Laudon ch.4

ETHICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Chapter 4

Eng. Rasha Al Ababseh

Learning Objectives

• What ethical, social, and political issues are raised by information systems?

• What specific principles for conduct can be used to guide ethical decisions?

• Why do contemporary information systems technology and the Internet pose challenges to the protection of individual privacy and intellectual property?

• How have information systems affected everyday life?


Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related

to Systems

• Recent cases of failed ethical judgment in business

– Walmart Inc. (2012) Walmart executives in Mexico accused of paying millions in bribes to Mexican officials in order to receive building permits. Under investigation by the Department of Justice.

• Ethics

– Principles of right and wrong that individuals use to make choices to guide their behaviors


• Information systems and ethics

– Information systems raise new ethical questions because they create opportunities for:

• Intense social change, threatening existing distributions of power, money, rights, and obligations

• New kinds of crime



to Systems

• Model for thinking about ethical, social, political issues:

– Society as a calm pond

– IT as rock dropped in pond, creating ripples of new situations not covered by old rules

– Social and political institutions cannot respond overnight to these ripples—it may take years to develop etiquette, expectations, politically correct attitudes, approved rules and laws

• You may be forced to act in a legal gray areas



to Systems


The introduction of new information technology has a ripple effect, raising new ethical, social, and political issues that must be dealt with on the individual, social, and political levels. These issues have five moral dimensions: information rights and obligations, property rights and obligations, system quality, quality of life, and accountability and control.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHICAL, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL ISSUES IN AN INFORMATION SOCIETY


to Systems

• Five moral dimensions of the information age 1. Information rights and obligations – Internet and digital firm technologies make it easier than ever to

assemble, integrate, and distribute information, unleashing new concerns about the appropriate use of customer information, the protection of personal privacy

2. Property rights and obligations – Intellectual property is considered to be intangible property created by

individuals or corporations. Information technology has made it difficult to protect intellectual property.

3. Accountability and control – Who can and will be held accountable and liable for the harm done to

individual and collective information and property rights?



to Systems

4. System quality • What standards of data and system quality should we

demand to protect individual rights and the safety of

society?

5. Quality of life:

• Cultural value, computer crimes. Which institutions

should we protect from violation? Which cultural

values and practices are supported by the new

information technology?



to Systems

• Key technology trends that raise ethical issues 1. Computing power doubles every 18 months

• More organizations depend on computer systems for critical operations.

2. Data storage costs rapidly decline • Organizations can easily maintain detailed databases on

individuals. the violation of individual privacy both cheap and effective.

3. Networking advances • Copying data from one location to another and accessing

personal data from remote locations are much easier

4. Mobile device growth Impact • Individual cell phones may be tracked without user consent

or knowledge.



to Systems

• Key technology trends that raise ethical issues (cont.)

5. Data analysis advances • Companies can analyze vast quantities of data gathered on

individuals to develop detailed profiles of individual behavior./ highly detailed personal info. – Profiling

» Combining data from multiple sources to create dossiers of detailed information on individuals

– Nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA) (more powerful profiling capabilities.)

» Combining data from multiple sources and correlate relationships to find obscure hidden connections that might help identify criminals or terrorists



to Systems

• Basic concepts for ethical analysis: Ethical choices are decisions made by individuals who are responsible for the consequences of their actions.

– Responsibility: the key element of the ethical action • Accepting the potential costs, and obligations for decisions

– Accountability: feature of a system • System Mechanisms for identifying responsible parties

– Liability: laws • feature of political systems Permits individuals (and firms) to

recover damages done to them by others (systems, organizations…)

– Due process: • Laws are well known and understood, with an ability to appeal to

higher authorities to ensure that the laws applied correctly / low-governed society


Ethics in an Information Society

• Ethical analysis: A five-step process

1. Identify and clearly describe the facts: who did what to whom, and where, when, and how.

2. Define the conflict or dilemma (freedom, privacy, property rights)

3. Identify the stakeholders : who have invested in the situation, and usually who have vocal opinions. Find out the identity of these groups and what they want.

