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MIS Chapter 4: Ethical and Social Issues in Information System

Terms in this set (50)

Ethics
Principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviors.
Information systems raise new ethical questions because they create opportunities for:
1.) Intense social change, threatening existing distributions of power, money, rights, and obligations
2.) New kinds of crime
Five moral dimension of information age
1.) Information rights and obligations
2.) Property rights and obligations
3.) Accountability and control
4.) System quality
5.) Quality of life
Profiling
Combining data from multiple sources to create dossiers of detailed information on individuals.
Nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA)
Combining data from multiple sources to find obscure hidden connections that might help identify criminals or terrorists.
Ethics analysis: A five-step process
1.) Identify and clearly describe the facts.
2.) Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher-order values involved.
3.) Identify the stakeholders.
4.) Identify the options that you can reasonably take.
5.) Identify the potential consequences of your options
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.
Golden Rule
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative
If an action is not right for everyone to take, it is not right for anyone.
Descartes' Rule of Change
If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take.
Utilitarian Principle
Take the action that achieves the higher or greater value.
Risk Aversion Principle
Take the action that produces the least harm or potential cost.
Ethical "No Free Lunch" Rule
Assume that virtually all tangible and intangible objects are owned by someone unless there is a specific declaration otherwise.
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.
Notice/awareness (core principle)
Websites must disclose practices before collecting data
Choice/consent (core principle)
Consumers must be able to choose how information is used for secondary purposes.
Access/participation
Consumers must be able to review, contest accuracy of personal data.
Security
Data collectors must take steps to ensure accuracy, ___________ of personal data.
Enforcement
Must be mechanism to enforce FIP principles.
Cookies
Tiny files downloaded by Web site to visitor's hard drive. Identify visitor's browser and track visits to site.
Web beacons (Web bugs)
Tiny graphics embedded in e-mail messages and Web pages. Monitor who is reading e-mail message or visiting site.
Spyware
Surreptitiously installed on user's computer. May transmit user's keystrokes or display unwanted ads.
Intellectual property
Intangible property of any kind created by individuals or corporations.
Three main ways that intellectual property is protected
1.) Trade secret
2.) Copyright
3.) Patents
Trade secret
Intellectual work or product belonging to business, not in the public domain
Copyright
Statutory grant protecting intellectual property from being copied for the life of the author, plus 70 years
Patents
Grants creator of invention an exclusive monopoly on ideas behind invention for 20 years
What is an acceptable, technologically feasible level of system quality?
Flawless software is economically unfeasible.
Three principle sources of poor system performance:
1.) Software bugs, errors
2.) Hardware or facility failures
3.) Poor input data quality (most common source of business system failure)
Balancing power
Although computing power decentralizing, key decision making remains centralized.
Rapidity of change
Businesses may not have enough time to respond to global competition.
Maintaining boundaries
Computing, internet use lengthens work-day, infringes on family, personal time.
Dependence and vulnerability
Public and private organizations ever more dependent on computer systems.
Computer crime
Commission of illegal acts through use of compute or against a computer system - computer may be object or instrument of crime
Computer abuse
Unethical acts, not illegal
Digital divide
Certain ethnic and income groups in the US less likely to have computers or Internet access.
Repetitive stress injury (RSI)
Largest source is computer keyboards. Carpel Tunnel Syndrome (CTS)
Computer vision syndrome (CVS)
Eyestrain and headaches related to screen use.
Technostress
Aggravation, impatience, fatigue.
Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS)
Pressure on the median nerve through the wrist's bony structure produces pain.
Digital millennium copyright act (DMCA)
Implemented a World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty that makes it illegal to circumvent technology-based protections of copyrighted materials.
Fair Information Practices (FIP)
A set of principles governing the collection and use of information about individuals. Principles based on the notion of a mutuality of interest between the record holder and the individual.
Information rights
The rights that individuals and organizations have with respect to information that pertains to them.
Informed consent
Consent given with knowledge of all the facts needed to make a rational decision.
Opt-in
Model of informed consent in which a business is prohibited from collecting any personal information unless the consumer specifically takes action to approve information collection and use.
Opt-out
Model of informed consent permits the collection of personal information until the consumer specifically requests the data not to be collected.
Safe harbor
A private, self-regulating policy and enforcement mechanism that meets the objectives of government regulators and legislation but does not involve government regulation or enforcement.
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