ITS610 - Social Ethical And Professional Issues, Short Note

Chapter 1 Computer Revolution  Earliest calculators  Punched card technology  Desktop calculators  Advanced analog computers  Early digital computers  Konrad Zuse’s Z-series: the first program controlled computers  Colossus  American Development  ENIAC  First Generation computer – Von Neumann machine  Second generation: transistors  Third generation  Early electronic digital computers Digital Revolution  Telecommunication  Telegraph and telephone  Radio and television  Computer networks and the Internet Digitality  Digitality is used to mean the condition of living in a digital culture  Aspects of digitality include near continuous contact with other people through cellphones, through world wide web, through search engine, email  Negative aspect of digitality – eg; computer viruses Digital Revolution  Digital cinema  Digital camera  Digital journalism  Digital media  Digital cinematography Digital Divide  The term digital divide refers to the gap between those people with effective access to digital and information technology, and those without access to it.  It includes the imbalances in physical access to technology, as well as imbalances in resources and skills needed to effectively participate as a digital citizen  Groups often discussed in the context of a digital divide include socioeconomic (rich/poor), racial (white/minority), or geographical (urban/rural).  The term global digital divide refers to differences in technology access between countries.

Issue to be discussed  Digital divide and education  E-democracy  E-governance  Overcoming the digital divide Impact of New Technology  Example negative aspects of ATMs?  Unemployment  Alienation and customer service  Crime  Loss of privacy  Errors Benefits of IT  Communication  Education and training  Crime fighting  health and medicine  etc Introduction to Computer Ethics  Ethics, in the classical sense, refers to the rules and standards governing the conduct of an individual with others.  As technology and computers became more and more a part of our everyday lives, we must understand that the problems that have always plagued business and conduct will continue to be a problem. In fact, a new medium can provide even more difficult questions of judgment. In other words, since the introduction of the World Wide Web, the definition of ethics has evolved, too.  A new type of ethics known as computer ethics has emerged. Computer ethics is concerned with standards of conduct as they pertain to computers. Why do we need computer ethics?  the growth of the WWW has created several novel legal issues  the existence of new questions that older laws cannot answer  traditional laws are outdated/anachronistic in this world  a more coherent body of law is needed to govern Internet and computers Some issues in computer ethic  copyright  privacy  censorship

Copyright: Guardian of Intellectual Property  The word property: it is generally used to mean a possession, or more specifically, something to which the owner has legal rights.  This term has become more commonplace during the past few years, especially in the context of computer ethics. 

Intellectual property generally refers to rights relating to, among others, the following: 1. literary, artistic, and scientific works 2. performances of performing artists, phonograms, and broadcasts 3. inventions in all fields of human endeavor 4. Scientific discoveries.

Chapter 2 Economy • Economy -Way in which a country makes money • Financial state of a country Traditional Economy • For the last 200 years there are three factors of production – land, labor and capital • Economic activities – agriculture and manufacturing New Economy • IT has brought a fundamental change to the society’s economy • Knowledge and innovation become another factors of production in new era. • New economy - substitution of high speed communication for traditional brick and mortar and face to face transaction • Service industry is expanding dramatically • While manufacturing sector continues to shrink Digital Economy • What is digital economy? – “The economy that focuses on goods and services whose developments, productions, sales, or provision is critically dependent upon digital technology” – Is based on ICT infrastructure to allow new opportunity and challenges for business and government – Is a common market place where consumer and business can benefit from good value product and services, where suppliers can market and distribute their product more efficiently – Is the use of information to interact and communicate in globalize high technology economy – Transformational impact which ‘ICTs’ are having on every single aspect of business activity – Changing the nature of individual businesses, of market and of entire economies •

4 subsectors of a digital economy: – Highly digital goods and services • Interbank fund transfer and electronic journals – Mixed digital goods and services • Online music, books, and flowers – IT-intensive services or goods production

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Complex engineering designs and data-intensive market research Supporting goods and services • The part of the IT industry that support these three segments of the digital economy

Components of Digital Economics • Digital products • The consumers • The sellers • The infrastructure companies • The intermediaries • The support services • Content creators Why must the ICTs being use? • In 90s The use of Internet has become popular and benefit all the users • By the end of 1997, – >100 million users worldwide – Every day in 1998, 80,000 new users coming online – e.g. ) E-Commerce – fast, cut cost, global market The impact of D-Economy • a) Direct link between consumers and suppliers • b) New form of intermediary will emerge • c) The value of brands will be greatly enhanced • d) Business to business trade

