BUSINESS WOLVES MIS

CHAPTER 4
 Ethics – Principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices
to guide their behaviors
 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 crimes
 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
- Computing power doubles every 18 months
- Data storage costs rapidly decline
- Data analysis advances
- Networking advances
- Mobile device growth impact
 Advances in Data Analysis Techniques
-- Profiling – Combining data from multiple sources to
create dossiers of detailed information on individuals
-- Nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA)
Combining data from multiple sources to find obscure
hidden connections that might help identify criminals
or terrorists
 • Five-step process for 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.
Basic Concepts:
Responsibility – Accepting the potential costs, duties, and obligations for decisions
Accountability – Mechanisms for identifying responsible parties
Liability – 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
Opt-in
Model of information consent in which a business is prohibited from collecting any personal information unless
the consume specically take action to approve information collection and use

Opt-out

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Model of informed consent of permits the collection of personal information until the consumer specifically
requests that the data not be collected
Ethical principles
- Golden rule: “Do to others as you would do them to you”.
- Immanuel Kant Categorical Imperative: “If it’s not right for everyone to do, it’s
not right for one to do”.
- Slippery Slope Rule: “If you can’t do it repeatedly, don’t do it at all”.
- Utilitarian Principle: “Take the action with higher/ greater value”.
- Risk Aversion Rule: “Take the action with least harm/ cost”.
- No Free Lunch Rule: “Always assume that tangible and intangible things are owned
by someone else, unless otherwise” or “it’s impossible to get something for nothing”.
Real-World Ethical Dilemmas
• One set of interests pitted against another
Examples
– Monitoring employees: Right of company to maximize productivity of workers versus workers’ desire
to use Internet for short personal tasks
– Facebook monitors users and sells information to advertisers and app developers
Information Rights:
• 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
• Fair information practices – Set of principles governing the collection and use of information
– Used to drive changes in privacy legislation
▪ COPPA
▪ Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
▪ HIPAA
• FTCFIP principles
– Notice/awareness (core principle)
– Choice/consent (core principle)
– Access/participation
– Security
– Enforcement

 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Requires unambiguous explicit informed consent of customer

Internet Challenges to Privacy

• Cookies – Identify browser and track visits to site – Super cookies (Flash cookies)
• Web beacons (web bugs)
– Tiny graphics embedded in e-mails and web pages
– Monitor who is reading email message or visiting site
• Spyware
– Surreptitiously installed on user’s computer
– May transmit user’s keystrokes or display unwanted ads
• Google services and behavioral targeting

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Technical Solutions
• Solutions include:
– Email encryption
– Anonymity tools
– Anti-spyware tools
• Overall, technical solutions have failed to protect users from being tracked from one site to another
– Browser features ▪ “Private” browsing ▪ “Do not track” options
• Intellectual property – Tangible and intangible products of the mind created by individuals or
corporations
• Protected in four main ways: – Copyright – Patents – Trademarks – Trade secret

Challenges to Intellectual property rights:

- Ease of replication.
- Ease of transmission (internet).
- Ease of alteration.
- Compactness.
- Difficulty in establishing uniqueness.
• Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)

Examples of failed solutions:

Incognito/ Private browsing and “Do Not Track” options.
It’s economically impractical to have a “perfect” software, but what makes a bad software?
- Software bugs and errors.
- Hardware/ facility failures.
- Poor data input quality.
- Bad quality of life; computer crimes and abuse, including spam.
Quality of Life: Equity, Access, Boundaries
• Negative social consequences of systems
• Balancing power: center versus periphery
• Rapidity of change: reduced response time to competition
• Maintaining boundaries: family, work, and leisure
• Dependence and vulnerability
• Computer crime and abuse
• Computer crime and abuse
– Computer crime
– Computer abuse
– Spam – CAN-SPAM Act of 2003
• Health risks
– Repetitive stress injury (RSI)
– Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS)
– Computer vision syndrome (CVS)
– Technostress

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Important questions :
1) The use of computers to assemble data from different sources to create digital dossiers of
detailed information about individuals is known as which of the following?
A) Profiling
B) Phishing
C) Spamming
D) Targeting
2)Which of the following is a data analysis technology that finds hidden connections between data
in disparate sources?
A) HIPAA
B) FIP
C) NORA
D) COPPA
3)________ means that you accept the potential costs and obligations for the decisions you make.
A) Responsibility
B) Accountability
C) Liability
D) Due process
E) Duty
4)________ is a feature of social institutions that means mechanisms are in place to determine
responsibility for an action.
A) Due process
B) Accountability
C) The courts of appeal
D) The judicial system
E) Liability
5) ________ is a feature of law-governed society and involves having laws that are known and
understood, along with the ability to appeal to higher authorities to ensure that the laws are applied
correctly.
A) Liability
B) Due process
C) Responsibility
D) Accountability
E) The judicial system
6) Which ethical rule states that if an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take at all?
A) Slippery-slope rule
B) Lemming rule
C) High-failure cost rule
D) Utilitarian principle
E) Golden Rule
7) Which of the following is not protected by copyright law?
A) Musical compositions B) Motion pictures C) Maps D) Artwork E) Machines
8) Which of the following U.S. laws gives patients access to personal medical records and the right
to authorize how this information can be used or disclosed?
A) HIPAA
B) Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
C) Privacy Protection Act
D) Freedom of Information Act
9)Any intellectual work product that isn't based on public knowledge can be classed as a trade
secret
10) Web beacons are tiny, invisible software programs hidden in e-mail messages and web pages
that are used to track and report a user's online behavior.
11) Spam is legally defined as any email that is unsolicited.
12) Copyright is a legal protection given to creators of certain types of intellectual property