MIS Week-5

ETHICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES IN INFORMATION SYSTEMSETHICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Week 5
Chapter 4
Management Information Systems
What ethical, social, and political issues are raised by information systems?
What specific principles for conduct can be used to guide ethical decisions?
Why do contemporary information systems technology and the Internet pose challenges to the protection of individual privacy and intellectual property?
How have information systems affected everyday life?
Learning Objectives
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Solutions: Behavioral targeting allows businesses and organizations to more precisely target desired demographics
Google monitors user activity on thousands of sites; businesses monitor own sites to understand customers
Demonstrates IT’s role in organizing and distributing information
Illustrates the ethical questions inherent in online information gathering
Behavioral Targeting and Your Privacy: You’re the Target
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The technology used to implement online tracking is a combination of cookies, Flash cookies, and Web beacons (also called Web bugs).
Web beacons are small programs placed on your computer
when you visit any of thousands of Web sites. They report back to servers operated by the beacon owners the domains and Web pages you visited, what ads you clicked on, and other online behaviors.
These tools can be used to identify your
personal interests and behaviors
be shown to you.
all Web bugs.
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The growing use of behavioral targeting techniques shows that technology can be a double-edged sword.
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CHAPTER 4: ETHICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES IN
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Ethics
Principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviors
Recent cases of failed ethical judgment in business
Lehman Brothers, Minerals Management Service, Pfizer
In many, information systems used to bury decisions from public scrutiny
Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
New kinds of crime
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Society as a calm pond
IT 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
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHICAL, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL ISSUES IN AN INFORMATION SOCIETY
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.
FIGURE 4-1
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Information rights and obligations
What information rights do individuals and organizations possess with respect to themselves? What can they protect?
Property rights and obligations
How will traditional intellectual property rights be protected in a digital society in which tracing and accounting for ownership are difficult and ignoring such property rights is so easy?
Accountability and control
Who can and will be held accountable and liable for the harm done to individual, collective information and property rights?
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
System quality
What standards of data and system quality should we demand to protect individual rights and the safety of society?
Quality of life
What values should be preserved in an information and knowledge-based society? Which institutions should we protect from violation? Which cultural values and practices are supported by the new information technology?
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Doubling of computer power (18 months)
More organizations depend on computer systems for critical operations resulting our dependence on systems and our vulnerability to system errors and poor data quality have increased.
Social rules and laws have not yet adjusted to this dependence.
Standards for ensuring the accuracy and reliability of information systems are not universally accepted or enforced.
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Responsible for the multiplying databases on individuals, employees, customers, and potential customers maintained by private and public organizations.
These advances are responsible for routine violation of individual privacy both cheap and effective.
3. Networking advances and the Internet
Copying data from one location to another and accessing personal data from remote locations is much easier
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Advances in data analysis techniques
Companies can analyze vast quantities of data gathered on individuals for:
Profiling
Combining data from multiple sources to create dossiers of detailed information on individuals e.g. credit card purchases, telephone calls, magazine subscriptions, video rentals, banking records and visits to Web sites etc.
This information could reveal not only your credit information but also your driving habits, your tastes, your associations, and your political interests.
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Advances in data analysis techniques
Nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA)
Given both the government and the private sector even more powerful profiling capabilities by combining data from multiple sources to find obscure hidden connections that might help identify criminals or terrorists.
The technology is considered a valuable tool for homeland security but does have privacy implications
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
NONOBVIOUS RELATIONSHIP AWARENESS (NORA)
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.
FIGURE 4-2
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Responsibility:
Accountability:
Mechanisms for identifying responsible parties for any pros and cons
Liability:
Concept of responsibility that permits individuals (and firms) to recover damages done to them by other actors
Due process:
feature of law-governed societies and is a process in which Laws are well known and understood, with an ability to appeal to higher authorities for application of law
Ethics in an Information Society
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Identify and clearly describe
facts to find out who did what to whom, and where, when, and how.
Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher-order values involved
Ethical, social, and political issues always reference higher values. The parties to a dispute all claim to be pursuing higher values (e.g., freedom, privacy, protection
of property, and the free enterprise system).
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Identify the stakeholders
who have an interest in the outcome, who have invested in the situation, and usually who have vocal opinions. Find out the identity of these groups and what they want. This will be useful later when designing a solution.
Identify the options that you can reasonably take
Sometimes arriving at a good or ethical solution may not always be a balancing of consequences to stakeholders.
