chapter 4

The feature of social institutions that means mechanisms are in place to determine responsibility for an action is called

B. Accountability

The U.S. CAN-SPAM Act of 2003

B. requires spammers to identify themselves

In general, it is very difficult to hold software producers liable for their software products when those products are considered to be

B. similar to books

Intellectual property can best be described as

A. Intangible property created by individuals or corporations

Which of the five moral dimensions of the information age does spamming raise

A. quality of life

What legal mechanism protects the owners of intellectual property from having their work copied by others?

C. Copyright Law

The Internet has made the protection of intellectual property

C. More difficult because of the ease of copying and transmitting digitalized media

FIP principles are based on the notion of the

C. Mutuality of interest between the record holder and the individual.

The four key technical trends responsible for current ethical stresses related to information technology are (1) doubling of computer power every 18 months, (2) data analysis advances, (3) declining data storage costs, and (4) ________.

C. Networking advances and the Internet

________ can be induced by tens of thousands of repetitions under low-impact loads.

C. RSI

The term "________ divide" refers to large disparities in access to computers and the Internet among different social groups and different locations.

C. digital

Two of the three principal sources of poor system performance are

C. hardware or facility failures and poor input data quality

A limitation of trade secret protection for software is that

C. it is difficult to prevent the ideas in the work from falling into the public domain

In the information age, the obligations that individuals and organizations have regarding the preservation of existing values and institutions fall within the moral dimension of

D. Quality of life

The U.S. Department of Commerce developed a ________ framework in order to enable U.S. businesses to legally use personal data from EU countries.

D. Safe-harbor

The Federal Trade Commission FIP principle of Notice/Awareness states that

D. Web sites must disclose their information practices before collecting data

The P3P standard is concerned with

D. blocking or limiting cookies

The "do anything anywhere" computing environment can

D. blur the traditional boundaries between work and family time

The most common source of business system failure is

D. data quality

The ethical "no free lunch" rule states that

D. everything is owned by someone else, and that the creator wants compensation for this work.

Advances in data storage have made routine violation of individual privacy more difficult.

False

P3P encrypts or scrambles e-mail or data so that it cannot be read illicitly

False

Protection for trade secrets is enforced at the federal level.

False

Web ________ are embedded in e-mails and Web pages to monitor user behavior at the Web site or sending e-mail.

beacons, bugs

The commission of acts involving the computer that may not be illegal but are considered unethical is called ________.

computer abuse

The ________ model prohibits an organization from collecting any personal information unless the individual specifically takes action to approve information collection and use.

opt-in

A(n) ________ is a private, self-regulating policy and enforcement mechanism that meets the objectives of government regulators but does not involve government enforcement.

Safe harbor

Descartes' rule of change, that if an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take at all, is also known as the ________ rule.

Slippery-slope

________ is permission given with knowledge of all the facts needed to make a rational decision.

Informed consent

Discuss at least three key technology trends that raise ethical issues. Give an example of an ethical or moral impact connected to each one.

Key technology trends include the following: (1) Computer power doubling every 18 months: ethical impact because more organizations depend on computer systems for critical operations, these systems are vulnerable to computer crime and computer abuse; (2) Data storage costs are rapidly declining: ethical impact it is easy to maintain detailed databases on individuals who has access to and control of these databases?; (3) Data analysis advances: ethical impact vast databases full of individual information may be used to develop detailed profiles of individual behavior; and (5) Networking advances and the Internet: ethical impact it is easy to copy data from one location to another. Who owns data? How can ownership be protected?

________ refers to the existence of laws that permit individuals to recover damages done to them by other actors, systems, or organizations.

Liability

What are the major issues concerning privacy in the information age? Do you believe the need for homeland security should overrule some of the personal privacy and information rights we have previously taken for granted? Why or why not?

One answer might be that we should depend upon the Federal Trade Commission Fair Information Practice Principles and that as long as these principles are not ignored or overset, personal privacy does not conflict with homeland security. This is a weak argument. Other issues involve online privacy, employee monitoring, tradeoffs between security and privacy and good business results versus privacy.

The ethical principle called ________ asks you to put yourself in the place of others, and think of yourself as the object of the decision.

The Golden rule

What do you consider to be the primary ethical, social, and political issues regarding information system quality?

