(© 2007 by Robert Newton Barger)

Introduction

The last chapter of this book is reserved for the treatment of a unique computer ethics dilemma. Few dilemmas can literally be called “computer” ethics dilemmas. This is because most such dilemmas are not restricted only to the use of computers. They often can employ some other medium. For instance, the action of a bank teller pilfering a bank account by shorting each deposit a fraction of a cent through the use of a computer is not a unique computer ethics crime. This crime could also have been committed without the use of a computer.

The dilemma to be described in this chapter involves a proof-of-concept experiment performed by four faculty members at the University of Notre Dame. The four were Vincent Freeh and Jay Brockman of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and Hawoong Jeong of the Department of Physics. This dilemma might best be introduced in the researchers' own words:

Introduction

You may be wondering what a chapter on robotics and ethics is doing in a book on computer ethics. Simply put, robotics today is heavily dependent upon artificial intelligence, and artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science. I would feel I was short-changing the reader if I had not included this chapter.

The Roboethics Roadmap, a product of the European Robotics Research Network (EURON), begins with the following statement: “We can forecast that in the XXI century humanity will coexist with the first alien intelligence we have ever come into contact with – robots.” EURON is a group that aims to promote excellence in robotics by creating resources and exchanging knowledge, as well as looking to the future. Its objectives are research coordination, a joint program of research, education and training, industrial links, and dissemination. It is clear from the quoted statement that EURON is serious about looking to the future through a multinational approach that will prepare for the advent of the relationship between humans and intelligent robots.

A major product of EURON is a robotics research roadmap that is meant to investigate opportunities for developing and employing robot technology over the next twenty years. The first release of this roadmap took place in July of 2006. More than fifty people who produced it had participated in previous activities on robotics, possessed a cross-cultural attitude, and were interested in applied ethics.

Introduction

Having spoken in Chapter 12 about theft and piracy concerns and in Chapter 14 about privacy concerns, it will be the task of this chapter to cover power concerns. “Power concerns” might sound like a catchall for any issues left over after those covered in Chapters 12 and 14. In a sense, this is the case. However, the choice of the term “power” is meant to focus more specifically upon ethical dilemmas involving the use of power or involving subjection to power.

Accountability of Bloggers

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines “blog” as “a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and sometimes hyperlinks provided by the writer.” The question of accountability has been raised in regard to blogging in as much as blogs are essentially public materials, intended for all to see, and meant as media to publicize the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of the blogger. If the press is to be held accountable for its reporting, should not bloggers also be held accountable for what they publish?

In 2005, a blogger was given press credentials for admission to the White House briefing room. The same New York Times story that reported this event continued by saying: “Increasingly, bloggers are penetrating the preserves of the mainstream news media. They have secured seats on campaign planes, at political conventions and in presidential debates, and have become a driving force in news events themselves.”

An Opening Orientation

The words “computer ethics” sometimes evoke the quip: “‘Computer ethics…isn't that an oxymoron?” Indeed, the computer has received a great deal of bad press over the years because of its association with things like spam, fraud, and impersonalization, but the computer itself is not to blame for these things. Obviously, it is the people who misuse computers who are to blame. They are the unethical ones, not the computers. This book shows that there is indeed an ethics that governs the use of computers. It examines the basis for ethical decision-making and presents a methodology for reaching ethical decisions concerning computing matters. Finally, it concentrates on the theory and practice of computer ethics, using a case-based approach.

An Outline of This Book

Chapter 1 considers a brief history of computers and the Internet, the meaning of ethics, the distinction between law and ethics, the subjects of ethics, and whether computer ethics is a unique kind of ethics. This chapter, and the rest of the chapters in the book, ends with a chapter summary and a “your turn” section soliciting student response to material covered in the chapter.

Chapter 2 deals with the computer as a humanizing agent. This chapter shows that the computer is not – as it is sometimes accused of being – the antithesis of what it means to be human.

Chapter 3 gives a systems approach to ethics. Here you can study the philosophies of Idealism, Realism, Pragmatism, Existentialism, and Philosophical Analysis.

In this chapter a number of cases will be presented that involve forms of piracy. By piracy is meant the taking of something, or the attempt to take something, which a person is not entitled to take.

Internet Fraud Case

An e-mail message with no “Subject” line received on January 19, 1999, by Robert Newton Barger from a person using a fictitious name.

