Balberan, Jan Maxin R.             ITETHIC                                 March 9, 2008

CYBERETHICS

T. Halbert, E. Ingulli

Chapter 2: Privacy and Information Technology

“Every individual lives behind a mask”

Each person is aware to the gap between what he wants to be and what he actually is, between what the world sees of him and what he knows to be his much more complex reality. In addition, there are aspects of him that the individual does not fully understand but is slowly exploring and shaping as he develops. As the first etymological meaning of the word “person” was “mask”. The real self of individual is under his mask. There is a mask for each group that we socialize with. But the real question is that…what if the real self do not exist but only a pile of mask?  

Human beings as individuals must experience a degree of privacy to thrive. Yet, as they act inside organizations, they frequently need information about one another, information that may be sensitive and confidential. Employers want to find out if their workers are productive and loyal. Corporations want to know the preferences of potential customers or the strategies of their competitors. Health insurers want access to patient medical histories and genetic profiles. Governments want to prevent terrorist. Tension between privacy and the need to know is heightened as computer technology revolutionizes information gathering. The process has never been so fast, so efficient, so universal.

The chapter highlights the conflict between the sweeping power of technology to access and assemble information and ongoing concerns about privacy that we all share. It starts with electronic surveillance at work – with the interception of email by employers. Shifting into the area of customer privacy, the chapter considers the collection of personal information in the online marketplace. Can the private sector regulate itself in this arena, or should some form of government regulation exist? There is a connection between copyright management systems and privacy. Then the chapter looks at government surveillance, and it closes with a reading about a particularly glaring problems: how information technology in the health care context has the potential for revealing extremely sensitive private data.

Chapter 3: Cyberspeech

“Perceived anonymity of e-mail puts psychological distance between two communicators”

The distance between communicators shows the seriousness and intimacy. Some misuse the distance in the most unreasonable way. The sender of an email message is aware that it is unlikely he or she will ever have a personal contact with the recipient. Accordingly, there is a sense that there will be no “real world” consequences of email messages. The result is that email often takes on a tone that does not resemble personal communication.

Protected by the first Amendment to the US Constitution, free speech is considered a fundamental freedom. The right to freedom of expression is the bedrock of American democracy, as it connects directly with the right of the people to criticize and influence their government. In principal, few Americans contest the importance of free speech – although the parameters of its legal protection have never been dawn clearly. Furthermore, what is legal may not necessarily be ethical. In this chapter, we explore the outer reaches of free speech in cyberspace, where it is relatively cheap to send a message around the world in a split of seconds.

For the chapter: it discusses the first amendment law and recurring theme in the debates about on-line freedom of expression in general. Next is at cyber smearing – bad – mounting a person or business over the internet – as part of a discussion about the benefits and problems of on-line anonymity. From there we look at cyber speech that is both dangerous and potentially criminal, including hate speech, cyber harassments, and online stalking.

Chapter 4: E-Commerce

The origin of the Internet can be traced back to the 1960’s. From the beginning, the Internet was advanced by a group of talented hackers – university students who worked in a collaborative fashion. There was no centralized control, and so significant corporate input. As one historian has put it, “The Internet was designed informally, and with little fanfare, by a self-selected group of experts.”

In this chapter, we look the flashpoints where e-commerce raises ethical concerns. We begin with the marketing of pharmaceutical drugs. When direct-to-consumer (DTC) selling takes place online, consumers are potentially better informed, but they also may be more likely to take serious health risks. We then consider gambling on the internet: illegal in the US, it’s popularly among Americans is growing fast. Do we have either the moral will or the technological capacity to stop it?     

With a section on “dot-cons”, the varieties of fraud that have infiltrated the e-commerce; we see how eBay, the online auction site, has tried – and failed - to police fraud with a feedback system. The rest of the chapter focuses on the nuts and bolts of online transactions, and asks whether we should adopt uniform rules of contracting that would encompass click wrap licenses and whether sales tax should be collected as part of all e-commerce.