Ethics Handout

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COMPUTER ETHICS

In the advancement of the IT age, computers aren’t the issue for security breach.
Instead, it is the ethical and social issue that is arising. Generally, ethics is a set of moral
principles that regulate the behavior of a group or individual regarding to specific
matters. Therefore, computer ethics is set of moral principles that regulate the use of
computers. Common issues in computer ethics consist of intellectual intellectual
property, privacy, abuse of trust, accuracy and many more.

The major ethical issues that emerge from these various sources include; codes of ethics,
intellectual property, data security and accuracy, personal privacy.

Computer ethics are usually focused in these four areas:

1. Privacy – responsibility to protect data about individuals


2. Accuracy – responsibility of data collectors to authenticate information and
ensure its accuracy
3. Property – who owns information and software and how can they be sold and
exchanged
4. Access responsibility of data collectors to control access and determine what
information a person has the right to obtain about others and how the
information can be used.

TEN COMMANDMENTS OF COMPUTER ETHICS


1. Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other individuals.
2. Thou shalt not interfere with other people's computer work.
3. Thou shalt not snoop around in other people's 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 use or copy software for which you have not paid.
7. Thou shalt not use other people's computer resources without authorization.
8. Thou shalt not appropriate other people's intellectual output.
9. Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you write.
10. Thou shalt use a computer in ways that show consideration and respect.

WHAT IS ETHICS?

Ethics can be defined in various ways ranging from religion to philosophical point of
view of what is meant by a morally good action; for sometimes what is good or morally
right in one’s mind may be bad or morally wrong to others and vice versa.

The English dictionary defines ethics as the standards that govern the conduct of a
person, especially a member of a profession

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

Professional Ethics is a crucial part of the content of professionalism. Computing


professionals perform a variety of tasks which include hardware designs, software
engineering, database administration, system analysis, and host of others. Computing
professionals are obligated to perform these tasks conscientiously because their
decisions affect the performance and functionality of computer systems, which in turn
affect the welfare of the systems’ users directly and that of others less directly. In view
of this, it is important to understand the term professional ethics and discuss the roles
such codes can play as professionalization strategy, ethical position, and practical
approach so as to raise some fundamental awareness on ethics for computer
professionals and point out areas of their differences.

WHAT IS COMPUTER ETHICS AND WHY STUDY IT?


✓ Derived from the Greek word “ethos”, which means “custom”, “habit”, and
“way of living”.
✓ Ethics is concerned with human conduct, i.e., behavior of individuals in society.
✓ Ethics is a system of morals of a particular person, religion or a group.
✓ Moral: means dealing with, or capable of, distinguishing between right and
wrong, and between just and unjust.
✓ Ethical Theory: a system of ethics guides towards actions good for all.
Computer ethics can be defined as the analysis of the nature and social impact of
computer technology and the corresponding formulation and justification of policies for
the ethical use of such technology.

The knowledge of computer ethics helps to sensitize students to computer ethics issues,
provide tools and methods for analyzing cases, provide practice in applying the tools
and methods to actual or realistic cases, and develop the student to good judgment and
helpful intuitions.

Computer ethics arises because of a policy vacuum about how technology should be
used. Technology is capable of many things.

Computer ethics includes questions such as:

➢ Should U.S. sell computers and software to countries that support terrorism?
➢ Medical ethics defines patient – provider relationships.
➢ Legal ethics defines client – attorney relationships.
➢ Every technical decision has an ethical dimension.
➢ A computer whiz-kid wants to help his mother get expensive medicines for a
lifethreatening condition. Wants to use his technical prowess to defraud a pharmacy.
Does the end justify the means?

Why Computing Professional Ethics?


