Ethical and Social Issues in the Information Age

We also discuss the growth of computing technologies like the Internet, the Web, and advanced mobile computing technologies and the rise of computer crimes. Finally we introduce the need for computer ethics education as one of the solutions to the growing threat of a cyberspace attack.

This chapter defines and examines personal and public morality, identifying assumptions and values and the law, looking at both conventional and natural law, and the intertwining of morality and the law. We define morality as a system that, in addition to setting standards of virtuous conduct for people, also consists of mechanisms to self-regulate through enforcement of the moral code and self-judge through guilt, which is an internal discomfort resulting from disappointment in self-mediated conscience. Based on this definition, we discuss moral theories, moral codes, moral standards and norms, and how they are used to make judgment of human actions to determine their goodness or badness. With the discussion of moral standards, we venture into concepts of guilt and conscience. We show how moral guilt is a result of self-judgment and punishment by an individual for not living up to the moral standards set for oneself or for the group. We end the chapter with discussion of morality and the law noting that conventional laws of a society are anchored by the moral beliefs of that society. We look into the heated argument about this statement and observe that both morality and the legal system serve the purpose of keeping society stable and secure.

This chapter builds upon Chap.​ 2 in setting up the philosophical framework and analysis tools for discussing moral theories and problems in ethical relativism. We discuss the moral and ethical premises and their corresponding values in the changing technology arena. In particular, we give two fitting definitions of ethics: the traditional definition of ethics and the functional definition of ethics as involving a value mapping. We discuss describe ethical decision making as a process of making a decision which may result in one or more moral conflicts. We end the chapter with a list of codes of ethics in use by different professional organizations.

This chapter examines the changing nature of the professions and how they cope with the impact of technology on their fields. An ethical framework for decision making is developed. Professional and ethical responsibilities based on community values and the law are also discussed. Social issues including harassment and discrimination are thoroughly covered. Discussed in depth are the four pillars of professionalism that include commitment, integrity, responsibility, and accountability. We focus our discussion on professional dilemmas and guilt associated with decision making showing that these dilemmas, which are quite common in the everyday activities of a professional, are caused by questioning the values attached to one’s premises as inputs to the decision being made and that one’s input values may be clouded by conflicting codes of conduct, advances in technology, and/or incomplete or misleading information. We end the chapter with an in-depth discussion of professionalism and ethical responsibilities focusing on whistle-blowing, harassment, and discrimination.

This chapter surveys the traditional ethical and privacy issues including security, anonymity, and the analysis of how these issues are influenced by computer technology. This dialog also looks at privacy and the protection of civil rights. But in the absence of and agreed upon set of civil liberties by scholars, the discussion focuses on the following four accepted categories: (1) criminal justice that includes police powers, personal liberty, and the right to a fair trial; (2) basic freedoms of speech, assembly, association, movement, and no discrimination; (3) freedom of information; and (4) communications and privacy. With the rapid advances in computer technology, and in particular the advent of the Internet mobile telecommunication technologies, the reader is challenged and brought into the discussion of finding ways, best practices, and in some cases protocols and frameworks to protect these civil liberties. The chapter ends with a challenge to the reader to find a fitting ethical framework to protect us and our ethical and social values against the avalanche of these technologies. What should be included in it? Is there a need for a legal framework also? The reader is prompted!

This chapter discusses the foundations of intellectual property rights and how computer technology has influenced and changed the traditional issues of property rights. The reader is immersed into a discussion of controversial issues of ownership in a rapidly amalgamating global cultures, languages, beliefs, and values as a result of rapid globalization technologies like telecommunication that is casting a far and wide net that is likely, in the near future, to create one global commons. The controversial issues focused on here include the politics and psychology of ownership and the changing infringement landscape. Another issue of interest in our focus is the intellectual property crime (IPC), activities that involve infringement, counterfeiting, piracy of products and services for profit without permission from the creator, misappropriation, misrepresentation, corruption and bribery, and espionage.

This chapter considers social issues in computing including the digital divide, workplace issues like employee monitoring, health risks due to computer use, and how these issues are changing with the changing computer technology. The chapter also covers a detailed discussion on a number of obstacles to overcoming the digital divide through digital inclusion within countries and globally. On workplace issues, the discussion focuses on the best practices to deal with the changing workplace issues resulting from the growing army of home-based workers and measuring employee productivity.

