WHAT ETHICAL, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL ISSUES ARE RAISED BY INFORMATION SYSTEMS?

Information technology is introducing changes for which laws and rules of acceptable conduct have not yet been developed. Increasing computing power, storage, and networking capabilities--including the Internet--expand the reach individual and organizational actions and magnify their impacts. The ease and anonymity with which information is now communicated, copied, and manipulated in online environments pose new challenges to the protection of privacy and intellectual property. The main ethical, social, and political issue raised by information systems center around information rights and obligations, property rights and obligations, accountability and control, system quality, and quality of life.

1.Ethical issues: Intellectual property rights, electronic monitoring of employees and data utilization;

2.Cultural issues: Assimilation of emerging technologies, developing trust, power asymmetry, policy implementation, and social environments;

3.Human interaction issues: recruitment and retainment of technical personnel, motivation, leadership, social presence, and organizational champions of information systems;

4.Relationship issues: development partnerships, virtual teams, group cohesiveness, collaboration, group facilitation, networking, and buyer-supplier linkages;

5.Security issues: misuse of data, virus/worm creation, Intranet abuse, data protection, fraud with systems use, and standards and regulations.

Five Moral Dimensions of the Information Age

The major ethical, social, and political issues raised  by information systems include the following moral dimensions:

1. Information rights and obligations. What information rights do individuals and organizations possess with respect to information about themselves? What can they protect? What obligations do individuals and organizations have concerning this information?
2. 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?
3. Accountability and control. Who can and will be held accountable and liable for the harm done to individual and collective information and property rights?
4. System quality. What standards of data and system quality should we demand to protect individual rights and the safety of society?
5. 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?

Technology Trends that Raise Ethical Issues:

ASSIGNMENT:

SOCIAL, ETHICAL AND POLITICAL ISSUES RAISED BY INFORMATION SYSTEM

§ INFORMATION SYSTEM

“An Information System is a combination of hardware,  software, infrastructure and trained personnel organized to facilitate planning, control, coordination and decision making in an organization.”

Information Technology have both dark and bright sides. At one end, IT has revolutionized our lives especially it ease the doing of business. With the use of IT, businesses are able to increase sales and profit and had a wide reach of potential customers. But on the other end, IT had given birth to different issues which can ultimately results in crime.

§ SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES

The main ethical, social and political issues raised an information system are:

1.    Information Rights and Obligations

2.    Accountability and Control

3.    System Quality

4.    Quality of Life

5.    Property Rights and Obligations

§ KEY TECHNOLOGY TRENDS THAT RAISE ETHICAL ISSUES

IT has heightened ethical concerns and made some laws obsolete or severely crippled. There are four key technological trends responsible for these ethical issues:

                i.            DOUBLING OF COMPUTER POWER

       The doubling of computer power every 18 months has made it possible for more organizations to depend on information systems for their core production processes. This has increased our vulnerability to system errors and poor data quality.

              ii.            RAPIDLY DECLINING DATA STORAGE COSTS

Advances in data storage techniques and declining storage costs have been responsible for increase in databases of individual employees, customers and suppliers. These advances have made the routine violations to individual privacy both cheap and effective.

           iii.            ADVANCES IN DATA ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES

Advances in data analysis techniques for large pools enables companies and government agencies to find out highly detailed personal information about individuals.

·        PROFILING

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

·        NON-OBVIOUS RELATIONSHIP AWARENESS (NORA)

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

      It includes tracking of individual cell phones.

§ BASIC CONCEPTS OF ETHICAL ANALYSIS

1.    RESPONSIBILITY

This means that you accept the potential costs, duties and obligations for the decisions you make.

2.    ACCOUNTABILITY

It means mechanisms are in place for identifying who took responsible actions and who are the responsible parties.

3.    LIABILITY

Liability is a feature of the political systems in which a body of laws permits individuals and firms to recover damages to them by other actors, systems or organizations.

4.    DUE PROCESS

This is a related feature of law-governed societies and is a process in which laws are well known and understood and there is an ability to higher authorities.

§  ETHICAL PRINCIPLES

a)  Golden Rule

b)  Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative

c)   Descartes Rule of Change

d)  Utilitarian Principle

e)  Risk-aversion Principle

f)    Ethical “no free lunch” Rule

§  LAWS IN WORLD TO AVOID THESE ISSUES

Following are the laws in the world which help to avoid these issues:

I)       Electronic Commerce Act (Ireland)

II)    Electronic Transaction Act (UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore)

III)  Electronic Transaction Ordinance (Hong Kong)

IV) Information Technology Act (India)

V)    Information Communication Technology Act Draft (Bangladesh)

§  LAWS IN PAKISTAN

1)   ELECTRONIC TRANSACTION ORDINANCE 2002

·       Formed in 2002 by national lawmakers.

