Cyberethics



Cyberethics is a branch of ethics that studies ethical dilemma brought on by the emergence of digital technologies. The emergence of personal computers and the internet have led to conflicts over privacy, intellectual property rights, software ownership, censorship, and sexuality.

Cyberethics is distinct from cyberlaw. Laws are formal written directives that apply to everyone, interpreted by the judicial system, and enforced by the police. Ethics is a broad philosophical concept that goes beyond simple right and wrong, and looks towards "the good life". See Ethics.

Privacy

In the late 1800 century, the inventions of cameras spurred similar ethical debates as the Internet does today. During a Harvard Law Review seminal in 1890, Warren and Brandeis defines privacy from an ethical and moral point of view to be "central to dignity and individuality and personhood. Privacy is also indispensable to a sense of autonomy - to 'a feeling that there is an area of an individual's life that is totally under his or her control, an area that is free from outside intrusion.' The deprivation of privacy can even endanger a person's health." (Warren & Brandeis, 1890).^[1] Over 100 years later, the Internet and proliferation of private data through ecommerce is a phenomenon which requires a new round of ethical debate involving a person's privacy.

Privacy can be decomposed to the limitation of others' access to an individual with "three elements of secrecy, anonymity, and solitude" (Gavison, 1984).^[2] Anonymity refers to the individual's right to protection from undesired attention. Solitude refers to the lack of physical proximity of an individual to others. Secrecy refers to the protection of personalized information from being freely distributed.

Individuals surrender private information when conducting transactions and registering for services. Ethical business practice protects the privacy of their customers by securing information which may attribute to the loss of secrecy, anonymity, and solitude. Credit card information, social security numbers, phone numbers, mothers' maiden names, addresses and phone numbers freely collected and shared over the internet may lead to a loss of Privacy.

Fraud and impersonation are some of the malicious activities that occurr due to the direct or indirect abuse of private information. Identity theft is rising rapidly due to the availability of private information in the internet. For instance, seven million Americans have fallen victim to Identity Theft in 2003, making identity theft as the fastest growing crime in the United States (Latak, 2005).^[3] Public records search engines and databases are the main culprits contributing to the rise of cybercrime. Listed below are a few recommendations to restrict online databases from proliferating sensitive personnel information.

1. Exclude sensitive unique identifiers from database records such as social security numbers, birth dates, hometown and mothers' maiden names.
2. Exclude phone numbers that are normally unlisted.
3. Clear provision of a method which allows people to have their names removed from a database.
4. Banning the reverse social security number lookup services (Spinello, 2006).^[4]

Private Data Collection

Data warehouses are used today to collect and store huge amounts of personal data and consumer transactions. These facilities can preserve large volumes of consumer information for an indefinite amount of time. Some of the key architectures contributing to the erosion of privacy include databases, cookies and spyware.^[4]

Some may argue that data warehouses are supposed to stand alone and be protected. However, the fact is enough personal information can be gathered from corporate websites and social networking sites to initiate a reverse lookup. Therefore, is it not important to address some of the ethical issues regarding how protected data ends up in the public domain?

As a result, identity theft protection businesses are on the rise. Companies such as LifeLock and JPMorgan Chase have begun to capitalize on selling identity theft protection insurance.

Intellectual Property Rights

The ever-increasing speed of the internet and the mp3 compression technology opened the doors to file sharing, a technology that allowed users to anonymously transfer files to each other. Much of this, however, was copyrighted music, illegal to transfer to other users. Whether it is ethical to transfer copyrighted media is another question.

Proponents of unrestricted file sharing point out how file sharing has given people broader and faster access to media, has increased exposure to new artists, and has reduced the costs of transferring media (including less environmental damage). Supporters of restrictions on file sharing argue that we must protect the income of our artists and other people who work to create our media. This argument is partially answered by pointing to the small proportion of money artists receive from the legitimate sale of media.

With the introduction of Digital Rights Management software, new issues are raised over whether the subverting of DRM is ethical. Some champion the hackers of DRM as defenders of users' rights, allowing the blind to make audio books of PDFs they receive, allowing people to burn music they have legitimately bought to CD or to transfer it to a new computer. Others see this as nothing but simply a violation of the rights of the intellectual property holders, opening the door to uncompensated use of copyrighted media.