Identify the potential consequences of your options
Some options may be ethically correct but disastrous from other points of view. Other options may work in one instance but not in other similar instances.
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Golden Rule
Putting yourself into the place of others and thinking of yourself as the object of the decision, it can help you think about fairness in decision making.
Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative
If an action is not right for everyone to take, it is not right for anyone. Ask yourself, “If everyone did this, could the organization or society survive?”
Descartes’ Rule of Change
If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take at all. “once started down a slippery path, you may not be able to stop.”
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Utilitarian Principle
Take the action that achieves the higher or greater value. This rule assumes you can prioritize values in a rank order and understand the consequences of various courses of action.
Risk Aversion Principle
Take the action that produces the least harm or least potential cost (e.g., building a nuclear generating facility in an urban area have extremely high failure 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. If something someone else has created is useful to you, it has value, and you should assume the creator wants compensation for this work.
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
E.g. American Medical Association (AMA), the American Bar Association, (ABA), the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Codes of ethics are Promises by professions to regulate themselves in the general interest of society
Real-world ethical dilemmas
One set of interests pitted against another e.g. Internet monitoring in an organization
Right of company to maximize productivity of workers vs. workers right to use Internet for short personal tasks
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
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 U.S., privacy protected by:
First Amendment (freedom of speech and association)
Fourth Amendment (unreasonable search and seizure of one’s personal documents or home, and the guarantee of due process.)
Additional federal statues (e.g. Privacy Act of 1974, regulating the federal government’s collection, use, and disclosure of information.)
The Moral Dimensions of Information Systems
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Fair information practices:
It is a set of principles governing the collection and use of information
Basis of most U.S. and European privacy laws
Based on mutuality of interest between record holder and individual
Restated and extended by FTC in 1998 to provide guidelines for protecting online privacy
Used to drive changes in privacy legislation
COPPA
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Used to drive changes in privacy legislation
COPPA - Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, requiring Web sites to obtain parental permission before collecting information on children under the age of 13.
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act - All financial institutions are required to disclose their policies and practices for protecting the privacy of nonpublic personal information and to allow customers to opt out of information-sharing arrangements with nonaffiliated third parties.
HIPAA - Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act provides privacy protection for medical records. Doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers must limit the disclosure of personal information about patients to the minimum amount necessary to achieve a given purpose.
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Notice/awareness (core principle)
Web sites must disclose their information practices before collecting data. Includes identification of collector; uses of data; other recipients of data; nature of collection (active/inactive); voluntary or required status; consequences of refusal; and steps taken to protect confidentiality, integrity, and quality of the data.
Choice/consent (core principle)
There must be a choice regime in place allowing consumers to choose how their information will be used for secondary purposes other than supporting the transaction, including internal use and transfer to third parties.
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
3. Access/participation
Consumers should be able to review and contest the accuracy and completeness of data collected about them in a timely, inexpensive process.
4. Security
Data collectors must take responsible steps to assure that consumer information is accurate and secure from unauthorized use
5. Enforcement
There must be in place a mechanism to enforce FIP principles. This can involve self-regulation, legislation giving consumers legal remedies for violations, or federal statutes and regulations
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
European Directive on Data Protection:
Requires companies to inform people when they collect information about them and disclose how it will be stored and used.
Requires informed consent of customer (can be defined as consent given with knowledge of all the facts needed to make a rational decision)
EU member nations cannot transfer personal data to countries with no similar privacy protection (e.g. U.S.)
U.S. businesses use safe harbor framework
A private Self-regulating policy to meet objectives of government legislation. U.S. businesses would be allowed to use personal data from EU countries if they develop privacy protection policies that meet EU standards.
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Cookies
Tiny files downloaded by Web site to visitor’s hard drive to help identify visitor’s browser and track visits to site
Allow Web sites to develop complete profiles on visitors (If registered)
Web beacons/bugs
Tiny graphics embedded in e-mail and Web pages to monitor who is reading message (IP address). Usually placed by third parties by paying a fee. 25-30 beacons on popular websites.
Spyware
Secretly installed on user’s computer
May transmit user’s keystrokes and other movements on the intrnet.
Displays banners and other unsolicited material
Google’s collection of private data; behavioral targeting (75 % users use google and it has enormous impact on online privacy)
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
HOW COOKIES IDENTIFY WEB VISITORS
Cookies are written by a Web site on a visitor’s hard drive. When the visitor returns to that Web site, 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 Web site can then use these data to display personalized information.