·       Laid the foundation for comprehensive legal infrastructure.

·       It is heavily taken foreign law related to cyber crime.

2)   ELECTRONIC CRIME BILL 2007

·          It was promulgated by the President of Pakistan on the 31^st December, 2007.

·          The bill deals with the electronic crimes including:

Ø Data damage

Ø Electronic fraud

Ø Electronic forgery

Ø Unauthorized access to code

Ø Cyber Spaming

Ø Cyber Stalking

ØCyber Terrorism

Pakistan: National Assembly Passes New Cybercrime Law

(Sept. 21, 2016) On August 11, 2016, Pakistan’s lower house, the National Assembly, passed a controversial cybercrime law called the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016. The Senate had unanimously passed the law, with a number of amendments, in July. (Raza Khan, Cyber Crime Bill Passed by NA: 13 Reasons Pakistanis Should Be Worried, DAWN (Aug .11, 2016).) The President of Pakistan gave his assent to the legislation on August 18, 2016. (Archive: Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill 2015-16, BOLO BHI (last visited Sept. 19, 2016).)

According to the Act, the purpose of the legislation is “to prevent unauthorized acts with respect to information systems and provide for related offences as well as mechanisms for their investigation, prosecution, trial and international cooperation … .” (Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 (Aug. 11, 2016), Foreword, National Assembly website.)

Crimes Against Information and Data Systems, and Cyber-Terrorism

The Act introduces a range of offenses involving the unauthorized access, transmission, copying, or interference in an information system or data. (Id. §§ 3-5.) Harsher penalties are set for these crimes if they involve information systems or data connected to critical infrastructure. (Id. §§ 6-8.)

The Act also introduces the offense of cyber-terrorism. A cyber-terrorist crime is deemed to have been committed if a crime connected to critical infrastructure is carried out with the intent to commit terrorism. The punishment for such an offense upon conviction is up to a 14-year term of imprisonment or a fine of Rs5 million (about US$47,450), or both. (Id. §10.) The glorification of terrorism-related offenses, hate speech, and the recruitment for or funding and planning of terrorism “through any information system or device” are also punishable crimes under the Act. (Id. §§9, 10A, & 10B.)

The Act also introduces crimes of spamming and of distributing and transmitting malicious code. (Id. §§ 20 & 22.)

Crimes Against Persons via the Internet, Including Criminal Defamation

Section18 (1) of the law essentially criminalizes defamation “through any information system.” The Act prescribes that

Whoever intentionally and publicly exhibits or displays or transmits any information through any information system, which he knows to be false, and intimidates or harms the reputation or privacy of a natural person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years or with fine which may extend to one million rupees or with both. (Id. § 18 (1).)

Certain provisions, such as one on “spoofing,” have been particularly controversial, because they might be used to target satirical online content. The spoofing provision stipulates, “[w]hoever with dishonest intention establishes a website or sends any information with a counterfeit source intended to be believed by the recipient or visitor of the website to be an authentic source commits [the offense of] spoofing.” (Id. § 23.) This crime is to be punished upon conviction with up to three years of imprisonment or a fine of Rs500,000 (about US$4,745), or both. (Id.)

Section 19 of the Act, which deals with offenses against the modesty of a natural person or a minor, prohibits, among other acts, superimposing “a photograph of the face of a natural person over any sexually explicit image or video.” (Id. § 19(1)(a).)

Other newly introduced crimes against the person are cyber stalking and producing, distributing, possessing, or procuring online child pornography. (Id. § 19(A).)

Investigative Powers

The powers to investigate crimes set forth in the Act include those of preservation, search and seizure, and retention of data, and also the real time collection and recording of information through a court order or warrant. Section 26 grants the Federal Government the power to establish or designate a law enforcement agency “as the investigation agency for the purposes of investigation of offences under this Act.” (Id.) On September 9, 2016, the Federal Cabinet designated the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) as the Investigation Agency under the Act. (Press Release, PR No. 66, Meeting of the Federal Cabinet Islamabad: September 9, 2016(Sept. 9, 2016), Press Information Department website.)

Section 34 of the Act grants the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority the power to

remove or block or issue directions for removal or blocking of access to an [sic] information through any information system if it considers it necessary in the interest of the glory of Islam or the integrity, security or defence of Pakistan or any part thereof, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court or commission of or incitement to an offence under this Act.  (Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016, § 34(1).)