Computing professional’s obligations are similar to those of other technical
professionals. Taken together, these professional obligations are called professional
ethics. Ethical obligations have been studied by philosophers and have been
articulated by religious leaders for many years. Within the discipline of philosophy,
ethics encompasses the study of the actions that a responsible individual should
choose, the values that an honorable individual should espouse, and the character that
a virtuous individual should have. This is also known as philosophical ethics, ethical
theory, moral theory or moral philosophy which involves systematizing, defending
and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct and often addressing
disputes of moral diversity. Religiously, it encompasses a system of faith based on
belief in the existence of God and the activities that are connected with the worship of
God.

Who are the Professionals?


Computing professionals include hardware designers, software engineers, database
administrators, system analysts, and computer scientists. Professions that exhibit certain
characteristics are called strongly differentiated professions.

These are the professions such as physicians and lawyers, who have special rights and
responsibilities. The defining characteristics of a strongly differentiated profession are
specialized knowledge and skills, systematic research, professional autonomy, a robust
professional association, and a well-defined social good associated with the profession.
Members of a strongly differentiated profession have specialized knowledge and skills,
often called a “body of knowledge,” gained through formal education and practical
experience. Although plumbers also have special knowledge and skills, education in the
trades such as plumbing emphasizes apprenticeship training rather than formal
education.
Professionals value the expansion of knowledge through systematic research—they do
not rely exclusively on the transmission of craft traditions from one generation to the
next.

Research in a profession is conducted by academic members of the profession, and


sometimes by practitioner members too. Academic physicians, for example, conduct
medical research. Because professionals understand that professional knowledge
always advances, professionals should also engage in continuing education by reading
publications and attending conferences. Professionals should share general knowledge
of their fields, rather than keeping secrets of a guild. Professionals are obligated,
however, to keep specific information about clients confidential.

Professionals are members of a strongly differentiated profession that have


specialized knowledge and skills, often called a ‘‘Body of Knowledge,’’ gained
through formal education and practical experience. They value the expansion of
knowledge through systematic research and do not rely exclusively on the
transmission of craft traditions. Professionals tend to have clients, not customers.
Professionals tend to have clients, not customers. Whereas a sales clerk should try to
satisfy the customer’s desires, the professional should try to meet the client’s needs
(consistent with the welfare of the client and the public).

Professionals have specialized knowledge, clients cannot fully evaluate the quality of
services provided by professionals. Only other members of a profession, the
professional’s peers, can sufficiently determine the quality of professional work. The
principle of peer review underlies accreditation and licensing activities: members of a
profession evaluate the quality of an educational program for accreditation, and they set
the requirements for the licensing of individuals. For example, in the United States, a
lawyer must pass a state’s bar exam to be licensed to practice in that state. (Most states
have reciprocity arrangements—a professional license granted by one state is
recognized by other states.) The license gives professionals legal authority and
privileges that are not available to unlicensed individuals. For example, a licensed
physician may legitimately prescribe medications and perform surgery, activities that
should not be performed by people who are not medical professionals. Through
accreditation and licensing, the public cedes control over a profession to members of the
profession.

Figure 1, Ethics contexts, (Dodig-Crnkovic, 2004)

WHY PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS?

The purposes and values of a profession, including its commitment to a public good, are
expressed by its code of ethics. The creation of a code of ethics is the transformation of
an occupation into a profession. A profession code of ethics is developed and updated
by a national or international professional association; e.g. the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineering Computer Society (IEEE-CS), the Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM), the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AIPT), the
Computer Professionals of Nigeria (CPN) and a host of others. These associations
publish periodicals, organize the accreditation of educational programs, licensing of
individual professionals and host conferences to enable professionals to continue
learning and networking with other members of the profession. The obligations of
computing professionals to clients, employers, and the public are expressed in several
codes of ethics just like any other professions such as Law Accounting and Medicine.

WHAT ARE THE MORAL AND LEGAL RESPONSIBILITIES IN COMPUTING

Moral responsibility is generally broader than legal responsibility. For example, the
thunderstorm was responsible for damaging the computer system through a
lightening spike (known as the “Act of God”) could be considered moral since it’s not
mitigated by the presence of good intentions or by the absence of bad consequences.
Moral responsibility is shared whenever multiple individuals collaborate as a group,
such as a software development team. When this happen, responsibility is not
atomized to the point at which no one in the group is responsible. Rather, each
member of the group is accountable to the other members.