4. Identify the options that you can reasonably take

5. Identify the potential consequences of your options: Some options may be ethically correct but disastrous from other points of view.



• Six Candidate Ethical Principles: Once your analysis is complete, what ethical principles or rules should you use to make a decision? 1. Golden Rule

• Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. • “Treating People As You'd Like to Be Treated” • Is your company using unlicensed software although your

company itself sells software? 2. Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative

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

• Ask yourself “If everyone did this, could the organization, or society, survive?”

3. Descartes’ Rule of Change • If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take at all

• This is the slippery-slope rule: An action may bring about a small change now that is acceptable, but if it is repeated, it would bring unacceptable changes in the long run.



• Six Candidate Ethical Principles (cont.)

4. Utilitarian Principle

• Take the action that achieves the higher or greater value. Should customers using your Web site be asked to opt in or opt out of the possible sale of their personal data to other companies?

5. Risk Aversion Principle

• Take the action that produces the least harm or least potential cost

6. Ethical “no free lunch” Rule

• Assume that all property and information belong to someone. This principle is primarily applicable to intellectual property that should not be taken without just compensation. Has your company used unlicensed software? Or hired a group of IT workers from a competitor?



• Professional codes of conduct

– These professional groups take responsibility for the partial regulation of their professions by determining entrance qualifications and competence. When you present technological alternatives to managers who do not know the right questions to ask, do you tell them all they need to know to make informed choices?

• Real-world ethical dilemmas

– E.g. Right of company to maximize productivity of workers vs. workers right to use Internet for short personal tasks



• 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.

– Information technology and systems threaten individual claims to privacy by making the invasion of privacy cheap, profitable, and effective.


The Moral Dimensions of Information Systems

• Fair information practices FIP:

– Set of principles governing the collection and use of information about individuals

– Basis of most U.S. privacy laws

– Based on mutuality of interest between record holder and individual

– Restated and extended by FTC in 1998 to provide guidelines for protecting online privacy

– Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), requiring Web sites to obtain parental permission before collecting information on children under the age of 13.



• European Directive on Data Protection:

– EU protections of privacy are far more powerful than the United States

– Requires companies to inform people when they collect information about them and disclose how it will be stored and used.

– Requires informed consent of customer

– the EU’s new proposed rules have a strong emphasis on regulating tracking, enforcing transparency, limiting data retention periods, and obtaining user consent.

– EU member nations cannot transfer personal data to countries with no similar privacy protection (e.g. U.S.)

– The new rules would apply to all companies providing services in Europe, and require Internet companies like Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google, and others to obtain explicit consent from consumers about the use of their personal data,



• Internet Challenges to Privacy: – Cookies

• Tiny files downloaded by Web site to visitor’s hard drive to help identify visitor’s browser and track visits to site

• Allow Web sites to develop profiles on visitors – Web beacons/bugs

• Tiny graphics embedded in e-mail and Web pages to monitor who is reading message.

• keep a record of users’ online clickstream and report this data back to whomever owns the tracking file

– Spyware • Secretly installed on user’s computer • May transmit user’s keystrokes or display unwanted ads

• Most experts believe that Google possesses the largest collection of personal information in the world—more data on more people than any government agency. The nearest competitor is Facebook.




HOW COOKIES IDENTIFY WEB VISITORS

Cookies are written by a Web site on a visitor’s hard drive. When the visitor returns to that Web site, the Web server requests the ID number from the cookie and uses it to access the data stored by that server on that visitor. The Web site can then use these data to display personalized information.


• U.S. allows businesses to gather transaction information and use this for other marketing purposes

• without obtaining the informed consent of the individual whose information is being used

• Online industry promotes self-regulation over privacy legislation for protecting the consumers.

• However, extent of responsibility taken varies – Opt-out model of informed consent – Opt-in is no collection of user information.