Reaction to the Act

Human rights and free speech activists are worried that many of the provisions of the Act are framed in vague terms that “could lead to curtailment of free speech and unfair prosecutions.” (Mehreen Zahra-Malik, Pakistan Passes Controversial Cyber-Crime Law, REUTERS (Aug 12, 2016).) Nighat Daad, the founder of the Digital Rights Foundation, was quoted as stating that “[t]he overly broad language used in the bill ensures that innocent and ignorant Pakistani citizens, unaware of the ramifications of what the bill entails, can be ensnared and find themselves subject to very harsh penalties.” (Id.)

Members of opposition political parties have also expressed concern about the potential for misuse of the Act by government authorities and the possibility that it may stifle political debate online.(Vasudevan Sridharan, Pakistan Passes ‘Draconian’ Cybercrime Law Threatening Civil Liberties, INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES (Aug .11, 2016).) The Minister of State for Information Technology & Telecom, Anusha Rehman, told Parliament, however, that “[c]riticism regarding the bill is baseless as proposed amendments have been included. Non-governmental organisations and civil society representatives are opposing the bill due to a certain agenda.” (Id.)

Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

Technology can be a double-edged sword. It can be the source of many benefits but it can also create new opportunities for invading your privacy, and enabling the reckless use of that information in a variety of decisions about you.

Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems

In the past 10 years, we have witnessed, arguably, one of the most ethically challenging periods for U.S. and global business.  In today’s new legal environment, managers who violate the law and are convicted will most likely spend time in prison.  Ethics refers to the principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviors. When using information systems, it is essential to ask, “What is the ethical and socially responsible course of actin?”

A Model for Thinking about Ethical, Social and Political Issues

Ethical, social, and political issues are closely linked. The ethical dilemma you may face as a manager of information systems typically is reflected in social and political debate.

Fig. The Relationship Between Ethical, Social, and Political Issues In An Information Society

Five Moral Dimensions Of The Information Age

The major ethical, social, and political issues raised by information systems include the following moral dimensions:

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 and collective information and property rights?

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?

Key Technology Trends that Raise Ethical Issues

Profiling – the use of computers to combine data from multiple sources and create electronic dossiers of detailed information on individuals.

Nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA) – a more powerful profiling capabilities technology, can take information about people from many disparate sources, such as employment applications, telephone records, customer listings, and “wanted” lists, and correlated relationships to find obscure hidden connections that might help identify criminals or terrorists.

Fig. Nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA)

 

 

Ethics In An Information Society

Basic Concepts: Responsibility, Accountability, and Liability

Ethical choices are decisions made by individuals who are responsible for the consequences of their actions. Responsibility is a key element and means that you accept the potential costs, duties, and obligations for the decisions you make. Accountability is a feature of systems and social institutions and means mechanisms are in place to determine who took responsible action, and who is responsible. Liability is a feature of political systems in which a body of laws is in place that permits individuals to recover the damages done to them by other actors, systems, or organizations. Due process is a related feature of law-governed societies and is a process in which laws are known and understood, and there is an ability to appeal to higher authorities to ensure that the laws are applied correctly.

 

The Moral Dimensions of Information Systems
Information Rights: Privacy And Freedom In The Internet Age

Privacy is the claim of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance or interference from other individuals or organizations, including the state. Most American and European privacy law is based on a regime called Fair Information Practices (FIP) first set forth in a report written in 1973 by a federal government advisory committee (U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1973).

The European Directive on Data Protection

In Europe, privacy protection is much more stringent than in the United States. Unlike the United States, European countries do not allow businesses to use personally identifiable information without consumers’ prior consent. Informed consent can be defined as consent given with knowledge of all the facts needed to make a rational decision. 

Working with the European Commission, the U.S. Department of Commerce developed a safe harbor framework for U.S. firms. A safe harbor is 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.

Internet Challenges to Privacy

Internet technology has posed new challenges for the protection of individual privacy. Information sent over this vast network of networks may pass through many different computer systems before it reaches its final destination. Each of these systems is capable of monitoring, capturing, and storing communications that pass through it.

Cookies are small text files deposited on a computer hard drive when a user visits to the web sites. Cookies identify the visitor’s web browser software and track visits to the website. Web beacons, also called web bugs, are tiny objects invisibly embedded in e-mail messages and Web pages that are designed to monitor the behavior of the user visiting a web site or sending e-mail. Spyware can secretly install itself on an Internet user’s computer by piggybacking on larger applications. Once installed, the spyware calls out to Web sites to send banner ads and other unsolicited material to the user, and it can also report the user’s movements on the Internet to other computers.

Property Rights: Intellectual Property

Intellectual property is considered to be intangible property created by individuals or corporations. Information technology has made it difficult to protect intellectual property because computerized information can be so easily copied or distributed on networks. Intellectual property is subject to a variety of protections under three different legal traditions: trade secrets, copyright, and patent law.

