Week 10 Legal Issues in Computing

• Computing Problems


  Problems created by computers are a result of hardware and software malfunctions or intentional misuse by human beings
• Social problems created by computing problems


  • Computer crime
  • Software theft
  • Hacking
  • The creation of viruses
  • Invasions of privacy
  • Overreliance on intelligent machines
  • Workplace stress
• Ethics


  Principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviors
• Information systems, computing technology and ethics


  • They raise new ethical questions because they create opportunities for intense social change, threatening existing distributions of power, money, rights, and obligations
  • They create opportunities for new kinds of crime
• 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, laws
• Five moral dimensions of the information age


  • Information rights and obligations
  • Property rights and obligations
  • Accountability and control
  • System quality
  • Quality of life
• Key technology trends that raise ethical issues


  • Doubling of computer power
  • Rapidly declining data storage costs
  • Networking advances and the Internet
  • Advances in data analysis techniques
  • Mobile device growth
• Nonobvious Relationship Awareness (NORA)


  Combining data from multiple sources to find obscure hidden connections that might help identify criminals or terrorists
• Responsibility


  Accepting the potential costs, duties, and obligations for decisions
• Accountability


  Mechanisms for identifying responsible parties
• Liability


  Extends Responsibility - Permits individuals (and firms) to recover damages done to them
• Due process


  Laws are well known and understood, with an ability to appeal to higher authorities
• Ethical analysis: A five-step process

  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
• Six Candidate Ethical Principles


  • Golden Rule
  • Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative
  • Descartes' Rule of Change
  • Utilitarian Approach
  • Risk Aversion Principle
  • Ethical "no free lunch" Rule
• Professional codes of conduct


  Developed for self-regulatory measures by associations of professionals, promises by professions to regulate themselves in the general interest of society
• Real-world ethical dilemmas involve one set of interests stacked against another, e.g. right of company to maximize productivity of workers vs. workers' right to use Internet for short personal tasks
• Privacy


  Claim of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance or interference from other individuals, organizations, or state, and to be able to control information about yourself
• Fair information practices


  Set of principles governing the collection and use of information, basis of most privacy laws, based on mutuality of interest between record holder and individual, used to drive changes in privacy legislation
• Data Protection


  Requirements for companies to inform people when they collect information about them and disclose how it will be stored and used, requires informed consent of customer
• Internet challenges to privacy


  • Cookies
  • Web beacons/bugs
  • Spyware
• In the U.S and Australia, businesses are allowed to gather transaction information and use this for other marketing purposes
• Most Web sites do not have any privacy policies
• Technical solutions for privacy


  • E-mail encryption
  • Anonymity tools
  • Anti-spyware tools
  • Browser features like "private" browsing and "do not track" options
• Intellectual property


  Intangible property of any kind created by individuals or corporations
• Ways that protect intellectual property


  • Trade secret
  • Copyright
  • Patents
• Challenges to intellectual property rights


  • Ease of replication and transmission of digital media
  • Difficulty in classifying software
  • Compactness and difficulties in establishing uniqueness
• Computer-related liability problems


  • If software fails, who is responsible?
  • If seen as part of machine that injures or harms, software producer and operator may be liable
  • If seen as similar to book, difficult to hold author/publisher responsible
  • What should liability be if software seen as service?
• System Quality


  Acceptable, technologically feasible level of system quality, flawless software is economically unfeasible
• Sources of poor system performance


  • Software bugs, errors
  • Hardware or facility failures
  • Poor input data quality
• Negative social consequences of systems


  • Rapidity of change
  • Maintaining boundaries - computing, Internet use lengthens work-day, infringes on family, personal time
  • Dependence and vulnerability - public and private organizations become ever more dependent on computer systems
• Computer crime


  Commission of illegal acts through use of computer or against a computer system - computer may be object or instrument of crime
• Computer abuse


  Unethical acts, not illegal, e.g. spam
• Health risks from computing


  • Repetitive stress injury (RSI)
  • Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS)
  • Computer vision syndrome (CVS)
  • Technostress
  • Role of radiation, screen emissions, low-level electromagnetic fields
• Professionalism


  Professionals are subject to ethical and moral standards of practice, having the necessary technical knowledge and knowing when and how to appropriately apply it
• Role of Professional Associations


  • Academic and professional accreditation
  • Industry advocacy / peak-body for government and community advocacy
  • Skill development
  • Ethical frameworks and guidelines for their members