This chapter focuses on the issues that arise out of the relationship between software developer and the buyer, including claims, user expectations, and the legal ramifications that may follow an unhealthy relationship. The discussion touches on standards, reliability, security, safety, quality of software, quality of service of software products, causes of software failures, developer and buyer protection, and techniques for improving software quality. Causes of software failures or poor performance of a software product are discussed attributing the causes to a variety of reasons but most notably human error, the nature of software itself, and the environment in which software is produced and used. Finally historic examples of software-caused accidents are given including the Therac–25, the Space Shuttle Challenger, the Indian Bhopal chemical accident, and the Chernobyl nuclear power accident. Both consumer protection and techniques for improving software quality are also discussed.

This chapter surveys the history and examples of computer crimes, their types, costs to society, and strategies of detection and prevention. In the discussion, it is noted that a great number of computer attacks fall into two categories: penetration and denial of service attacks. And these are discussed in depth. Attack motives are also discussed. Are nations, businesses, and individuals prepared for computer attacks? Are they ready to pay the price? We look for answers to these questions as we ponder the costs and consequences of computer crimes. We note also that although it is difficult to estimate the actual costs of e-attacks on physical system resources, progress is being made for better and more accurate estimates. An in-depth discussion of the social and ethical consequences that include psychological effects, moral decay, loss of privacy, and loss of trust follows. We end the chapter with recommendations for educating the computing device users in computer ethics. The need to educate the user to be aware of possible sources of computer crimes and what to do if and when one becomes a victim of these crimes is stressed. It is noted that education can go a long way in reducing computer crimes if the users take crime preventive steps every time they use the computer and computer-related technologies.

This chapter discusses the new frontiers of ethics in the new artificial intelligent (AI) technologies and how these new frontiers are affecting the traditional ethical and social values. Our discussion is based on the premise that artificial intelligence technologies create possibilities to understand and extend human knowledge to create intelligent agents perhaps with a human–value base, intended to help solve human problems. However, as we strive to extend human knowledge, are we transgressing against the law of God, as it is deeply rooted in the minds and hearts of many who still believe that the human quest for knowledge must eventually lead to disaster? Although this belief has not been affected by current philosophical and scientific advances, it has instead produced the Frankenstein monster syndrome of fear of new advances in intelligence, particularly machine intelligence. It is this fear that has been the source of controversy in the field of artificial intelligence and has the potential to hinder its development.

We discuss the two schools of thought that have formed around the debate of artificial intelligence and the future of humanity. These are in one school are those who take a dark view of AI contributions, labeling all AI activities as research gone wrong, “mad scientist” research in the spirit of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In contrast to these naysayers are those in the other school who see the future of AI as very beneficial to humanity. They see a fruitful partnership with the agents in which the agents are relieving us of all our dangerous and tedious tasks, making our lives a little easier and helping us reach our ultimate goal of the good life. They further believe that we will learn more about ourselves in the attempt to construct something like ourselves. Will we become better as human beings in what we do and how we do it? Will the success of AI and the creation of ourselves bring us to the full understanding of our inadequacies and belittle our human experience? We ask the reader to ponder these questions as we end the chapter.

This chapter discusses the new developments and consequences of the virtualization technology and its implications on our participation and how the technology informs our behavior based on our traditional moral and ethical values. In a more detailed way, we define virtualization as a process which embodies both abstraction and reconstruction and as it creates a sense of complete participants’ immersion yet with autonomy of participants to vary their chosen new environments to suit individual likings. As defined, virtualization, therefore, conjures uncertainty and fear not of the environment but of the individual who partakes in the activities of the environment. Our discussion of both social and ethical issues that arise within and outside the environment focused on two types of virtualization: computing resources virtualization and virtual reality (VR). We note that virtualization is also bringing about easy creation of new human identities in the new virtual environments which makes authentication more difficult but at the same time creating unprecedented potential in self-creation and self-presentation. We note, however, that while these benefits may bring new opportunities and new potential that may empower individuals to new levels of creativity, these unparalleled opportunities of virtualization may come at a price to society.

This chapter discusses cyberspace as one of the new frontiers of ethics. In our discussion, we note that is a global artificial reality environment based on a global mesh of interconnected computer networks. This mesh allows and makes it possible for anyone using a point-of-entry device like a computer, smartphone, or any other Internet-enabled electronic device to reach anyone else, with the potential to access the mesh, through a one-on-one, one-to-many, and many-to-one communication capabilities or through broadcasting via the World Wide Web. Cyberspace, because of immerse and telepresence capabilities and global reach, is used either in real time or otherwise, simultaneously by millions if not billions of people around the world. We note that these notions give cyberspace and in fact makes cyberspace not only a virtual environment but also makes it a potentially dangerous environment where one can do anything with no elegance, no accountability and limited responsibility, and all in a cover. So personal privacy becomes the number one social and ethical issue of concern in our discussion. With the changing cyberspace technologies, we wonder whether cyberspace communities will see their etiquettes, if any, eventually amalgamate, mutate, and spread into global cyberethics. How about cyberspace lingua franca and a global cyber culture?