Trade Secrets

Any intellectual work product – a formula, device, pattern, or compilation of data-used for a business purpose can be classified as a trade secret, provided it is not based on information in the public domain.

Copyright

Copyright is a statutory grant that protects creators of intellectual property from having their work copied by others for any purpose during the life of the author plus an additional 70 years after the author’s death.

 

Patents
A patent grants the owner an exclusive monopoly on the ideas behind an invention for 20 years. The congressional intent behind patent law was to ensure that inventors of new machines, devices, or methods receive the full financial and other rewards of their labor and yet make widespread use of the invention possible by providing detailed diagrams for those wishing to use the idea under license from the patent’s owner.

System Quality: Data Quality and System Errors

Three principle sources of poor system performance are (1) software bugs and errors (2) hardware or facility failures caused by natural or other causes and (3) poor input data quality. The software industry has not yet arrived at testing standards for producing software of acceptable but not perfect performance.

 

Quality of Life: Equity, Access, and Boundaries

Balancing Power: Center Versus Periphery

Lower level employees many be empowered to make minor decisions but the key policy decisions may be as centralized as in the past.

Rapidity of Change: Reduced Response Time to Competition

Information systems have helped to create much more efficient national and international market. The now-more-efficient global marketplace has reduced the normal social buffers that permitted businesses many years to adjust to competiton. We stand the risk of developing a “just-in-time society” with “just-in-time jobs” and “just-in-time” workplaces, families, and vacations.

Maintaining Boundaries: Family, Work, and Leisure

The danger to ubiquitous computing, telecommuting, nomad computing, and the “do anything anywhere” computing environment is that it is actually coming true. The traditional boundaries that separate work from family and just plain leisure have been weakened. The work umbrella now extends far beyond the eight-hour day.

Dependence and Vulnerability

Today our businesses, governments, schools, and private associations, such as churches are incredibly dependent on information systems and are, therefore, highly vulnerable if these systems fail. The absence of standards and the criticality of some system applications will probably call forth demands for national standards and perhaps regulatory oversight.

Computer Crime and Abuse

New technologies, including computers, create new opportunities for committing crimes by creating new valuable items to steal, new way to steal them, and new ways to harm others. Computer crime is the commission illegal acts through the use of a computer or against a computer system. Simply accessing a computer system without authorization or with intent to do harm, even by accident, is now a federal crime.

Computer abuse is the commission of acts involving a computer that may not illegal but that are considered unethical. The popularity of the Internet and e-mail has turned one form of computer abuse – spamming – into a serious problem for both individuals and businesses. Spam is junk e-mail sent by an organization or individual to a mass audience of Internet users who have expressed no interest in the product or service being marketed.

 

Employment: Trickle-Down Technology and Reengineering Job Loss

Reengineering work is typically hailed in the information systems community as a major benefit of new information technology. It is much less frequently noted that redesigning business processes could potentially cause millions of mid-level managers and clerical workers to lose their jobs. One economist has raised the possibility that we will create a society run by a small “high tech elite of corporate professionals…in a nation of permanently unemployed” (Rifkin, 1993).  Careful planning and sensitivity to employee needs can help companies redesign work to minimize job losses.

 

Equity and Access: Increasing Racial and Social Class Cleavages

Several studies have found that certain ethnic and income groups in the United States are less likely to have computers or online Internet access even though computer ownership and Internet access have soared in the past five years. A similar digital divide exists in U.S. schools, with schools in high-poverty areas less likely to have computers, high-quality educational technology programs, or internet access availability for their students. Public interest groups want to narrow this digital divide by making digital information services – including the Internet – available to virtually everyone, just as basic telephone service is now.

 

Health Risks: RSI, CVS, and Technostress

The most common occupational disease today is repetitive stress injury (RSI). RSI occurs when muscle groups are forced through repetitive actions often with high-impact loads (such as tennis) or tens of thousands of repetitions under low-impact loads (such as working at a computer keyboard).

The single largest source of RSI is computer keyboards. The most common kind of computer-related RSI is carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), in which pressure on the median nerve through the wrist’s bony structure, called a carpal tunnel, produces pain. Millions of workers have been diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. Computer vision syndrome (CVS) refers to any eyestrain condition related to display screen use in desktop computers, laptops, e-readers, smart-phones, and hand-held video games. Its symptoms, which are usually temporary, include headaches, blurred vision, and dry and irritated eyes.

The newest computer-related malady is technostress, which is stress induced by computer use. Its symptoms include aggravation, hostility toward humans, impatience, and fatigue. Technostress is thought to be related to high levels of job turnover in the computer industry, high levels of early retirement from computer-intense occupations, and elevated levels of drug and alcohol abuse.