Key factors drive towards digital economy The Government identified that there are 3 areas need to be excel to achieve leadership in the digital economy:  consumers who provide strong and sophisticated demand for digital products and services  IT, electronics and communications supply sectors which are innovative, dynamic and growing  a market framework which both empowers consumers and encourages competition and innovation from the industries which serve them Drivers of demand in the digital economy • A culture which understands and accepts digital technologies • Pricing • User skill levels • Infrastructure

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The macro economy

Drivers of supply in the digital economy • Competitiveness of supply industry • Willingness and ability to invest • Access to skilled workforce

Chapter 3 What is personal information?  In the context of privacy issues, it includes any information relating to or traceable to an individual person.  It is not restricted solely to what we might think as sensitive, private information, although it includes that.  It includes user name, online nickname, identification number, e-mail address  It includes to any information including images  Privacy involves a balancing act  Alan Westin describes the factors to be balanced as follows: – Safeguarding personal and group privacy, in order to protect individuality and freedom against unjustified intrusions by authorities – Collecting relevant personal information essential for rational decision-making in social, commercial and governmental life. – Conducting the constitutionally limited government surveillance of people and activities necessary to protect public order and safety  Privacy issues arise in many different contexts: – Communication privacy – Anonymity – Intruders and hackers – Privacy of employees in workplace The Impact Of computer technology  There are 3 key aspects of privacy: – Freedom from intrusion – being left alone – Control of information about oneself – Freedom from surveillance (from being followed, watched ) Risks of the Technology (1) Invisible information gathering:  Describes collection of personal information about someone without the person’s knowledge.  Eg: web site can collect information (2) Secondary use, computer matching and profiling  Secondary use of personal information: – Use of information for a purpose other than the one for which it was supplied – Eg: UseNet newsgroup  Computer matching – Combining and comparing information from different databases (3) Location

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The use of GPS technology, satellites and computer chips make it possible to track our movements and determine a person’s current location.

OVERCOMING DIGITAL DIVIDE The role of Institute of Higher Education learning in Digital Divide 1. Computer education - introduce teaching using computer to deliver school lessons. 2. Allocating private institutions of higher learning in rural areas assists in promoting computer based program or courses. 3. Industrial training in Computer Science/IT program - helps in experiencing the works in IT environment and applies computer concepts in job area. 4. Organize "Home-stay" activity - undergraduate students participate in this activity become the foster child of selected villages. The student can apply their skills and what they learn in university while suggesting new ideas or advice to the villagers. The villagers can learn new things such as using computer or advance technology in their work. The role of Government Policy 1. Entrusted the IT implementation and utilization to National IT Council (NITC) - elected members of NITC deals with the digital divide. 2. Introduce support policies - assist in reducing the division by removing taxes on computer related device to lower the price and building local computer manufacturing factories. 3. Low interest loans - encourage students to purchase computer. The role of Industry 1. Infrastructure - upgrade the facilities to ensure that basic requirement such as electricity, community computer center, phone line, roads and others are met. 2. Organization in urban areas - upgrade their facilities in line with new computing developments. 3. Public-private sector partnership - contributes in upgrading the infrastructure, introduce satellite and wireless technologies. 4. Non-government organizations - supply necessary power sources and equipment.

The role of Rural Community 1. Win the support of "local champions" before success can be realized. Local champions - the person entrusted to take charge of the running of the community hubs. 2. Must be a purpose behind the acquisition of IT skills by the rural population - having necessary computer equipment installed and the supporting infrastructure and training in rural areas. 3. Establish a small business or local facility that uses ICT to provide certain essential services to the community - training on computer usage first given to few individuals. 4. Unemployed youths could use the community hubs as a means to gain IST-related skills and enable them to seek employment without having to incur the cost of travelling to the nearest town. Cause of Digital Divide in Rural Community 1. Lack of awareness 2. Lack of training and education 3. Limitation of service and infrastructure 4. Financial constraint - Rural community have financial problems to own pc and pay for monthly Internet access. 5. Big IT companies may not see the business opportunity in rural community is low. Personalization and customization to understand the community’s need and expectation may be minimum.

RISKS AND CHALLENGES OF CLOUD USE The companies that hosted the cloud services can control freely all the information stored between the user and the host company. This violated the privacy rights of the users that uses the Cloud computing. The risk of leaking information is to be taken in consideration as the information might be altered by unauthorized personal or used to bring harm to other people. Precaution steps must be implemented along with the implementation of this Cloud computing to avoid unnecessary entities and problems. As the Cloud computing mainly focuses on services over the network or internet, a logging authorization system is a need in order to control data access. Only authorized personal can access and altered the data, preventing any unwanted data modification. This only covers the inside privacy issues, while the outside privacy issues such as accident leaking of information by the staff is covered by staff training program. Only minimum staff training is required as some of them are already familiar with the cloud computing and the training only required by the doctors and this is due to the information of the patients is managed by the doctors. The staff may only read the data and information and the patients may only modify their personal information, but the doctors are the one who have the access to the system and do data modification.