This chapter discusses the new realities of global computer online social network ecosystems, including moral and ethical dilemmas. Because we believe that a sound and detailed discussion of online social networks is based on a good understanding of the underlying network infrastructure, we start the chapter with a brief discussion of the computer network infrastructure. Based on this communication infrastructure, we define a social network and its subset, the online social network. We discuss the types of social networks, their historical development, and the different and changing services of online social networks. After discussing the basics of online social networks, we then focus on ethical, social, and privacy issues in the online social network noting that while online, we inevitably give off our information to whomever asks for it in order to get services. We note further that routinely information collected from online community members, however, is not always used as intended. It is quite often used for unauthorized purposes, hence an invasion of privacy. We discuss known ways we give off vital personal information while online in social networks. We further discuss ways to protect personal privacy. On the central point of ethical implications of life in the social network, we note that unlike in the traditional network, governance is not centralized, but community based with equally shared authority and responsibility by all users. But the mechanisms are not yet defined, and where they are being defined, it is still too early to say whether they are effective. The complexity, unpredictability, and lack of central authority are further enhanced by a the concepts of telepresence and immersion, virtual personality, anonymity, and multiple personality. These issues are at the core of the social and ethical problems in online social networks in particular and cyberspace in general; the larger and more numerous these communities become, the more urgent the ethical concerns become.

This chapter begins by presenting rather a frightening and quickly evolving mobile telecommunication and computing technologies; their unprecedented global reach and inclusion; unparalleled social, financial, and cultural prowess; and the yet to be defined social, moral, and ethical value systems. We discuss the crucial role of the mobile operating system and survey the current mobile devises and their anchoring mobile operating systems. The discussion then settles on the main themes of the book, that is, the ethical and security issues in the mobile ecosystem. We discuss the troubling issue of the mobile ecosystem, the location-based tracking system (LTS). This technology, in three types, is troubling because it is being used by merchants, law enforcement agencies and almost everyone else who needs to know where you and your smart electronic device are. We note that while users of smart devices may not be aware, these technologies have huge ethical and privacy implications. In our discussion, we focus on the security and threat to individual privacy, for even in public places individuals deserve some privacy, resulting from the collection, aggregation, and centralization of personal information, without user consent of the user and also in the absence of applicable laws. On security issues in the ecosystem, we note that mobile devices are increasingly holding and storing more private data like personal and business and they are roaming in public spaces on public networks with limited security and cryptographic protocols to protect the data. Also because of the fact that these devices have the ability to roam on several networks, there is a wider sphere of attack beset by geographical, legal, and moral differences. We note that the penetration trend of these smart mobile devices is not limited to faraway rural places but more scaring is their rapid penetration on enterprise IT spaces where security is paramount for any device.

This chapter discusses what constitutes digital evidence, the collection and analysis of digital evidence, chain of custody, the writing of the report, and the possible appearance in court as an expert witness. We give an in-depth discussion of digital evidence acquisition rule of thumb and the candidates for evidence extraction. On preserving of evidence, a cornerstone of crime investigation, we note that since digital evidence is very fluid, in that it can disappear or change so fast, extra care must be taken in preserving digital evidence. We discuss the various techniques to preserve evidence and what needs to be done if evidence is to be moved. We stress the importance of careful analysis of digital evidence noting that this process is the most difficult and most opinionated. It is also the most important, most time-consuming, and painstakingly slow and should be thorough so that it can support or reject a fact based on identified patterns of activities, file signature anomalies, unusual behaviors, file transfers, and several other trends in the evidence. Final issues discussed in this chapter include the process of report writing and presentation and also the ethical implications and responsibilities of both the investigator and the lawyer. The role of the investigator, as the main player in the process, is discussed in depth in light of the absence of a legal and ethical framework for digital forensics investigators to work under. Specific guidelines like the United Kingdom Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO)’s “Good Practice Guide for Computer Based Electronic Evidence” and the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 800 series special publications are suggested.

This chapter starts off by discussing. Biometric technologies as access and identification processes. Biometric technologies confirm a person’s identity by scanning physical characteristics such as a fingerprint, voice, eye movement, and facial recognition. We discuss how a typical biometric system operates in two distinct stages: the enrollment stage and the authentication stage. We also discuss biometric technologies traits used to confirm a person’s identity that include fingerprint, voice, eye movement, facial recognition, and a few others. Finally in discussing the ethical issues faced in the use of biometric technologies, we pose the following questions to the reader:The answers to these questions inform our discussion.