Nevertheless, an individual who is assigned a task or function is considered legally


responsible for his actions whether good or bad.

Hence, an individual or organization can be legally responsible or liable for a problem


and can be charged in a civil lawsuit. Therefore, the principle of strict liability
encourages manufacturers to be careful, since it provides a way to compensate victims
of accidents.

Judging from the various contemporary schools of moral thinking, consequence-based


ethics, as opposed to rule based, seems to have a good acceptance among professionals
such as software engineers. Besides, the complexity of software systems makes it very
hard to know in advance the consequences that will derive from professional activities
in the production of software. Therefore, following the spirit of well-known codes of
ethics such as the ACM/IEEE’s, it is pertinent to take into account both rules and
consequences to assess the goodness of actions, and at the same time pay adequate
consideration to the absolute values of human dignity. Good intentions are not enough.
Software engineers require sound ethical instruction that integrates moral principles
and respect to human dignity with the real experience of their profession.

Software systems are strongly characterized by complexity due to the following reasons:

i. Complexity and imperfection of software makes the prediction of consequences


particularly difficult.
The imperfection and unpredictability of software belongs to the very nature of the
profession, as witnessed nowadays.

ii. Though it is not an excuse to ignore at all the consequences of one’s acts,
consequentiality analysis of responsibility becomes much harder and inadequate in
software engineering.

To tackle these problems, the Current codes of ethics in software engineering provide
valuable guidelines as:

i. A moderate deontologist (the study of the nature of duty and obligation) ethical
position is adopted.
ii. It tries not to teach precise (algorithmic) mechanisms to valuate responsibility so
as not to compound the complexity problems.
iii. It strives for a good integration of rules and consequences to achieve ethical
behavior and to assess moral responsibility in the profession:

RESPONSIBILITY IN COMPUTING

Causal responsibility: Responsibility can be attributed to causes: for example, “the


tornado was responsible for damaging the house.” In the Therac-25 case, the proximate
cause of each accident was the operator, who started the radiation treatment. But just as
the weather cannot be blamed for a moral failing, the Therac-25 operators cannot be
blamed because they followed standard procedures, and the information displayed on
the computer monitors was cryptic and misleading.

Role responsibility: An individual who is assigned a task or function is considered the


responsible person for that role. In this sense, a foreman in a chemical plant may be
responsible for disposing of drums of toxic waste, even if a forklift operator actually
transfers the drums from the plant to the truck. In the Therac-25 case, the software
developers and system engineers were assigned the responsibility of designing the
software and hardware of the machine. Insofar as their designs were deficient, they
were responsible for those deficiencies because of their roles. Even if they had
completed their assigned tasks, however, their role responsibility may not encompass
the full extent of their professional responsibilities.

Legal responsibility: An individual or an organization can be legally responsible, or


liable, for a problem. That is, the individual could be charged with a crime, or the
organization could be liable for damages in a civil lawsuit. Similarly, a physician can be
sued for malpractice. In the Therac-25 case, AECL could have been sued. One kind of
legal responsibility is strict liability: if a product injures someone, then manufacturer of
the product can be found liable for damages in a lawsuit, even if the product met all
applicable safety standards and the manufacturer did nothing wrong. The principle of
strict liability encourages manufacturers to be careful, and it provides a way to
compensate victims of accidents.