The central quality-related ethical issue that information systems raise is at what point should I release software or services for consumption by others? At what point can I conclude that my software or service achieves an economically and technologically adequate level of quality? What am I obligated to know about the quality of my software, its procedures for testing, and its operational characteristics? The leading quality-related social issue deals with expectations: As a society, do we want to encourage people to believe that systems are infallible, that data errors are impossible? By heightening awareness of system failure, do we inhibit the development of all systems, which in the end contribute to social well-being? The leading quality-related political issue concerns the laws of responsibility and accountability, what they should be, and how they should be applied.

Re-designing and automating business processes can be seen as a double-edged sword because

A. increases in efficiency may be accompanied by job losses

Software presents liability problems in terms of legal protections for users because

A. of the difficulty in classifying its role as a machine, a service, or a book.

A classic ethical dilemma is the hypothetical case of a man stealing from a grocery store in order to feed his starving family. If you used the Utilitarian Principle to evaluate this situation, you might argue that stealing the food is

B. Acceptable, because the higher value is the survival of the family.

The robotics startup you work for has developed an AI-controlled robotic nurse, intended to care for end-of-life patients who are often unconscious. Which of the five moral dimensions does this raise?

B. Quality of life

The introduction of new information technology has a

B. Ripple effect raising new ethical, social, and political issues.

According to the ________, you should take the action that produces the least harm

B. Risk aversion principle

The 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 is referred to as

D. Liability

NORA is a

C. new data analysis technology that finds hidden connections between data in disparate sources

Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative states that

D. If an action is not right for everyone to take, it is not right for anyone to take

Which of the five moral dimensions of the information age do the central business activities of ChoicePoint raise?

D. Information Rights and Obligations

According to the courts, in the creation of software, unique concepts, general functional features, and even colors are protectable by copyright law.

False

Despite the passage of several laws defining and addressing computer crime, accessing a computer system without authorization is not yet a federal crime.

False

Insofar as software is essentially an intangible good, producers of software cannot be held liable for any damages that their software unintentionally causes.

False

Most American and European privacy law is based on a set of five principles called COPPA.

False

The drawback to copyright protection is in passing stringent criteria of nonobviousness.

False

The key concepts in patent law are originality, novelty, and value.

False

The last step in analyzing an ethical issue should be to identify the stakeholders people who have a vested interest in the outcome of the decision.

False

The moral dimension of ________ is concerned with the standards that data and systems should achieve in order to protect individual rights and the safety of society.

System Quality

Trade secret law protects the actual ideas in a work product, not just their manifestations.

True

CVS refers to

A. eyestrain related to computer display screen use.

How does a cookie work?

A cookie works as follows: A user opens a Web browser and selects a site to visit. The user's computer sends a request for information to the computer running at the Web site. The Web site computer is called the server, since it allows the user's computer to display the Web site. At the same time it sends a cookie - a data file containing information like an encrypted user ID and information about when the user visited and what he did on the site. The user's computer receives the cookie and places it in a file on the hard drive. Whenever the user goes back to the Web site, the server running the site retrieves the cookie to help identify the user.

Which of the following is not one of the five steps discussed in the chapter as a process for analyzing an ethical issue?

A. Assign responsibility

Which of the following adjusts copyright laws to the Internet age by making it illegal to circumvent technology-based protections of copyrighted materials?

A. Digital millennium copyright act

Which of the following U.S. laws gives patients access to personal medical records and the right to authorize how this information can be used or disclosed?

A. HIPAA

A colleague of yours frequently takes for his own personal use small amounts of office supplies, noting that the loss to the company is minimal. You counter that if everyone were to take the office supplies, the loss would no longer be minimal. Your rationale expresses which historical ethical principle?

A. Kant's Categorical Imperative

Which U.S. act restricts the information the federal government can collect and regulates what they can do with the information?

A. Privacy Act of 1974

The use of computers to combine data from multiple sources and create electronic dossiers of detailed information on individuals is called

A. Profiling

In the information age, the obligations that individuals and organizations have concerning rights to intellectual property fall within the moral dimension of

A. Property rights and obligations

Accepting the potential costs, duties, and obligations for the decisions you make is referred to as

A. Responsibility

The Online Privacy Alliance

A. encourages self-regulation to develop a set of privacy guidelines for its members.

"Look and feel" copyright infringement lawsuits are concerned with A) the distinction between tangible and intangible ideas.

B. The distinction between an idea and its expression

Which of the following best describes how new information systems result in legal gray areas?

B. They result in new situations that are not covered by old laws

The process in law-governed societies 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 is called

B. due process

It is not feasible for companies to produce error-free software because

B. it is too expensive to create perfect software

When a cookie is created during a Web site visit, it is stored

B. on the visitors computer

A(n) ________ model of informed consent permits the collection of personal information until the consumer specifically requests that the data not be collected.

