Assignment 87

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Essentials of Management Information Systems

Thirteenth Edition

Chapter 4

Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

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Learning Objectives

4.1 What ethical, social, and political issues are raised by information systems?

4.2 What specific principles for conduct can be used to guide ethical decisions?

4.3 Why do contemporary information systems technology and the Internet pose challenges to the protection of individual privacy and intellectual property?

4.4 How have information systems affected laws for establishing accountability, liability, and the quality of everyday life?

4.5 How will M I S help my career?

This chapter examines the ethical, social, and political issues raised by information systems. It can be useful to ask students to help you put together a list of these issues categorized into ethical, social, and political columns.

Video Cases

Case 1: What Net Neutrality Means for You

Case 2: Facebook and Google Privacy: What Privacy?

Case 3: United States v. Terrorism: Data Mining for Terrorists and Innocents

Instructional Video: Viktor Mayer Schönberger on the Right to Be Forgotten

The Dark Side of Big Data (2 of 2)

Organizations like Boutiquaat use predictive modeling to identify individual customers that fit risk or weakness profiles

Demonstrates how technological innovations can be a double-edged sword

Illustrates the ability of I T systems to support decision making

What Ethical, Social, and Political Issues are Raised by Information Systems? (1 of 2)

Recent cases of failed ethical judgment in business

In many, information systems used to bury decisions from public studies

Ethics

Principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviors

There are numerous examples of business ethical failures to ask students about. You could ask how information systems or their absence might have been related to the 2008-2009 financial crisis in the United States, the investment banks that suffered heavy losses, and individuals who were able to defraud investors of millions. What role did IS have in this crisis? The Madoff Ponzi scheme is instructive: systems were used for more than twenty years to fool investors, regulators, and investigators about the true nature of Madoff’s business.

What Ethical, Social, and Political Issues are Raised by Information Systems? (2 of 2)

Information systems raise new ethical questions because they create opportunities for:

Intense social change, threatening existing distributions of power, money, rights, and obligations

New kinds of crime

Ask students to describe some of the ethical dilemmas that are presented by information systems and new developments in technology. Privacy is an important issue—mention the opening case again and explain that the business models of Google, Facebook, and many other sites depend on getting users to give up their personal information so it can be used to market and sell them products.

A Model for Thinking About Ethical, Social, and Political Issues

Society as a calm pond

I T as rock dropped in pond, creating ripples of new situations not covered by old rules

Social and political institutions cannot respond overnight to these ripples—it may take years to develop etiquette, expectations, laws

Requires understanding of ethics to make choices in legally gray areas

Can students provide any examples of how IT has challenged some area of ethics, social life, or legal arrangements?

Figure 4.1 The Relationship Between Ethical, Social, and Political Issues in an Information Society

Figure 4.1, Page 119.

The introduction of new information technology has a ripple effect, raising new ethical, social, and political issues that must be dealt with on the individual, social, and political levels. These issues have five moral dimensions: information rights and obligations, property rights and obligations, system quality, quality of life, and accountability and control.

Explain to students that the graphic displays the five moral dimensions listed in the caption. Consider online P2P bit torrent shared music as an example of how a new technology has ethical, social, and eventually political (legal) ramifications. If music can be ripped off, why pay any money for it? Why should anyone care about record labels or artist’s income?

Five Moral Dimensions of the Information Age

Information rights and obligations

Property rights and obligations

Accountability and control

System quality

Quality of life

Give examples of each of the five major issues. For example, an issue dealing with information rights might be, what rights do individuals possess with respect to themselves? What do they have a right to protect? An issue dealing with quality of life might be: what values should be preserved in an information- and knowledge-based society? An issue dealing with system quality might be: what standards of data and system quality should we demand to protect individual rights and the safety of society?

Key Technology Trends That Raise Ethical Issues

Computing power doubles every 18 months

Data storage costs rapidly decline

Data analysis advances

Networking advances

Mobile device growth impact

Which of these trends do students believe might have the most adverse consequences? Why do they feel this way? Do the positives outweigh the negatives for all four issues? Why or why not?

Advances in Data Analysis Techniques

Profiling

Combining data from multiple sources to create records of detailed information on individuals

Nonobvious relationship awareness (N O R A)

Combining data from multiple sources to find unclear hidden connections that might help identify criminals or terrorists

Online profiling is one of the most controversial computer-related ethical, social, and political issues today. Although it is used fairly extensively on the Internet, it is also used by insurance firms, health insurance firms, casinos, and of course national authorities around the globe for finding potential terrorists.

Figure 4.2 Nonobvious Relationship Awareness (N O R A)

Figure 4.2, Page 122.

