What is ethics? According to Laudon & Laudon, ethics refers to the principles of right and wrong that can be used by individuals acting as free moral agents to make choices to guide their behavior.

Ethical and Social Concerns The development of national digital superhighway communication networks widely available to individuals and businesses poses many ethical and social concerns.

Info System Impacts Whatever information system impacts exist are a product of instititional, organizational, and individual actions and behaviors. Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative says that if an action is not right for everyone to take, then it is not right for anyone.

Other ethical rules/principles If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, then it is not right to be taken at any time (Descarte) One can put values in rank order and understand the consequences of various courses of action (Utilitarian) “Take the action that achieves the higher or greater value.” All tangible and intangible objects are owned by someone, unless specifically stated otherwise.

What is privacy? The claim of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance or interference from other individuals or organizations. The set of principles governing the collection and use of information about individuals is known as FIP

FIP Principles Fair Information practices (FIP) principles include: individuals have rights of access, inspection, review, and amendment to systems that contain information about them

Cryptography and the Internet Concerns of e-commerce: –lack of security, reliability, and accountability –The greatest use of e-commerce today is customer-to- business as opposed to business-to-business Strong security is: –hard to implement –requires eternal, almost obsessive vigilance to maintain. –Public key encryption is used by most businesses who conduct business on the web.

Security and hackers One of the most famous hackers gained notoriety at age 17 when he broke into the military’s NORAD air defense computer system. He hacked his way into phone companies, cellular networks, credit bureaus, university and corporate computers. He was finally caught two months after he broke into the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

Security Issues Some perceive that Hacking has to do with the belief that all info should be free. Most FBI computer crimes were committed by hackers gaining access to internal networks through the Internet. Once a local area network is hooked up to the Net, sensitive data in the system potentially becomes accessible to every computer on the Net.

Ways to protect one’s system Encryption Firewalls Digital Pathways Security software

Security Compromised Systems Yes, this means someone is lurking or has invited themselves in as an unwelcome guest. So, you can do such things as: –follow the intruder back to this origin –implement some password scheme

Fact: 85 to 97 percent of all computer break-ins are not reported. Would you want to do business with a company whose system has been compromised? The Great Arpanet Worm--R. Morris, Jr. wrote a program that penetrated the country’s poorly defended computer networks, replicating itself so fast that it created a nationwide network gridlock in a matter of days.

But there’s more! The New California Gold Rush. A bank employee simply ed Brinks to tell them to deliver 44 kilos of gold to a P.O. Box number in remote California. Someone picked up the gold--and disappeared.

Hacker’s vengeance Garbage dump. Angered by a piece a Newsday journalist had written about hackers, the article’s subjects hacked their way into the root directories of IBM., Sprint, and a small Internet provider called Pipeline to fire thousands of abusive junk items to his personal address, effectively preventing him from accessing the Internet.

Four Key technological Trends/Ethical Issues The doubling of computer power every 18 months Advances in data storage techniques and rapidly declining storage cost Advances in data mining techniques for large databases Advances in telecommunications infrastructure like ISDN/ATM and Internet. All this will permit the invasion of privacy on a very large scale.