Software Ownership

Software ownership is an issue related to intellectual property rights. The two opposing views are for closed source software distributed under restrictive licenses or for free and open source software (Freeman & Peace, 2004).^[5] The argument can be made that restrictions are required because companies would not invest weeks and months in development if there is no incentive for revenue generated from sales and licensing fees. Proponents for open source believe that all programs should be available to anyone who wants to study them.

Censorship

Main article: Internet censorship

Internet censorship is control or suppression of the publishing or accessing of information on the Internet. The legal issues are similar to offline censorship. The same arguments that apply to offline censorship apply to online censorship: whether people are better off with free access to information or should be protected from harmful influences online. The information in question can be anything from political speech, hate speech, to pornography including child pornography. The fear of access by minors drives much of the concern.

Sexuality

Main article: Cybersex

It is debated whether cybersex should be considered real sex, with its implications for marital infidelity and pre-marital sex. Not everyone counts these as unethical even when discussing physical sex, however, for those that do cybersex is a concern.

Codes of Ethics in Computing

Information Technology managers are required to establish a set of ethical standards common to their organization. There are many examples of ethical code currently published that can be tailored to fit any organization. Code of Ethics is an instrument that establishes a common ethical framework for a large group of people. Four well known examples of Code of Ethics for IT professionals are listed below:

Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics

The ethical values as defined in 1992 by the Computer Ethics Institute; a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advance technology by ethical means, lists these rules as a guide to computer ethics:

1. Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people.
   
2. Thou shalt not interfere with other people's computer work.
   
3. Thou shalt not snoop around in other people's computer files.
   
4. Thou shalt not use a computer to steal.
   
5. Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness.
   
6. Thou shalt not copy or use proprietary software for which you have not paid.
   
7. Thou shalt not use other people's computer resources without authorization or proper compensation.
   
8. Thou shalt not appropriate other people's intellectual output.
   
9. Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you are writing or the system you are designing.
   
10. Thou shalt always use a computer in ways that ensure consideration and respect for your fellow humans (Computer Ethics Institute, 1992).^[6]

RFC 1087

In January 1989, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) in RFC 1087 defines an activity as unethical and unacceptable if they:

1. Seeks to gain unauthorized access to the resources of the Internet.
2. Disrupts the intended use of the Internet.
3. Wastes resources (people, capacity, computer) through such actions.
4. Destroys the integrity of computer-based information, or
5. Compromises the privacy of users (RFC 1087, 1989). ^[7]

(ISC)² Code of Ethics

(ISC)² an organization committed to certification of computer security professional has further defined its own Code of Ethics generally as:

1. Act honestly, justly, responsibly, and legally, and protecting the commonwealth.
2. Work diligently and provide competent services and advance the security profession.
3. Encourage the growth of research – teach, mentor, and value the certification.
4. Discourage unsafe practices, and preserve and strengthen the integrity of public infrastructures.
5. Observe and abide by all contracts, expressed or implied, and give prudent advice.
6. Avoid any conflict of interest, respect the trust that others put in you, and take on only those jobs you are qualified to perform.
7. Stay current on skills, and do not become involved with activities that could injure the reputation of other security professionals (Harris, 2003).^[8]

The Code of Fair Information Practices

The Code of Fair Information Practices is based on five principles outlining the requirements for records keeping systems. This requirement was implemented in 1973 by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

1. There must be no personal data record-keeping systems whose very existence is secret.
2. There must be a way for a person to find out what information about the person is in a record and how it is used.
3. There must be a way for a person to prevent information about the person that was obtained for one purpose from being used or made available for other purposes without the person's consent.
4. There must be a way for a person to correct or amend a record of identifiable information about the person.
5. Any organization creating, maintaining, using, or disseminating records of identifiable personal data must assure the reliability of the data for their intended use and must take precautions to prevent misuses of the data (Harris, 2003).^[8]

See Also

• Computer Ethics
• Computer Crime
• Cyber Law
• Information Privacy Laws

References

External Links

IEEE Website
ACM Website
ISC² Website
Internet Architecture Board