FIGURE 4-3
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
U.S. allows businesses to gather transaction information and use this for other marketing purposes without obtaining the informed consent of the individual whose information is being used
Online industry promotes self-regulation over privacy legislation - In 1998, the online industry formed the Online Privacy Alliance to encourage self-regulation to develop a set of privacy guidelines for its members.
However, extent of responsibility taken varies
Statements of how information will be used
Opt-out selection boxes. Network Advertising Initiative (NAI)
Online “seals” of privacy principles - adhering to certain privacy principles (certified websites TRUSTe)
Most Web sites do not have any privacy policies
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P)
It is a protocol that automatically allows Web sites to communicate privacy policies to visitor’s Web browser – user
User specifies privacy levels desired in browser settings
E.g. “medium” level accepts cookies from first-party host sites that have opt-in or opt-out policies but rejects third-party cookies that use personally identifiable information without an opt-in policy
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
THE P3P STANDARD
P3P enables Web sites to translate their privacy policies into a standard format that can be read by the user’s Web browser software. The browser software evaluates the Web site’s privacy policy to determine whether it is compatible with the user’s privacy preferences.
FIGURE 4-4
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Property rights: Intellectual property
Intellectual property: Intangible property of any kind created by individuals or corporations
Three main ways that protect intellectual property
Trade secret: Intellectual work formula, pattern, compilation of data or product belonging to business, not in the public domain. Trade secret law protects the actual ideas in a work product, not only their manifestation
Copyright: Statutory grant protecting intellectual property from being copied for the life of the author, plus 70 years after the death of the creator.
Patents: Grants creator of invention an exclusive monopoly on ideas behind invention for 20 years
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Digital media different from physical media (e.g. books)
Ease of replication
Difficulty in classifying software
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
Makes it illegal to bypass technology-based protections of copyrighted materials. ISPs are required to take down such sites
Microsoft and other major software and information content firms are represented by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) witch runs an anti piracy hotline to report piracy activities and offer educational programs to combat software piracy
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
If software fails, who is responsible?
If seen as part of machine that injures or harms, software producer and operator may be liable
If seen as similar to book, difficult to hold author/publisher responsible
What should liability be if software seen as service? Would this be similar to telephone systems not being liable for transmitted messages?
liability law would extend its reach to include software even when the software merely provides an information service.
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
What is an acceptable, technologically feasible level of system quality?
Flawless software is economically unfeasible.
some system errors are foreseeable and correctable only at very great expense
An expense so great that pursuing this level of perfection is not feasible economically—no one could afford the product.
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)
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Negative social consequences of systems
Balancing power: Although computing power decentralizing, Lower-level employees may be empowered to make minor decisions, key decision-making remains centralized
Rapidity of change: Businesses may not have enough time to respond to global competition, reduced response time to competetion.
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 and are, therefore, highly vulnerable if these systems fail
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Computer crime and abuse
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, may not illegal
Spam: High costs for businesses in dealing with spam
Market products not widely approved in most civilized societies.
Employment:
redesigning business processes could potentially cause millions of mid-level managers and clerical workers to lose their jobs.
Equity and access – the digital divide:
Certain ethnic and income groups in the world less likely to have computers or Internet access
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Largest source is computer keyboards (repetitive actions)
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) pressure on the median nerve through the wrist’s bony structure
Computer vision syndrome (CVS) eye strain
Technostress stress - Induced by computer use. Symptoms include aggravation, hostility toward humans, impatience, and fatigue.
Role of radiation, screen emissions, low-level electromagnetic fields and have unknown effects on enzymes, molecules, chromosomes, and cell membranes.
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Read the Interactive Session and discuss the following questions
Which of the five moral dimensions of information systems identified in this text is involved in this case?
What are the ethical, social, and political issues raised by this case?
Which of the ethical principles described in the text are useful for decision making about texting while driving?
THE PERILS OF TEXTING
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Read the Interactive Session and discuss the following questions
What are some of the arguments for and against the use of digital media?
How might the brain be affected by constant digital media usage?
Do you think these arguments outweigh the positives of digital media usage? Why or why not?
What additional concerns are there for children using digital media? Should children under 8 use computers and cell phones? Why or why not?
TOO MUCH TECHNOLOGY?
INFORMATION SYSTEMS

MIS Week-5

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