NORA technology can take information about people from disparate sources and find obscure, nonobvious relationships. It might discover, for example, that an applicant for a job at a casino shares a telephone number with a known criminal and issue an alert to the hiring manager.

Explain that NORA is used by both the government and the private sector for its profiling capabilities. Ask students to provide potential examples of NORA (other than the one mentioned in the caption) for both governmental and business purposes. One such example might be an airline identifying potential terrorists attempting to board a plane. Another might be government identifying potential terrorists by monitoring phone calls.

Basic Concepts: Responsibility, Accountability, and Liability

Responsibility

Accepting the potential costs, duties, and obligations for decisions

Accountability

Mechanisms for identifying responsible parties

Liability

Permits individuals (and firms) to recover damages done to them

Due process

Laws are well-known and understood, with an ability to appeal to higher authorities

Explain that information systems do not exist in a vacuum and that these concepts are instrumental in understanding the impact of systems and measuring their success. Ask students why liability and due process are such important ethical concepts? (A rough answer would be that they provide recourse to individuals negatively effected by mismanagement of information systems, providing incentive to “play by the rules”.)

Ethical Analysis

Five-step process for ethical analysis

Identify and clearly describe the facts.

Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher-order values involved.

Identify the stakeholders.

Identify the options that you can reasonably take.

Identify the potential consequences of your options.

Do students believe that any aspect of ethical analysis is lacking from this process? If so, what? Can students offer a brief example of an ethical dilemma and how they would resolve it using this process? One class exercise is to work with students to identify an ethical situation they are aware of, or that may have been in the news. Then, go through the ethical analysis described in the slide to illustrate the process of analyzing an ethical situation.

Professional Codes of Conduct

Promulgated by associations of professionals

American Medical Association (A M A)

American Bar Association (A B A)

Association for Computing Machinery (A C M)

Promises by professions to regulate themselves in the general interest of society

Real-World Ethical Dilemmas

One set of interests pitted against another

Examples

Monitoring employees: Right of company to maximize productivity of workers versus workers’ desire to use Internet for short personal tasks

Facebook monitors users and sells information to advertisers and app developers

Other ethical dilemmas include companies trying to use new systems to reduce the size of their workforce, such as telephone companies using automated systems to reduce the need for human operators. Emphasize that in cases like these, right and wrong are not clearly defined, but instead, contrasting values are at odds with one another (companies value productivity, employees value their work).

Information Rights: Privacy and Freedom in the Internet Age (1 of 3)

Privacy

Claim of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance or interference from other individuals, organizations, or state; claim to be able to control information about yourself

In the United States, privacy protected by:

First Amendment (freedom of speech and association)

Fourth Amendment (unreasonable search and seizure)

Additional federal statues (e.g., Privacy Act of 1974)

Do students believe that there are sufficient protections for privacy in law? If not, what are possible methods of developing appropriate privacy protections? Table 4.3 in the text lists a variety of other laws affecting both the government and private institutions, but few areas of the private sector are as well regulated with respect to privacy. Do an in-class poll and ask students who among them feel they can control the use of their personal information on the Internet. You should get no one raising their hand.

Information Rights: Privacy and Freedom in the Internet Age (2 of 3)

Fair information practices

Set of principles governing the collection and use of information

Basis of most U.S. and European privacy laws

Used to drive changes in privacy legislation

C O P P A

Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act

H I P A A

Explain what is meant by a “mutuality of interest between record holder and individual.” (Briefly, the individual wants to engage in a transaction, and the record holder needs information about the individual to support the transaction—both are interested parties in the transaction.)

Internet Challenges to Privacy (1 of 2)

Identify browser and track visits to site

Super cookies (Flash cookies)

Web beacons (web bugs)

Tiny graphics embedded in emails and web pages

Monitor who is reading email message or visiting site

Spyware

Surreptitiously installed on user’s computer

May transmit user’s keystrokes or display unwanted ads

Google services and behavioral targeting

What are students’ attitudes toward these technologies? Emphasize that cookies can be useful at trusted sites, but perhaps invasive at others. Have students had any experience with spyware or web bugs on their own computers? How would they know they are being tracked?

Internet Challenges to Privacy (2 of 2)

The United States allows businesses to gather transaction information and use this for other marketing purposes.

Opt-out versus. opt-in model

Online industry promotes self-regulation over privacy legislation.

Complex/ambiguous privacy statements

Opt-out models selected over opt-in

Online “seals” of privacy principles

Do students believe that businesses should be pressed to provide more comprehensive privacy protections online? Explain that businesses prefer the looser regulation, but that individuals may not. Also emphasize that most individuals do not take the proper steps to ensure their own privacy in any case. Most people do not know how to protect their privacy online. Does that mean that privacy is unimportant or that people don’t care?