Moral responsibility: Causal, role, and legal responsibilities tend to be exclusive: if one
individual is responsible, then another is not. In contrast, moral responsibility tends to
be shared: many engineers are responsible for the safety of the products that they
design, not just a designated safety engineer. Furthermore, rather than assign blame for
a past event, moral responsibility focuses on what individuals should do in the future.
In the moral sense, responsibility is a virtue: a “responsible person” is careful,
considerate, and trustworthy; an “irresponsible person” is reckless, inconsiderate, and
untrustworthy. Responsibility is shared whenever multiple individuals collaborate as a
group, such as a software development team. When moral responsibility is shared,
responsibility is not atomized to the point at which no one in the group is responsible.
Rather, each member of the group is accountable to the other members of the group and
to those whom the group’s work might affect, both for the individual’s own actions and
for the effects of their collective effort. For example, suppose a computer network
monitoring team has made mistakes in a complicated statistical analysis of network
traffic data, and these mistakes have changed the interpretation of the reported results.
If the team members do not reanalyze the data themselves, they have an obligation to
seek the assistance of a statistician who can analyze the data correctly. Different team
members might work with the statistician in different ways, but they should hold each
other accountable for their individual roles in correcting the mistakes. Finally, the team
has a collective moral responsibility to inform readers of the team’s initial report about
the mistakes and the correction. Moral responsibility for recklessness and negligence is
not mitigated by the presence of good intentions or by the absence of bad consequences.
Suppose a software tester neglects to sufficiently test a new module for a telephone
switching system, and the module fails. Although the subsequent telephone service
outages are not intended, the software tester is morally responsible for the harms
caused by the outages. Suppose a hacker installs a keystroke logging program in a
deliberate attempt to steal passwords at a public computer. Even if the program fails to
work, the hacker is still morally responsible for attempting to invade the privacy of
users. An individual can be held morally responsible both for acting and for failing to
act. For example, a hardware engineer might notice a design flaw that could result in a
severe electrical shock to someone who opens a personal computer system unit to
replace a memory chip. Even if the engineer is not specifically assigned to check the
electrical safety of the system unit, the engineer is morally responsible for calling
attention to the design flaw, and the engineer can be held accountable for failing to act

What then are Morality and Ethics?


Morality is used to refer to moral conduct, while ethics is used to refer to the formal
study of moral conduct. Hence Ethics is often called Moral Philosophy.

i. Morality (Praxis): first-order set of beliefs and practices about how to live a good
life
ii. Ethics (Theory): a second-order, conscious reflection on the adequacy of our
moral beliefs.

CODE OF ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT


1. General ethical principles: A computing professional should;

• Contribute to society and to human well-being, acknowledging that all people


are stakeholders in computing.

• Avoid harm.
• Be honest and trustworthy.
• Be fair and take action not to discriminate.
• Respect the work required to produce new ideas, inventions, creative works, and
computing artifacts.

• Respect privacy.
• Honor confidentiality
2. Professional Responsibilities: A computing professional should;

• Strive to achieve high quality in both the processes and products of professional
work.

• Maintain high standards of professional competence, conduct, and ethical


practice.

• Know and respect existing rules pertaining to professional work.


• Accept and provide appropriate professional review.
• Give comprehensive and thorough evaluations of computer systems and their
impacts, including analysis of possible risks.
• Perform work only in areas of competence.
• Foster public awareness and understanding of computing, related technologies,
and their consequences.

• Access computing and communication resources only when authorized or when


compelled by the public good.

• Design and implement systems that are robustly and usably secure.

3. PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES: A computing professional


especially the one acting as a leader should;
• Ensure that the public good is the central concern during all professional
computing work.

• Articulate, encourage acceptance of, and evaluate fulfillment of social


responsibilities by members of the organization or group.

• Manage personnel and resources to enhance the quality of working life.


• Articulate, apply, and support policies and processes that reflect the principles of
the Code.

• Create opportunities for members of the organization or group to grow as


professionals.

• Use care when modifying or retiring systems.


• Recognize and take special care of systems that become integrated into the
infrastructure of society.

4. COMPLIANCE WITH THE CODE: A computing professional should;

• Uphold, promote, and respect the principles of the Code.