B. opt-Out

The strength of patent protection is that it

D. grants a monopoly on underlying concepts and ideas

The practice of spamming has been growing because

D. it is so inexpensive and can reach so many people

European privacy protection is ________ than in the United States.

D. much more stringent

One of the difficulties of patent protection is

D. the years of waiting to receive it

How does the use of electronic voting machines act as a "double-edged sword?" What moral dimensions are raised by this use of information technology?

Electronic voting machines can be seen as beneficial by making voting easy to accomplish and tabulate. However, it may be easier to tamper with electronic voting machines than with countable paper ballots. In terms of information rights, it seems possible that methods could be set up to determine how an individual has voted and to store and disseminate this knowledge. Manufacturers of voting machines claim property rights to the voting software, which means that if the software is protected from inspection, there is no regulation in how the software operates or how accurate it is. In terms of accountability and control, if an electronic voting system malfunctions, will it be the responsibility of the government, of the company manufacturing the machines or software, or the programmers who programmed the software? The dimension of system quality raises questions of how the level of accuracy of the machines is to be judged and what level is acceptable? In terms of quality of life, while it may make voting easier and quicker, does the vulnerability to abuse of these systems pose a threat to the democratic principle of one person, one vote?

The principles of right and wrong that can be used by individuals acting as free moral agents to make choices to guide their behavior are called ________.

Ethics

Define the basic concepts of responsibility, accountability, and liability as applied to ethical decisions. How are these concepts related?

Responsibility is the first key element of ethical action. Responsibility means that an individual, group, or organization accepts the potential costs, duties, and obligations for decisions made. Accountability is a feature of systems and social institutions. It means that mechanisms are in place to determine who took responsible action; i.e., who is responsible for the action. Liability is a feature of political systems in which a body of law is in place that permits individuals to recover the damages done to them by others. These concepts are related as follows: I will assume the blame or benefit for the actions I take (responsibility); this blame or benefit accrues to me through the requirement that I be able to explain why I have taken the actions I have (accountability) for actions traceable to me by defined mechanisms in the organization, and if those actions result in hard to another, I will be held by law to reparations for those actions (liability).

List and describe the five moral dimensions that are involved in political, social, and ethical issues. Which do you think will be the most difficult for society to deal with? Support your opinion.

The five moral dimensions are: (1) Information rights and obligations. What rights do individuals and organizations have with respect to information pertaining to them? (2) Property rights. How can intellectual property rights be protected when it is so easy to copy digital materials? (3) Accountability and control. Who 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? What institutions must we protect? What cultural values can be harmed? Individual answers for determining the most difficult for society to deal with will vary. One answer might be: Quality of life issues will be most difficult for society to deal with in societies that are comprised of many different cultural and ethnic groups, such as the United States. It is difficult to regulate concerns that are based on subjective values.

List and define the six ethical principles discussed in your text

The six ethical principles are the Golden Rule, Kant's Categorical Imperative, Descartes' rule of change (slippery slope), the Utilitarian Principle, the Risk Aversion Principle, and the "no free lunch" rule. The Golden Rule proposes: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative proposes, if an action is not right for everyone to take, it is not right for anyone. Descartes' rule of change says: If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take at all. The Utilitarian Principle is: Take the action that achieves the higher or greater value. The Risk Aversion Principle is: Take the action that produces the least harm or the least potential cost. The ethical no free lunch rule says: Assume that virtually all tangible and intangible objects are owned by someone else unless there is a specific declaration otherwise. Tangible objects are owned by someone else unless there is a specific declaration otherwise.

What are the steps in conducting an ethical analysis

The steps are: (1) Identify and describe clearly 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; and (5) identify the potential consequences of your options.

A cookie is a small file containing information about you and your Web activities that is deposited on your hard disk by a Web site.

True

Copyright is the legal protection afforded intellectual property, such as a song, book, or video game.

True

Most Internet businesses do very little to protect the privacy of their customers.

True

Privacy is the right to be left alone when you want to be, without surveillance or interference from other individuals or organizations.

True

Professionals take on special rights and obligations because of their special claims to knowledge, wisdom, and respect.

True

Spyware is software that comes hidden in downloaded applications and can track your online movements

True

Technostress is a computer-related malady whose symptoms include fatigue.

True

The European Parliament has passed a ban on unsolicited commercial messaging

True

The most common type of computer-related RSI is CTS.

True