INTELECTUAL PROPERTY (IP) IP is any unique product of the human intellect that has commercial value. Refer to creation of the mind (invention, literary, artistic works). IP is given legal protection because the value of the human product is higher than the cost of publishing it. IP protects the right of the creator & encourages production of valuable, intangible, easily copied and creative works. TRADE MARK ™ A word, symbol, picture, color or smell used by a business to identify goods. Through the use of trademark, a company can establish a “brand name”. It is also a distinctive sign which is used to distinguish products or services of different businesses. PATENTS A patent is a legal concept that defines rights to IP and may be granted by government for a new, useful, and non-obvious invention. Patent allows protection of new inventions and prevent anyone from producing, using or selling the invention unless paid for the privileges for a specific period of time. COPYRIGHTS Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws to the authors of original works known as the owner of IP. It applies to the expression of an idea, whether published or not in which it satisfies the requirement for copyright. KANT DEANTOLOGICAL THEORIES 1. Principle of universality - follow rules of behavior that can universally apply to everyone. 2. Rationality is the standard of what is good - reason about what make sense and act accordingly. 3. Kant stated a principle about interacting with other people - one must never treat people as merely means to ends, but rather as ends in themselves. UTILITARIANISM Express by John Stuart Mill to increase happiness or utility - a person’s utility is what satisfies the person’s needs and values. An action might decrease utility for some people and increase it for others.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN CYBERSPACE

PRIVACY & PERSONAL INFORMATION

CENSORSHIP Censorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which considered sensitive to government or media organizations.

RISKS OF THE TECHNOLOGY Invisible Information Gathering 1. Describes collection of personal information about someone without the person’s knowledge. 2. ISP manages the connection between a user and the sites they are visiting. Logs are useful for determining customer’s needs, allocating resources, improving services and advertising. 3. ISP and Website logs are used for tracking and collecting activities in the web including place we visit, activity and time on particular page.

INTERNET CENSORSHIP Internet censorship is control or suppression of the publishing or accessing of information on the Internet. The legal issues are similar to offline censorship. RATIONALE FOR CENSORSHIP 1. Moral censorship - the removal of materials that are obscene or morally questionable. E.g.: Pornography 2. Religious censorship - any material objectionable to certain faith is removed, often involves dominant religion forcing limitations on less prevalent one. 3. Corporate censorship - the process by which editors in corporate media outlets intervene to halt the publishing of information that portrays their businesses or business partners in a negative light. 4. Military censorship - the process of keeping military intelligence and tactics confidential and away from the enemy. 5. Political censorship - occurs when governments hold back information from their citizens to exert control over populace and prevent free expression that might foment rebellion. SPAM Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in attempt to force the message on people who would not choose to receive it. Types of SPAM Cancellable Usenet SPAM - a single message sent to 20 or more Usenet newsgroups and is aimed at people who read newsgroups but rarely or never post and give their address away. Email SPAM - targets individual users with direct mail messages and typically cost users money out-of-pocket to receive.

Location 1. The use of GPS technology, satellites and computer chips make it possible to track our movements and determine a person’s current location. DIGITAL ECONOMY “The economy that focuses on goods and services whose developments, productions or sales is critically dependent upon digital technology.” Four Subsector of a Digital Economy 1. Highly digital goods & services 2. Mixed digital goods & services 3. Supporting goods & services 4. IT-intensive goods or services production Components of Digital Economy 1. Digital products 2. The consumers & sellers 3. Infrastructure companies 4. The support services 5. Content creators Impact of Digital Economy 1. Direct link between consumers & suppliers 2. New form of intermediary will emerge 3. The value of brands will be greatly enhanced 4. Business to business trade

Factors of Digital Economy

INFORMATION ECONOMY Information economy is a term that characterizes an economy with an increased emphasis on informational activities and information industry. INFORMATION SOCIETY Information society is a society in which the creation, distribution, integration and manipulation of information is a significant economic, political and cultural activity.

Difference between D-Economy & Traditional economy 1. Knowledge and information can be shared 2. Location is diminished - using appropriate technology and method, Virtual market place, organization, anytime and global reach 3. Law, barrier and taxes are difficult to apply 4. Pricing and value depends on context - same information & knowledge can have different value to different people at different times 5. Utilization of Human capital/resources –competencies 6. Knowledge worker

ELECTRONIC COMMERCE E-Commerce is the process of buying, exchanging products, services or information via computer networks including the Internet. ECommerce can also be benefited from many perspectives and often confused with e-business. Opportunities 1. Expands the marketplace to international markets. 2. Locate more customers, best suppliers and suitable business partners. 3. Eliminate cost associated with paper-based information 4. Increased flexibility and productivity. 5. Expediting customer access to information Threat - if the business can’t bring itself to see this technology as an opportunity, it must see it as a threat.

KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY Knowledge economy is a term that refers to either to an economy of knowledge focused on the production and management of knowledge in the frame of economic constraints, or to a knowledgebased economy. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Knowledge management compromises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create and represent of insights and experiences. That is either embodied in individuals or embedded in organizational processes. IMPACT OF COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY Privacy - involves balancing act of: 1. Safeguarding personal & group privacy; to protect individuality and freedom against unjustified intrusions by authorities. 2. Collecting relevant personal information essential for rational decision-making in social, commercial and government life. 3. Conducting the constitutionally limited government surveillance of people and activities necessary to protect public order and safety. Key Aspects of Privacy 1. Freedom from intrusions - being left alone 2. Control of information about oneself 3. Freedom from surveillance

COMPUTER CRIME Computer crimes are criminal activities, which involve the use of information technology to gain illegal or unauthorized access to a computer system with the intent of damaging, deleting or altering computer data. Types of Computer Crime Hacking Hacking is the activity of breaking into a computer system to gain an unauthorized and illegal access to the information stored on the computer system. Phishing Phishing is the act of attempting to acquire sensitive information like usernames or passwords by disguising as a trustworthy source. It is carried out through emails or by luring users to enter personal information through fake websites. Computer Viruses Computer viruses are computer program that can replicate themselves and harm the computer system on a network without the system user’s knowledge. Cyber-stalking Cyber-stalking is the use of communication technology to torture other individuals by using false accusations, transmission of threats and damage to data. Cyber-stalkers often target the users by means of chat rooms, online forums and social networking websites to gather user information and harass the users. Hackers VS Crackers Hackers are a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities. Hackers are usually very knowledgeable, know several programming languages and are able to use a wide variety of operation system efficiently. Cracker is a person who attempts to break into a system by guessing or cracking passwords by brute force. Usually the crackers have very low knowledge of computer systems and their inner workings. Media uses Hackers as a scapegoat for many security problems, but it is the crackers who are causing the problems through their inexperience and malicious intents.

Identity Theft Identity theft is one of the most serious frauds as it involves stealing money and obtaining other benefits through the use of a false identity by pretending to be someone else’s identity as one’s own. Four (4) ways in which personal identities can be stolen 1. Looks for bills or other paper with the personal information on it inside trash. 2. Steal credit card numbers by using special storage device when processing the card. 3. Spam and Spyware - Spyware is technology that surreptitiously gathers information, such as user IDs and passwords for bank accounts and this information is then passed back to the perpetrator when we connect to the Internet.

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS Computer ethics includes ethical issues faced by computer professionals as part of the job. Special Aspects of Professional Ethics 1. The professional is an expert in a field. Customers rely on the knowledge, expertise and honesty of the professional. 2. The products of many professionals profoundly affect large numbers of people. 3. Computer professional works can affect the life, health, finance, freedom and future of a member of the public. 4. A professional can cause great harm through dishonesty, carelessness or incompetence.

HARMFUL ACTION 4. Pretexting - They use false pretenses to obtain your personal information from financial institutions, telephone companies, and other sources.

Four (4) ways on how we can prevent identity thief 1. Shred the credit card offers, bill statement before disposal. Check the credit report and bank statement record on regular basis and check for any irregular transaction. 2. Identify who have the information about yourself - Knowing who else have your personal information might be able to help in identifying the source of information leaking to unauthorized personal. 3. Use a strong password - A strong password doesn’t mean that your password must be 14 characters long, but a strong password is password that combines the alphabets, symbols and even capitalizations. 4. Never provide the information to anyone who contacts you through a phone call - The person may only pretended to be from companies that you currently deal.

Examples of Harmful Action 1. Inadequate testing lead to unrevealed design flaws that may cause serious damage to end users especially in safety of critical applications. 2. The non-removal of hidden “trapdoors” in applications that may provide alternative secret entry points for hackers with malicious intent. 3. Spread of computer virus - unnecessary expenditure of human resources such as time and effort required to eliminate virus. Computer Professional Acts to Overcome Harmful Action 1. Carefully consider potential impacts on all those affected by decision made during design and implementation. 2. Minimize malfunctions by following generally accepted standards for system design and testing. 3. Necessary to assess the social consequences of systems to project the like hood of any serious harm to others.