• Treat violations of the Code as inconsistent with membership in the ACM.
EVALUATION OF FOUR PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS CODE OF ETHICS
It is necessary, but not sufficient, to trust people or organizations by setting a number
of ethical rules. Education may help toward ethical awareness and action, such that
computer ethics may actually, and not just theoretically, help increase information
security management. However, information security is worthy of ethical
consideration as many decisions in information technology affect a wide range of
stakeholders. Hence, National and international computer societies have promoted
codes of ethical practice and even written these codes into their constitutions. Notably
among them are ACM, IEEE-CS, AIPT and CPN.

The ACM and IEEE-CS developed in 1998 the ACM/IEEE Software Engineering Code of
Ethics and Professional Practice in terms of the following eight principles:

i. For the public, software engineers shall act consistently with the public interest. ii. For
the client and employer, software engineers shall act in a manner that is in the best
interests of their clients and employer, consistent with the public interest.
iii. Concerning the product, software engineers shall ensure that their products meet the
highest professional standards possible. iv. With respect to judgment, software
engineers shall maintain integrity and independence in their professional judgment.
v. About management, software engineering managers shall subscribe to and
promote an ethical approach to the management of software development and
maintenance.
vi. For the profession, software engineers shall advance the integrity and reputation
of the profession consistent with the public interest.
vii. With colleagues, software engineers shall be fair to and supportive of their fellow
workers.
viii. About self, software engineers shall participate in lifelong learning regarding the
practice of their profession and shall promote an ethical approach to the practice of the
profession.

On the other hand, AIPT code of ethics acknowledges and recognizes the following
obligations. It is first of all expected that an information processing professional will
abide by the appropriate laws of their country and community and that these codes of
ethics are not objectives to be strived for as they are rules that no professional will
violate.

These include:

i. Acknowledgement and Recognition of obligation to management by Sharing


knowledge with others and presenting factual and objective information to
management and accepting full responsibility for work done
ii. Acknowledgement and Recognition of obligation to fellow members by being
honest and not take advantage of the lack of knowledge or inexperience on the part of
other fellow members for personal gain.
iii. Acknowledgement and Recognition of obligation to society by Protecting the
privacy and confidentiality of all information entrusted and supporting, respecting, and
abiding by the appropriate local, state, provincial, and federal laws.
iv. Acknowledgement and Recognition of obligation to employer by Avoiding
conflict of interest and ensuring that employers are aware of any potential conflicts, and
by protecting the privacy and confidentiality of employer’s information.