ATTN: ROBERT

DATE: January 19, 1999

CC: FRIENDS CLUB

EXTREMELY URGENT AND HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL

I am [fictitious name] the President of ‘FRIENDS CLUB,’ a charity organization. The club inherited and was disbursed the heavy fortune through revenue allocation from the Funds and Properties Inheritance Board by the Federal Government of Zaire Central Africa.

I got your contact as a reliable, competent and trustworthy person that has a good name. The friends club was disbursed on Friday, January 15, 1999 at 10.35am by the financial controller of the Funds and Properties Inheritance Board, Dr K. S. Chaka, the sum of One Hundred and Thirty One Million USD ($131,000,000.00) to organise charity, promote scholarship programmes and aid the less privileged. This fund is an inheritance contained in the Federal Revenue Allocation for 1999 to charity.

The friends club pledged to ascertain a programme of excellence ever lasting and wishes to invest in a steady lucrative business in Europe or America to achieve its goal. It is my duty to safeguard, persist, and ensure a successful programme for the club. We have started by flying the funds through a security company as trustee to Abidjan, Ivory Coast, a free and safe African country practising [sic] first class democracy to ensure the safety of the funds from theft and also avoid new generation banking fraud affecting the world banking system today which is why you have been contacted.

In this chapter a number of cases will be presented that involve violations of privacy.

Fingering Case

© 2007 by John Halleck, used with permission)

The case concerns a student who used a computer to monitor his ex-girlfriend by checking how often she logged on, from what terminal she logged on, and with whom she communicated. First, here is a bit of background on this case. Most computer systems have a “finger” command of some sort. This command tells if a given user is on the system or not, information about when that person was last on, and, often, information as to the location where the person logged in. The finger command on a system at a fictitious university that will be known as Desert State University also says whether the person has new mail (and when it was last read). Some finger commands even tell from whom the person last received mail. This “feature” would no doubt have been disabled on machines at the University in the years after this case was originally written. Most people at the University would agree that this information is more or less “public.”

Here is the substance of the case. Administrators discovered that one of their student machines was severely bogged down in a manner that made it painful for the average student to use. It was discovered that a particular student's script was eating up all the available resources of the machine. Contrary to stated policy, it was a background script that continued running twenty-four hours a day, whether or not the student who had written the script was logged on.

Google and Chinese Censorship Case

(© 2007 by Robert Newton Barger)

Google, Inc., opened its doors in 1998 in Menlo Park, California. It was founded by two graduate students from Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In less than ten years it has become arguably the largest information retriever in the world and has established an international presence. This case will deal with the ethics of Google's cooperation with the government of the People's Republic of China in practicing censorship.

Google's presence in China began in 2005 when it opened a research and development center there. In 2006 it began a localized domain in China. The name of the domain is Google.cn. People in China could make a search on Google.com before 2006, but it was only available to about half of China's users. If those users entered search terms that were censored by the Chinese government, such as “Tiananmen Square,” the site would immediately become unreachable for several hours. A Chinese government directive issued in September, 2000, says that Internet content providers must restrict information that may harm the dignity and interests of the state or that foster evil cults or that damage social stability. The Chinese government is said to have an extensive Internet filtering process in place that controls which overseas Web sites its citizens can access. With that filtering as a guide, foreign companies are expected to build their own lists of Web sites that would be deleted from Web search results.

With regard to Google's stance on censorship, Google says, “It is Google's policy not to censor search results. However, in response to local laws, regulations, or policies, we may do so. When we remove search results for these reasons, we display a notice on our search results pages.”

Introduction

“Theft” is used here in the sense of the second meaning defined in Webster's Third New International Dictionary, which states, “the taking of property unlawfully.” “Piracy” is used here in the sense of the third meaning defined in Webster's Third New International Dictionary, which states, “an unauthorized appropriation and reproduction of another's production, invention, or conception, esp. in infringement of a copyright.”

The computer has made possible new forms of stealing and unauthorized appropriation of property. We will consider a number of them in this chapter. There is no claim that this is an exclusive list of such forms, but hopefully enough will be included here to provide a sense of how the Internet has changed things in regard to theft and piracy.

Cybersquatting

Not the most transparent of all technical terms, “cybersquatting” means the acquiring of a domain name on the Internet with the hope of selling it, in turn, to a business or individual who might be desirous of using it. The closer such a domain name is related to the name of a business or individual who is its prospective buyer, the better the chance the cybersquatter will have of selling it to such an entity and the higher the price the cybersquatter might be able to get for it. The relationship of the name to the potential buyer might be that the domain name is just one letter off from the business name of the potential buyer or it might be that the domain name incorporates a phrase that is associated with the business or professional activity of the potential buyer.

