Ethics Handout
Ethics Handout
Ethics Handout
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.
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
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.
➢ 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Software systems are strongly characterized by complexity due to the following reasons:
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
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
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.
• 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.
• Design and implement systems that are robustly and usably secure.
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:
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.
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