***** RESPONSIBILITIES OF COMPUTING PROFESSIONALS


Responsibilities to Clients and Users whether a computing professional works as a
consultant to an individual or as an employee in a large organization, the professional is
obligated to perform assigned tasks competently, according to professional standards.
These professional standards include not only attention to technical excellence but also
concern for the social effects of computers on operators, users, and the public. When
assessing the capabilities and risks of computer systems, the professional must be
candid: the professional must report all relevant findings honestly and accurately.
When designing a new computer system, the professional must consider not only the
specifications of the client, but also how the system might affect the quality of life of
users and others. For example, a computing professional who designs an information
system for a hospital should allow speedy access by physicians and nurses, yet protect
patients’ medical records from unauthorized access; the technical requirement to
provide fast access may conflict with the social obligation to ensure patients’ privacy.
Computing professionals enjoy considerable freedom in deciding how to meet the
specifications of a computer system. Provided that they meet the minimum
performance requirements for speed, reliability, and functionality, within an overall
budget, they may choose to invest resources to decrease the response time rather than to
enhance a graphical user interface, or vice versa. Because choices involve tradeoffs
between competing values, computing professionals should identify potential biases in
their design choices. For example, the designer of a search engine for an online retailer
might choose to display the most expensive items first. This choice might favor the
interest of the retailer, to maximize profit, over the interest of the customer, to minimize
cost. Even moderately large software artifacts (computer programs) are inherently
complex and error-prone. Furthermore, software is generally becoming more complex.
It is therefore reasonable to assume that all software artifacts have errors. Even if a
particular artifact does not contain errors, it is extremely difficult to prove its
correctness.
Faced with these realities, how can a responsible software engineer release software that
is likely to fail sometime in the future? Other engineers confront the same problem,
because all engineering artifacts eventually fail.
Whereas, most engineering artifacts fail because physical objects wear out, however,
software artifacts are most likely to fail because of faults designed into the original
artifact. The intrinsically faulty nature of software distinguishes it from light bulbs and
Ibeams, for example, whose failures are easier to predict statistically. To acknowledge
responsibilities for the failure of software artifacts, software developers should exercise
due diligence in creating software, and they should be as candid as possible about both
known and unknown faults in the software—particularly software for safety-critical
systems, in which a failure can threaten the lives of people. Candor
(Straightforward/honesty) by software developers would give software consumers a
better chance to make reasonable decisions about software before they buy it. Following
an established tradition in medicine, “Miller” advocates “software informed consent”
as a way to formalize an ethical principle that requires openness from software
developers. Software informed consent requires software developers to reveal, using
explanations that are understandable to their customers, the risks of their software,
including the likelihoods of known faults and the probabilities that undiscovered faults
still exist. The idea of software informed consent motivates candor, and also requires
continuing research into methods of discovering software faults and measuring risk.
Responsibilities to Employers most computing professionals work for employers. The
employment relationship is contractual: the professional promises to work for the
employer in return for a salary and benefits. Professionals often have access to the
employer’s proprietary information such as trade secrets, and the professional must
keep this information confidential. Besides trade secrets, the professional must also
honor other forms of intellectual property owned by the employer: the professional
does not have the right to profit from independent sale or use of this intellectual
property, including software developed with the employer’s resources. Every employee
is expected to work loyally on behalf of the employer. In particular, professionals
should be aware of potential conflicts of interest, in which loyalty might be owed to
other parties besides the employer. A conflict of interest arises when a professional is
asked to render a judgment, but the professional has personal or financial interests that
may interfere with the exercise of that judgment. For instance, a computing professional
may be responsible for ordering computing equipment, and an equipment vendor
owned by the professional’s spouse might submit a bid. In this case, others would
perceive that the marriage relationship might bias the professional’s judgment. Even if
the spouse’s equipment would be the best choice, the professional’s judgment would
not be trustworthy.
In a typical conflict of interest situation, the professional should recuse (decline, reject or
make an objection to) herself: that is, the professional should remove herself and ask
another qualified person to make the decision. Many computing professionals have
managerial duties, and some are solely managers. Managerial roles complicate the
responsibilities of computing professionals because managers have administrative