Accountability of bloggers – A blog is a Web site containing analyses, opinions, and sometimes hyperlinks. What is the accountability of the owner of the blog for this material?

Carnivore's use by the FBI – Carnivore is an investigative device used to monitor e-mail and other electronic communications by means of “packet sniffing.” It has raised privacy concerns.

Computer viruses – Programs that enter a computer through trickery or stealth, infecting it and usually corrupting its data and/or affecting its operation.

Credit card fraud online – Often involves “spoofing” (see Web spoofing) to obtain personal information that will enable illicit use of a credit card.

Cybersquatting – Usually involves investing in domain names that might in turn be sold to companies for a higher price than was originally paid.

Data mining – The practice of sifting through large amounts of data in search of information that might be used for commercial purposes, for example, to target potential customers.

Dating on the Internet – Involves using the Internet to find and make contact with other people for romantic purposes. The anonymity afforded by the Internet can make this a dangerous activity, however.

Fake ID manufacture and sale with computers – Involves use of Internet technology to sell fake identification cards (e.g., drivers' licenses). These are often described by the online sales sites as “novelty” cards to avoid criminal liability for their sale.

Gambling on the Internet – Involves wagering on sports events or games of chance. This activity often involves offshore sites and runs the risk of inauthentic practices that make the odds of winning (or being paid off) much less than they are at a physical casino or sports facility.

Introduction

There is sometimes a relationship between theft and privacy. Theft and related crimes, such as fraud, often occur after one's personal information has been compromised. In fact, compromised personal information can be the very means used to commit the crimes.

It used to be said that you need not be concerned about privacy unless you have something to hide. Now, most people understand that everyone should have something to hide, that is, personal information that can be used for identity theft or other kinds of fraud. In this chapter we will be talking about matters related to the privacy of information – information that can be used for good, or for bad, purposes.

Cookies

Something as yummy as a cookie doesn't sound like it could be a bad thing, does it? Usually it's not. We're talking here about electronic cookies, of course. They are bits of information sent to a browser by a Web server when contact is first made with it. Some servers place cookies on browsers that contact them, but not all of them do. If placed, the cookie is stored on the browser's computer and the information on it can be accessed the next time the browser is used to visit the Web server that placed the cookie. For instance, have you ever revisited a server and had the server call you by name. How could it do that?

Steps in the Ethical Decision-Making Process

There are eight steps involving questions to be answered in resolving computer ethics dilemmas. It may be asked whether this process actually facilitates one's ability to make the most ethical decisions or whether it simply encourages people to better document their own instinctive positions. Although it cannot be proven, the answer to this question is probably the former. Even if it were the latter, the process should still prove to be a valuable exercise.

The steps are:

1. Step 1. Briefly describe the ethical issues in this case.

Be aware that there may be multiple ethical issues in the case. Make sure that all of the issues are clearly articulated. Also, be aware that different issues may apply to the different people involved in the case.

1. Step 2. Identify the stakeholders in this case and tell what you think each of them would like to see as an outcome.

Empathy is needed here in order to put yourself in the place of each of the parties involved and state what each would presumably like to see done in keeping with each one's interests.

1. Step 3. A) Propose three possible solutions to the case (two extremes and a compromise). Mark them a), b), and c). B) Give a best-case and worst-case outcome for each solution and, for each solution, indicate whether you could tolerate the worst-case outcome. C) Which of the three solutions would you choose?

Mail Inspection Case

(© 1996 by John Halleck, used with permission)

Due to hardware problems, the mail to your site has to be remailed. (This involves checking each letter in the dead letter queue, checking to see to whom it should have been sent, and running a program to put it into the user's mailbox.) While doing this you end up seeing the contents of several messages. What should you do (if anything) in the following cases?

• A message seems to be bragging about getting away with some fraud.

• A message is giving information you know to be false about someone you know.

• A message is telling another user false information about you.

• A message seems to be setting up a drug deal.

• A message that gives you a personal advantage.

Fake Sale Case

(© 1996 by John Halleck, used with permission)

You are asked to write a program to print tags for a sale. Your boss asks you to put out tags that have a price sufficiently high that a 10% discount marked on it brings it back to the original price. Do you do this?

Numerically Unstable Case

(© 1996 by John Halleck, used with permission)

A user comes by with a question about running his/her program on your machine. You notice that the methods that the program employs are numerically unstable (i.e., the answers have lots of digits, but only the first is significant [i.e., correct]). The user claims that his/her thesis depends on the first three digits of the answer.

