1. Ethical & Social Issues
Opportunities of many benefits
Source of abuses

2. Direct & indirect care of the aged community
Australian government
Improve quality of life
Feel more in touch
Internet
Grocery
Bill payment

3. The “smart house” initiative
Passive infrared detectors
Door entry systems
Emergency pendants
Bed and chair sensors

4. Feel comfortable with computers
Privacy issues
Being monitored 24/7
Awareness, consent, ownership, and access of data
Culture competent
Interface (English only???)
Feel comfortable with computers
Knowledge and skills

5. 4. 1 Understanding ethical and social issues related to systems 4
4.1 Understanding ethical and social issues related to systems 4.2 Ethics in a information society 4.3 The moral dimensions of information systems

6. 4.1 Understanding Ethical & Social Issues
Failed Ethical Judgment by managers
Walmart
Paying bribes to Mexican Authority for building permit (2012)
Pfizer, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca
Falsified information of clinical trials (2009)
Siemens
Worldwide bribery and concealed accounting reports (2009)
Fat Cats
Big bonus while business collapsing,
were not masterminded by information systems,
Information systems were instrumental

7. Ethics Principles of right or wrong Individuals use to make choices
free moral agents
to make choices
to guide their behaviors

8. Info systems raise new ethical questions for Individuals
Improve efficiency
Cause many to lose jobs
Societies
Empowered citizen to better manage public issues
Enable criminals to commit crime much easier
Computerized telemarketing scams

9. Ethical, Social, and Political issues

10. Five Moral Dimensions of the info age

11. Table 4.2

12. Profiling Combine data from multiple sources
Advance of data analysis
Combine data from multiple sources
Credit cards purchases
Telephone calls
Magazine subscriptions
Video rentals ……
Create electronic files of detailed info on individual

13. NonObvious Relationship Awareness
Watch Lists

14. 4.2 Ethics in an Info Society
Basic concepts
Features & guidelines of ethical choices
Responsibility
Individual
Accept the potential costs, duties, and obligations for the decisions you made.
Accountability
System & social institute
Mechanisms to determine who took responsible action, who is responsible.

15. Liability Due process Law
Permit individuals to recover the damage done to them by other actors
Due process
Law-governed societies
An ability to appeal to higher authorities to ensure that the laws are applied correctly
Ex: Anti-trust disputes.

16. Ethical Analysis Identify and describe clearly the fact.
Who did what to whom, and when, where, and how.
Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher-order values involved.
Freedom of speech, privacy, …
Identify the stakeholders
Who has interests in the outcomes

17. Identify the options that you can reasonably take.
None of the options may satisfy all the interests involved.
Identify the potential consequences of your options.
Options may work in one instance but not in other similar instance.

18. Candidate ethical principles
Guidelines used for making decisions & judgments
Golden rule
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
Categorical imperative
If an action is not right for everyone to take, it is not right for anyone.
Ex: Fossil fuel consumption vs. clean energy

19. Descartes’ rule of change
If an action can not be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take at all.
The slippery-slope rule
An action might bring about a small change now
Acceptable
If it is repeated
It would bring unacceptable changes in the long run.
ex: Cyber bullies, zero tolerance

20. Utilitarian principle
Take the action that achieves the higher or greater value
Ex. Allow employees to use instant messages or not.
Risk aversion principle
Take the action that produces the least harm or the least potential cost.
Ex. Ban employee to install programs into office computers.

21. No free lunch rule
Assume that virtually all tangible or intangible objects are owned by someone else
unless there is a specific declaration otherwise.

22. Professional codes of conduct
Groups of people take on special rights and obligations because of their special claims to knowledge, wisdom, and respect
American Medical Association
Codes of ethics
Promises by professions to regulate themselves in the general interest of society

23. Some real-world ethical dilemmas
Voice recognition software
Reduce the size of workforce.
Monitor employee’s Internet activities
Prevent from wasting company resources on nonbusiness activities.
Ex. Gmail
Pet project from google’s employee.

24. 4.3 Moral Dimensions of IS Information Rights Property Rights
Accountability, liability, and control
System quality
Quality of life

25. Information Rights: Privacy and Freedom
The claim of individuals to be left alone
Free from surveillance or interference from
other individuals or
organizations, including the state.

26. Privacy issue in handling personal info
Credit reporting
Education
Financial records
Health care
Information technology and systems
makes invasion of privacy cheap, profitable, and effective

27. Fair Information Practices (FIP)
Notice/awareness (core principle)
Disclose information practices before collecting data
Choice/consent (core principle)
Allow consumers to choose how their info will be used
Access/participation
Consumers should be able to review and contest the accuracy and completeness of the data collected

28. Security Enforcement Protect consumers’ info from unauthorized use.
Mechanism to enforce FIP.

29. Internet challenges to privacy
Monitoring and tracking website visitors
Occur in the background without the visitors’ knowledge
Software available to “watch” online shoppers’ behavior
Help organizations better target their offerings

30. Identify website’s visitors
Visitors voluntarily register
Make purchases
Obtain free services
Cookies
Tiny file
resides on
computer’s
hard drive

32. Spyware Gmail Secretly install itself on an Internet user’s computer
Piggybacking on larger applications
Send banner ads
Unsolicitated material
Report user’s movements on the internet
Log user’s keystrokes
Gmail
Scan user’s to place keywords related ads

33. Options of informed consent
Opt-out
Permit the collection of personal info
Until the consumer specifically requests that the data not be collected
Default to U.S.
Opt-in
Prohibited from collecting any personal info
Unless the consumer specifically take action to approve
Default to E.U.