Figure 4.3 How Cookies Identify Web Visitors

The Web server reads the user's Web browser and determines the operating system, browser name, version number, Internet address, and other information.

The server transmits a tiny text file with user identification information called a cookie, which the user's browser receives and stores on the user's computer.

When the user returns to the Web site, the server requests the contents of any cookie it deposited previously in the user's computer.

The Web server reads the cookie, identifies the visitor, and calls up data on the user.

Figure 4.3, Page 129.

Cookies are written by a website on a visitor’s hard drive. When the visitor returns to that website, the web server requests the ID number from the cookie and uses it to access the data stored by that server on that visitor. The website can then use these data to display personalized information.

Ask students to pinpoint where potential privacy invasions might occur in the process shown above. Students may suggest that no real privacy violation is occurring in the figure, which is a legitimate point of view. If so, ask them how they might feel about a website they did not trust engaging in the displayed process.

Technical Solutions

Solutions include:

Email encryption

Anonymity tools

Anti-spyware tools

Overall, technical solutions have failed to protect users from being tracked from one site to another

Browser features

“Private” browsing

“Do not track” options

How many students have used technical solutions to protect their privacy?

Property Rights: Intellectual Property

Intellectual property

Tangible and intangible products of the mind created by individuals or corporations

Protected in four main ways:

Patents

Trademarks

Trade secret

Do students believe that the property rights guaranteed by copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets are strong enough to avoid the theft of intellectual property online? Give an example of a copyright (which could include the copyright of a photo or newspaper article). Give an example of a patent (such as Amazon's One-Click shopping as a business process patent, or Kodak‘s claim to have a patent on digital still cameras with digital displays for a viewfinder). Give an example of a trademark (such as the Google icon). And give an example of a trade secret (the formula for Coke; a method of doing business or business process).

Challenges to Intellectual Property Rights

Digital media different from physical media

Ease of replication

Ease of transmission (networks, Internet)

Ease of alteration

Compactness

Difficulties in establishing uniqueness

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (D M C A)

Students may be unwilling to admit to infringing upon intellectual property rights themselves, but ask them whether they are familiar with the Internet and its ability to bypass intellectual property protections. Do they believe that legislation such as the DMCA is having any effect? How many have friends who download “free” music from P2P sights? Free videos?

Computer-Related Liability Problems

If software fails, who is responsible?

If seen as part of a machine that injures or harms, software producer and operator may be liable

If seen as similar to book, difficult to hold author/publisher responsible

If seen as a service, would this be similar to telephone systems not being liable for transmitted messages?

Using the example from the text, who do students consider to be the liable party for the incident involving Target’s data breach? Is Target responsible for allowing the breach to occur despite efforts it made to secure the information? Should the breach be considered just a cost of doing business in the current age, where businesses have insurance policies to protect them against losses and customers have a maximum liability of $50 for fraudulent credit card purchases?

System Quality: Data Quality and System Errors

What is an acceptable, technologically feasible level of system quality?

Flawless software is economically unfeasible

Three principal sources of poor system performance

Software bugs, errors

Hardware or facility failures

Poor input data quality (most common source of business system failure)

Do students have any opinion about when software is “good enough?” Does it depend on the particular product? For example, distinguish between software used by air traffic controllers and software used for word processing. Do students believe that there are different levels of acceptable quality for these products?

Quality of Life: Equity, Access, Boundaries (1 of 3)

Negative social consequences of systems

Balancing power: center versus periphery

Rapidity of change: reduced response time to competition

Maintaining boundaries: family, work, and leisure

Dependence and vulnerability

Computer crime and abuse

Ask students whether they have witnessed any of these negative consequences first hand. It's likely that they know someone who has become dependent on their computer to some extent or have even experienced something similar first hand. Which of the above consequences do students feel is the most alarming?

Quality of Life: Equity, Access, Boundaries (2 of 3)

Computer crime and abuse

Computer crime

Computer abuse

Spam

CAN-SPAM Act of 2003

Employment

Trickle-down technology

Reengineering job loss

Ask students what experience they have had with spam. A notable statistic is that spam accounts for more than 75% of all email traffic and is relatively unlikely to decrease, because it is so difficult to regulate and so cheap to send.

Do students believe that the end result of continuing advances in information technology will be rising unemployment and a small number of elite corporate professionals? Students may enjoy debating this idea, which is somewhat far-fetched, but conceptually stimulating. There is some evidence that today’s manufacturing technology (including robots and computer controlled machines) is displacing factory jobs.

How Will M I S Help My Career?

The Organization: Pinnacle Air Force Base

Position Description

Job Requirements

Interview Questions

A good opportunity for a class discussion of the new Section on careers. Would any in the class be interested in a job like this? What do they think are the most important skills the employer is looking for? How would they answer the interviewer questions?