– Most Web sites do not have any privacy policies



• Technical solutions

– technical solutions have failed to protect users from being tracked.

– Many browsers have Do Not Track options, the browser will send a request to Web sites requesting the user’s behavior not be tracked.

– Online advertising industries Web sites argue that they are not obligated to follow users’ requests to Do Not Track.

– iPhone Becomes iTrack



• Property rights: Intellectual property – Intellectual property: Intangible property of any kind

created by individuals or corporations.

– Information technology has made it difficult to protect intellectual property because computerized information can be so easily copied or distributed on networks.

– Three main ways that protect intellectual property

1. Trade secret: Intellectual work or product belonging to business, not in the public domain (a formula, device, or compilation of Data). Protect the actual idea and the manifestation.

2. Copyright: Statutory grant protecting intellectual property from being copied for the life of the author, plus 70 years

3. Patents: Grants creator of invention an exclusive monopoly on ideas behind invention for 20 years



• Challenges to intellectual property rights – Digital media different from physical media (e.g.

books) • Ease of replication • Ease of transmission (networks, Internet). • Ease of alteration • Illegal file sharing

• the rate of global software piracy climbed to 42 percent in 2011, representing $63 billion in global losses from software piracy

• Worldwide, for every $100 worth of legitimate software sold that year, an additional $75 worth was obtained illegally (Business Software Alliance, 2012).



• ACCOUNTABILITY, LIABILITY, AND CONTROL

– If a person is injured by a machine controlled, in part, by software, who should be held accountable and, therefore, held liable?

– What about the Internet? If you outsource your information processing, can you hold the external vendor liable for injuries done to your customers?

– Who is liable for any economic harm caused to individuals or businesses that could not access their e-mail during this three-day period? If consumers pay for cell phone service, come to rely on it, and then are denied service for a significant period of time, is the cell phone provider liable for damages?

– Target retailer hacking issues



• System Quality: Data Quality and System Errors

– What is an acceptable, technologically feasible level of system quality?

– At what point should system managers say, “Stop testing, we’ve done all we can to perfect this software. Ship it!”

• Flawless software is economically unfeasible

– Three principal sources of poor system performance:

• Software bugs, errors

• Hardware or facility failures

• Poor input data quality (most common source of business system failure)



• Quality of life: Equity, access, and boundaries (Negative social consequences of systems)

– Balancing power: Although computing power decentralizing, key decision-making remains centralized.

– power has become more centralized into the hands of a few private monopoly markets.

– Google, Apple, Yahoo, Amazon, and Microsoft have come to dominate the collection and analysis of personal private information of all citizens

– Rapidity of change: Businesses may not have enough time to respond to global competition and may be wiped out in a year, along with your job.

– Maintaining boundaries: Computing, Internet use lengthens work-day, infringes on family, personal time

– Dependence and vulnerability: Public and private organizations ever more dependent on computer systems



– Computer crime and abuse – Computer crime: Commission of illegal acts through use of

compute or against a computer system – computer may be object or instrument of crime

– Computer abuse: Unethical acts, not illegal

– Spam: High costs for businesses in dealing with spam ( for products not widely approved in most civilized societies).

– Employment: – Reengineering work resulting in lost jobs

– Equity and access – the digital divide: – Does everyone have an equal opportunity to participate in the

digital age?



• Health risks: – Repetitive stress injury (RSI)

• occurs when muscle groups are forced through repetitive actions often with high-impact loads (such as working at a computer keyboard).

– Computer vision syndrome (CVS) refers to any eyestrain condition related to display screen use in desktop computers, laptops, e-readers, smartphones, and handheld video games. (Its symptoms include headaches, blurred vision, and dry and irritated eyes)

– Role of radiation, screen emissions.

– Technostress: stress induced by computer and cell phone use (aggravation, hostility toward humans, impatience, and fatigue)



Education

Laudon ch.4