responsibilities and interests within their organizations, in addition to their professional
responsibilities to clients and the public. Responsibilities to Other Professionals While
everyone deserves respect from everyone else, when professionals interact with each
other, they should demonstrate a kind of respect called collegiality. For example, when
one professional uses the ideas of a second professional, the first should credit the
second. In a research article, an author gives credit by properly citing the sources of
ideas due to other authors in previously published articles. Using these ideas without
attribution constitutes plagiarism. Academics consider plagiarism unethical because it
represents the theft of ideas and the misrepresentation of those ideas as the plagiarist’s
own. Because clients cannot adequately evaluate the quality of professional service,
individual professionals know that their work must be evaluated by other members of
the same profession. This evaluation, called peer review, occurs in both practice and
research. Research in computing is presented at conferences and published in scholarly
journals. Before a manuscript that reports a research, project can be accepted for a
conference or published in a journal, the manuscript must be reviewed by peer
researchers who are experts in the subject of the manuscript. Computing professionals
work together, they must observe professional standards. These standards of practice
are created by members of the profession, or within organizations. For example, in
software development, one standard of practice is a convention for names of variables
in code. By following coding standards, a software developer can facilitate the work of a
software maintainer who subsequently modifies the code. For many important issues
for which standards would be theoretically appropriate, however, “standards” in
software engineering are controversial, informal, or non-existent.
An example of this problem is the difficulties encountered when the IEEE (Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and the ACM (Association for Computing
Machinery) attempted to standardize a body of knowledge for software engineering, to
enable the licensing of software engineers. Senior professionals have an obligation to
mentor junior professionals in the same field. Although professionals are highly
educated, junior members of a profession require further learning and experience to
develop professional judgment. This learning is best accomplished under the tutelage of
a senior professional. In engineering, to earn a P.E. (Professional Engineer) license, a
junior engineer must work under the supervision of a licensed engineer for at least four
years. More generally, professionals should assist each other in continuing education
and professional development, which are generally required for maintaining licensure.
Professionals can fulfill their obligations to contribute to the profession by volunteering.
The peer review of research publications depends heavily on volunteer reviewers and
editors, and the activities of professional associations are conducted by committees of
volunteers. Responsibilities to the Public According to engineering codes of ethics, the
engineer’s most important obligation is to ensure the safety, health, and welfare of the
public. Although everyone must avoid endangering others, engineers have a special
obligation to ensure the safety of the objects that they produce. Computing
professionals share this special obligation to guarantee the safety of the public, and to
improve the quality of life of those who use computers and information systems. As
part of this obligation, computing professionals should enhance the public’s
understanding of computing. The responsibility to educate the public is a collective
responsibility of the computing profession as a whole; individual professionals might
fulfill this responsibility in their own ways. Examples of such public service to include
advising a church on the purchase of computing equipment, and writing a letter to the
editor of a newspaper about technical issues related to proposed legislation to regulate
the Internet. It is particularly important for computing professionals to contribute their
technical knowledge to discussions about public policies regarding computing. Many
communities are considering controversial measures such as the installation of Web
filtering software on public access computers in libraries. Computing professionals can
participate in communities’ decisions by providing technical facts. Technological
controversies involving the social impacts of computers are covered in a separate article
of this encyclopedia. When a technical professional’s obligation of loyalty to the
employer conflicts with the obligation to ensure the safety of the public, the professional
may consider whistle-blowing, that is, alerting people outside the employer’s
organization to a serious, imminent threat to public safety. Computer engineers blew
the whistle during the development of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system near
San Francisco.
Codes of Ethics For each profession, the professional’s obligations to clients, employers,
other professionals, and the public are stated explicitly in the profession’s code of ethics
or code of professional conduct. For computing professionals, such codes have been
developed by, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the British
Computer Society (BCS), the Computer Society of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE-CS), the Association of Information Technology
Professionals (AITP), the Hong Kong Computer Society, the Systems Administrators
Special Interest Group of USENIX (SAGE), and other associations.