Introduction

In previous chapters we have looked at the question of right and wrong behavior from the viewpoint of philosophical ethics. Now we will compare this approach with another way of looking at right and wrong behavior – the approach of developmental psychology.

Psychology takes a scientific approach to the study of human behavior. It uses experimental investigative procedures to study how human behavior develops. Psychologists examine questions of right and wrong in the branch of psychology known as moral development. One of the most famous researchers in this branch was Lawrence Kohlberg. A brief review of his work follows.

Lawrence Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

Lawrence Kohlberg was, for many years, a professor at Harvard University and director of its Center for Moral Education. He became famous for his research on moral development, which began in the early 1970s. He started as a developmental psychologist and then moved to the field of moral education. He was particularly well known for his theory of moral development that he popularized through research studies. He believed that justice was a central concept in moral education and he spent a good deal of time experimenting with how to make schools into “just communities” by having students make decisions through the use of democratic processes.

His theory of moral development was dependent on the thinking of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget and the American philosopher John Dewey. He was also inspired by the work of James Mark Baldwin, an early developmental psychologist.

Introduction

Four traits have traditionally characterized a profession: expert knowledge, autonomy in conducting one's practice, internal governance of one's professional field, and service to society. Each of these will be examined.

Expert Knowledge

Expert knowledge is special technical knowledge that is certified by some authority and is not possessed by the layperson. George Bernard Shaw once said that every profession is a conspiracy against the laity. Expert knowledge is related to skill, which may be learned “on the job.” Indeed, in earlier times some professions were learned in an apprenticeship manner. Would-be lawyers “read law” in law offices and would-be physicians went along on house calls with doctors and assisted them in their practices. The practice of going on “hospital rounds” is still a part of medical education today.

Autonomy

Autonomy involves independence in conducting one's professional practice in the areas of diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up – to use the language of the medical profession. Diagnosis deals with finding the root of the problem that needs to be treated. Treatment involves discovering what should be done to alleviate the problem. Follow-up is concerned with evaluation, that is, checking to see if the treatment was effective.

Internal Governance

Internal governance means that one's professional field is controlled by its practitioners rather than by some external authority. It includes the setting of entrance requirements and the handling of the discipline of one's errant colleagues.

Introduction

In Chapter 3 on Philosophic Belief Systems, it was mentioned that people of different philosophic viewpoints might agree on a common solution to an ethical dilemma. They would, however, do so for different reasons. Let us recall the outlooks of the four basic philosophies. The Idealist believes that reality lies ultimately in the ideal, nonmaterial dimension and so goodness would involve conformity to the ideal. The Realist believes that reality is found in nature and so goodness involves acting in accord with what is natural. The Pragmatist believes that reality is not an idea or a thing but rather an ongoing experience (i.e., the flow of life) and so goodness is concerned with the production of socially desirable results. The Existentialist believes that reality is self-defined and so goodness is concerned with whatever one's own conscience dictates.

To illustrate, let us take the case of murder. The Idealist would say that murder is wrong because all life is sacred. The Realist would say that murder is wrong because people should die only of natural causes. The Pragmatist would say that murder is wrong because it is disruptive of the good of society. The Existentialist would say that murder is wrong simply because the Existentialist believes it is wrong (probably out of respect for other people's autonomy and integrity).

Introduction

In this chapter you will have the opportunity to complete a philosophic inventory and learn with which philosophic theories you are most in agreement. Answer each of the questions as follows: if you strongly agree, put 2; if you agree, put 1; if you are undecided, put 0; if you disagree, put −1; and if you strongly disagree, put −2.

Inventory Questions

1. earning is a process of interacting with people and things around us. It leads to new understandings which can then be used to solve social problems.

2. he human person is primarily a nervous system that is influenced by interaction with the physical environment along lines recognized by science.

3. ducation should lead a person to spiritual understanding.

4. nowledge involves successful adaptation to our surroundings.

5. nowledge is accurate if it reflects physical, material reality.

6. he human person is basically a spiritual being.

7. he human person discovers knowledge from the physical, material world.

8. nowledge is meant to be used. It is ultimately a means to survival.

9. ducation is basically a process of spiritual growth.

10. Good is anything that results in achieving a goal agreed upon by society.

11. Knowledge is found by considering the practical implications of ideas.

12. The human mind is simply the brain at work.

13. Learning is a process of choosing our identity.

14. The mind is a spiritual entity that determines what reality is (rather than reality determining what the mind is).

15. All true knowledge engages the feelings of the knower.

16. The most important thing in reality is the ability to choose or decide.

17. […]