever a person clicks a flash video
Web Baacons
also called
web bugs
or simply tracking files, are tiny software programs that keep record of users` online clickstreams
Internet Challenges to Privacy -
Example 3
- Other
Spyware
can secretly install itself on an internet user`s computer by piggybacking on larger applications
Property Rights : Intellectual Property - tangible and intangible products of the mind creates by individuals or corporations
Protected in four main ways - 1) copy right 2) patents 3) trademarks 4) Trade secrets
Challenges
Digital media different from physical media - 1) ease of replication 2) ease of transmission (networks , internet) 3) Ease of alteration 4) compactness 5) Difficulties in establishing uniqueness
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
Data Quality and Errors
Principle
software bugs, errors
Hardware or facility failures
Poor input data quality