The ACM code and the Software Engineering Code jointly approved by the IEEE-CS
and the ACM. ACM is one of the largest nonprofit scientific and educational
organizations devoted to computing. In 1966 and 1972, the ACM published codes of
ethics for computing professionals. In 1992, the ACM adopted the current Code of
Ethics and Professional Conduct. Each statement of the code is accompanied by
interpretive guidelines.

For example, the guideline for statement, Honor confidentiality, indicates that other
ethical imperatives such as complying with a law may take precedence. Unlike ethics
codes for other professions, one section of the ACM code states the ethical obligations of
“organizational leaders,” who are typically technical managers. The ACM collaborated
with IEEE-CS to produce the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional
Practice. Like the ACM code, the Software Engineering Code also includes the
obligations of technical managers. This code is notable in part because it was the first
code to focus exclusively on software engineers, not other computing professionals.
This code is broken into a short version and a long version. The short version comprises
a preamble and eight short principles.

The long version expands on the eight principles with multiple clauses that apply the
principles to specific issues and situations. Any code of ethics is necessarily incomplete
— no document can address every possible situation. In addition, a code must be
written in general language; each statement in a code requires interpretation to be
applied in specific circumstances. Nevertheless, a code of ethics can serve multiple
purposes. A code can inspire members of a profession to strive for the profession’s
ideals. A code can educate new members about their professional obligations, and tell
non-members what they may expect members to do. A code can set standards of
conduct for professionals and provide a basis for expelling members who violate these
standards.

Finally, a code may support individuals in making difficult decisions. For example,
because all engineering codes of ethics prioritize the safety and welfare of the public, an
engineer can object to unsafe practices not merely as a matter of individual conscience,
but with the full support of the consensus of the profession.

Ethical Decision-Making for Computing Professionals every user of e-mail has received
unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail messages, known in a general way as spam. (A
precise definition of “spam” has proven elusive and is controversial; most people know
spam when they see it, but legally and ethically a universally accepted definition has
not yet emerged).

A single spam broadcast can initiate millions of messages. Senders of spam claim that
they are exercising their free speech rights, and few laws have been attempted to restrict
it. In the United States, no federal law prohibited spamming before the CAN-SPAM Act
of 2003. Even now, the CAN-SPAM law does not apply to spam messages that originate
in other countries. Although some prosecutions have occurred using the CAN-SPAM
Act, most people still receive many e-mail messages that they consider spam. Some
spam messages may be deceptive—they may appear genuine—but others are
completely accurate. Although most spamming is not illegal, even honest spamming is
considered unethical by many people, for the following reasons.

First, spamming has bad consequences: it wastes the time of recipients who must delete
junk e-mail messages, and these messages waste space on computers; in addition,
spamming reduces users’ trust in e-mail.

Second, spamming is not reversible: senders of spam do not want to receive spam.

Third, spamming could not be allowed as a general practice: if everyone attempted to


broadcast spam messages to wide audiences, computer networks would become
clogged with unwanted e-mail messages, and no one would be able to communicate at
all. The three reasons advanced against spam correspond to three ways in which the
morality of an action can be evaluated: first, whether on balance the action results in
more good consequences than bad consequences; second, whether the actor would be
willing to trade places with someone affected by the action; third, whether everyone (in
a similar situation) could choose the same action as a general rule. These three kinds of
moral reasons correspond to three traditions in philosophical ethics: consequentialism,
Golden Rule, and duty-based ethics. Ethical issues in the use of computers can also be
evaluated through the use of analogies to more familiar situations. For example, a
hacker may try to justify gaining unauthorized access to unsecured data by reasoning
that because the data are not protected, anyone should be able to read it. But by
analogy, someone who finds the front door of a house unlocked is not justified in
entering the house and snooping around. Entering an unlocked house is trespassing,
and trespassing violates the privacy of the house’s occupants.
COMPUTING AND THE STUDY OF ETHICS
The Ethical Challenges of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Agents
Many ethical issues, such as conflict of interest, are common to different professions.
In computing and engineering, however, unique ethical issues arise from the
creation of machines whose outward behaviors resemble human behaviors that we
consider “intelligent.” As machines become more versatile and sophisticated, and as
they increasingly take on tasks that were once assigned only to humans, computing
professionals and engineers must rethink their relationship to the artifacts they
design, develop, and then deploy. For many years, ethical challenges have been part
of discussions of artificial intelligence. Indeed, two classic references in the field are
by Norbert Wiener in 1965 and by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1976.
Since the 1990s, the emergence of sophisticated “autonomous agents,”
including Web “bots” and physical robots, has intensified the ethical debate. Two
fundamental issues are of immediate concern: the responsibility of computing
professionals who create these sophisticated machines, and the notion that the
machines themselves will, if they have not already done so, become sufficiently
sophisticated so that they will be considered themselves moral agents, capable of
ethical praise or blame independent of the engineers and scientists who developed
them. This area of ethics is controversial and actively researched. A full discussion of
even some of the nuances is beyond the scope of this article. Recent essays by Floridi
and Sanders, and Himma are two examples of recent influential ideas in the area.

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