Reference no: EM132310485

Ethical issues arising from use of ICT technologies

Purpose of the assessment

This assignment assesses the following Unit Learning Outcomes; students should be able to demonstrate their achievements in them.

- Analyse ethical, professional standards and codes of practice in relation to ICT systems;
- Understand the importance of team work, collaboration and life-long learning in the workplace.

Assignment Description

Students should form a group of three (3) students from the same laboratory class. You must not change the group membership unless approved by your tutor. Tutor willthen allocate one of the topicslisted in Table 1 to each group.

All students must collaborate in this group assignment and contribute equally. Group leader should report their progress on a weekly basis to relevant tutor. Every student must participate in peer assessment on the Spark-Plus system.

Table 1: List of topics for Assignment-2.

Topic 1: Moore's contention is that the central task of computer ethics in decision-making processes that involve computer technology should be to "determine what should be done" whenever there is a policy vacuum. Moore first observed that there are times when policy vacuums are created in the decision-making processes, especially those that involve processes in which computer technology is "essentially involved."

It is difficult to fully explain the cause of these vacuums, but one can say that they are mainly caused by the "confusion" between the known policies and what is presented. Moore tries to explain these muddles by a software example. As software can either be a product in which case patent laws apply, or it can be a service where no intellectual property laws apply. The multiplicity of choices like this, presented to a decision maker by computer technology, can result in policy vacuums. Several other factors contribute to the creation of these muddles. It is likely that computer users, especially computer professionals, may be unprepared to deal effectively with the ethical issues that arise in their places of work and everywhere else computers and computer-related technology is used.

So, naturally, one would come to the conclusion that since we cannot stop computer technology that causes these muddles, we need a plan of action that will work with the changing computing technology and at the same time deal with the ethical issues that do arise. We need computer ethics education. There are two schools of thought on this subject. One school believes in the study of computer ethics as remedial moral education. The other school believes in computer ethics education not as a moral education but as a field worthy of study in its own right. But for it to exist as a separate independent field of study, there must be a unique domain for computer ethics distinct from the domain for moral education, distinct even from the domains of other kinds of professional and applied ethics.

Investigate and report on the ethical issues raised in this case and link your answers to the questions listed below:
1. Discuss thereasons why it is good to study computer ethics.
2. Walter Maner believes that computer ethics education should not be given purely as a remedial moral education. Do you agree? Discuss.
3. Give support to the argument that computer ethics must be taken as a remedial moral course.

*Topic 2: For formal education to be effective in teaching and enforcing the pillars of professionalism, it must be targeted and incremental. Let us walk through the making of an information technology professional as an example. In elementary school, as students are introduced to information technology, they should be told not to use machines to destroy other people's property or to hurt others. But these cautions should be explained in an age-appropriate way. For example, children should be taught responsible ways of using computers and the Internet.

They should be told not to visit certain web pages, to avoid getting involved in relationships online, not to give personal and family information online, and not to arrange for a rendezvous on or offline. In addition, they should be told to respect others' work and property, whether they are online or off. There are already reported cases of children as young as 14 years old breaking into computer systems and destroying records. In fact, many of the computer network attacks, and a good number of the headline-making incidents, have been perpetuated by young people, sometimes as young as 10-years old. For example, in a certain county in Tennessee, several ninth-graders broke into their school computer system and infected it with a virus that wiped out most of the school records. It is believed the students got the virus off the Internet. The content of what is taught must be relevant and sensitive to different age groups and professionals.

As students go through high school, content should become progressively more sophisticated. The message on responsible use of computers should be stressed more. The teen years are years of curiosity and discovery and a lot of young people find themselves spending long hours on computers. Those long hours should be spent responsibly. While a good portion of the message should come from parents, schools should also be part of this partnership by offering courses in responsible use of computers. The teaching could focus on ethics; students should be given reasons why they cannot create and distribute viruses, download copyrighted materials off the Internet, and use the Internet to send bad messages to others. These are ethical reasons that go beyond "do it and you will be expelled from school" type of threats.

Why is it so difficult to make an ethical decision in today's technologically driven society?

Topic 3: Have you paid enough attention to the number of junk mail, telephone calls during dinner, and junk emails you have been getting? If so, you may have thought about who has your name on a list and what they're doing with it. In recent years, telemarketers have been having a field day as technological advances have replaced the door-to-door salesman. Many companies you have done business with may have sold or shared your personal information to other companies, and tracing the source may be difficult. In many cases, we do not preserve our privacy as we defined privacy earlier. We have helped information seekers like companies in gathering and data-basing information from us. We do this every time we apply for discount cards from grocery stores, gas stations, and merchandise stores, and every time we fill out information on little cards to enter contests, and every time we give out our Social Security number and telephone numbers to store clerks in department stores. The information they collect from us is put into databases and is later sold to the highest bidder, usually a marketer.

Information gathering is a very serious business that is increasingly involving a growing number of players that traditionally governments gathering mostly defensive information on weapon systems. However, with globalization and the Internet, the doors to the information gathering field have been cast open. Now individuals, companies and organization and of course governments are all competing, sometimes for the same information.The tools of the trade have also improved tremendously, becoming more stealthy and a lot smaller and of course more accurate. With the modern tools of gathering information, no one is safe anymore. Because of our habits online, Internet crawlers are in action visiting our machines stealthy and gathering a wealth of information. There is no longer the need to get your information from cards you fill at shopping malls and grocery stores. There are better and faster ways now. There are tremendous legal and privacy issues that we have to deal with. First most of the information collected from us, the one we come to know of, which is a fraction of what they take, is collected without our consent.

How do consumers unknowingly contribute to their own privacy violations?

Note: need only Topic 2.

Attachment:- Assignment.rar