34. Technical solutions Platform for Privacy Preference (P3P)
Protect user’s privacy during interaction with websites
Standard for communicating
Website’s privacy policy
Policy to the users’ preference
Other standard
FTC’s new FIP
European Directive on Data Protection

36. Information Rights
Property Rights
Accountability, liability, and control
System quality
Quality of life

37. Property Rights: Intellectual Property
Intellectual Property (IP)
Intangible property created by individuals or organizations.
Trade secrets
Copyright
patent

38. Trade secrets Any intellectual work product
A formula
Device
Pattern
Compilation of data
Provided it is not based on info in the public domain
Protect the actual idea in the work product
Nondisclosure agreement between employees and customers
Prevent the secret falling into the public domain
Microsoft sued Google over Kai-Fu Lee

39. Copyright Apple sued Microsoft
Protect IP from being copied by others
Life of the author + 70 years after death
Corporation: 95 years after creation
Encourage creativity & authorship
Protect the manifestation in a work
Underlying ideas behind a work are not protected
Apple sued Microsoft
on the expression of overlapping idea
The expression can be express only in a single way, therefore is not protected

40. Patents
Grants the owner an exclusive monopoly on the ideas behind an invention for 20 years
Determined by patent office and relies on court rulings
Inventor receives full reward
Make widespread use of invention

41. Challenges to IP rights
Ease of replication
Ease of transmission
Ease of alteration
Internet service provider (ISP) are required to take down sites of copyright infringers

42. Information Rights
Property Rights
Accountability, liability, and control
System quality
Quality of life

43. Accountability, liability, and control
Who should be responsible for the consequence done by information technology?
Software is part of a machine
Producer of the software is liable for damage
Software act like a book
Storing and displaying info
Not liable for its content
Software is more a service than a book

44. Information Rights
Property Rights
Accountability, liability, and control
System quality
Quality of life

45. System quality: data quality and system error
Accountability for unintentional consequences of system use
Perfect system quality is not economically feasible
No one can afford the product
Avoidable and foreseeable errors
Publisher is liable

46. Sources of poor systems performance
Software bugs and errors
Hardware or facility failure
Poor input data quality
The most common source of business system failure

47. Information Rights
Property Rights
Accountability, liability, and control
System quality
Quality of life

48. Quality of life: equity, access, and boundaries
Social consequences of systems use
Balancing power: center versus periphery
Centralized mainframe computers
Centralized power
Corporations
Governments
Decentralized computing
Empowerment of workers
Decision making to lower organization level

49. Rapidity of change: reduced response time to competition
Information systems help create
Much more efficient market
Reduce the normal social buffers for business to adjust to competition
Business was wiped out quickly
Jobs were wipe out with business
Due to insufficient time for response to competition

50. Maintaining boundaries: family, work, and leisure
Separation work from family has been weakened
Ubiquitous computing
Telecommuting
“do anything anywhere” computing environment
The work umbrella now extends far beyond the eight-hour day
Leisure time spent on the computer takes people away from their family

51. Dependence and vulnerability
If information systems fails, it will cripple
Businesses
Governments
Schools
Private association
Churches
Redundancy

52. Computer crime and abuse
Technology create new opportunity to commit crime
Computer crime
Commission of illegal acts thru the use of a computer or against a computer system
Destroy a computer file
Stealing computer’s list
Illegal gaining access

53. Computer abuse Commission of acts involving computer Spam
Consider unethical
May not be illegal
Spam
Junk s
Accounts for 70% of Internet traffic worldwide
addresses may be harvested by software robots
Message board
Chat room
website

54. Employment: trickle-down technology and reengineering job loss
is typically hailed in business world
Potentially cause jobs loss
Jobs loss
Relieve bright, well educated workers to fast-growth industries
Drive unskilled, blue-collar, older workers into jobless

55. Equity & access: Increasing racial and social class cleavages
Equal opportunities to participate in the digital age
Digital divide
Ethnic and social class line
Income group

56. Health risks: RSI, CVS, and Technostress
Repetitive stress injury
Mouse clicking
Keyboard
Carpal tunnel syndrome
RSI is avoidable
Ergonomically designed equipments

57. Computer vision syndrome
Headache
Blurred vision
Dry and irritated eyes

58. Technostress Working continuously with computers Aggravation
Expect other humans to behave like computers
Instant responses
Attentiveness
Absence of emotion
Aggravation
Hostility toward human
Impatient
fatigue

59. Interactive session Technology Organization
(Minicase)
Technology
Life on the grid: iPhone becomes iTrack
P. 170
Organization
Monitoring in the workplace
P. 179