PHILOSOPHY 103: Outline: INFORMATION ETHICS

"Although the electronic age makes official surveillance easier, people who haven't done anything wrong shouldn't be worried." —TRUE or FALSE?

HACKERS...

PIRACY is the (illegal) use, reproduction or distribution of another's property for business or personal use. Enabling piracy is morally dubious...

 

Information ethics deals with ethical questions:

1. in the business field (business information ethics)
2. in the Internet (cyberethics)
3. in the mass media (media ethics)
4. in computer science (computer ethics)
5. in the biological sciences (bioinformation ethics)
6. in the library and information science field (library ethics)
   
   

1. Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people.
2. Thou shalt not interfere with other people's computer work.
3. Thou shalt not snoop around in other people's files.
4. Thou shalt not use a computer to steal.
5. Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness.
6. Thou shalt not copy or use proprietary software for which you have not paid.
7. Thou shalt not use other people's computer resources without authorization or proper compensation.
8. Thou shalt not appropriate other people's intellectual output.
9. Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you write or the system you design.
10. Thou shalt use a computer in ways that show consideration and respect for your fellow humans.
    
    — Developed by the Computer Ethics Institute (CEI), Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.
    

Constitutional Issues

U.S. Supreme Court: MILLER v. CALIFORNIA, 413 U.S. 15 (1973): whether obscene material is protected by the First Amendment...

• "The Seven Words You Can't Say On Television"

U.S. Supreme Court: FCC v. PACIFICA FOUNDATION, 438 U.S. 726 (1978): Whether the Federal Communications Commission has any power to regulate a radio broadcast that is indecent but not obscene...

Info Tech Issues

What is new?

1. Computer and information technology enable surveillance of private individuals by making it possible and easy to gather, store and exchange information.
   
2. Communication is multidirectional, interactive on a global scale, somewhat anonymous, and reproducible.
   
3. Thus, people can steal, disrupt, damage, libel, slander, snoop, harass, stalk, blackmail, and defame other people from greater distances, in new ways, with large scale devastating effects that are extremely difficult to correct.
   
   
   

What has this changed?

1. Amount of information gathered is now physically limitless and easy to keep
   
   
2. New kinds of information are now gathered: keystrokes, browser activity, e-mail, transaction-generated information (credit card activity automatically stored)
   
   
   1. Data gets transferred whenever anyone enters info electronically: subscriptions, surveys, shopping, bill-paying activity get saved and analyzed
      
      
   2. Data mining tools (knowledge discovery instruments) match electronic bits of data and reveal patterns of behavior among groups of people.
      
      
3. Extent of the exchange of information is enormous and more reliable: now easy to copy and distribute info instantaneously since info can go wherever electrons do
   
   
   • Distribution occurs unintentionally, without the knowledge of its subject, and spreads inaccuracies reliably.
     
     
     

What is its effect?

1. We get a virtual PANOPTICON.
   
   
2. When individuals believe that they are or may be watched, they adjust their behavior; people think of themselves as observers see them: as objects subject to public scrutiny and evaluation.
   
   
3. Multiplies and magnifies possibility of immoral and illegal activity(e.g. breaches of privacy, theft of identity or property, fraudulent claims).
   
   
4. Via the internet and computer technology it is now easier (but not legal) to take control of someone's identity.
   
   
   1. How? Your online activity (shopping, viewing preferences and visits to web
      sites) is recorded, sorted, stored in databases and used. From this people assemble your profile and make transactions as if they are you.
      
      
   2. Thus, internet (civil) liberties jeopardize Privacy, Security and Property Rights.
      
      
      

Does computer technology MAKE people act immorally?

NO. But it helps them to be immoral on a greater and more harmful scale.

1. Individuals CHOOSE actions because they find themselves in a world which has certain possibilites; in a world with different possibilites, they behave differently.
   
   
2. Computer technology makes morally corrupt or illegal activity easier, and thus increases the probability that people will engage in such activities. We expect people to misbehave to the extent that they can. The more ways people can act badly, the more we can reasonably expect that they will.
   
   
3. Therefore, CT is a cause for moral concern because it INCREASES LIKELIHOOD that unethical activities occur.
   
   
   

Why protect personal privacy?

Privacy is a social good: Privacy ENABLES persons to live and interact freely and PROTECTS their autonomy in numerous beneficial ways. But from a legal and constitutional view the right to privacy is limited and complex.

Possible responses:

"Privacy only protects people who have someting to hide." FALSE.

Innocent people have much to fear. Organizations use personal information to discriminate inappopriately: so you get turned down for a credit card, a loan, a job or insurance.

"We could just refuse to give out information about ourselves." UNREALISTIC.

Freedom of information exchange purchases knowledge at great social cost: I give up a great deal of my autonomy if I choose to protect myself by never divulging personal information. No credit, no medical coverage, no internet, etc. Now I am not as free as everybody else.

Must we balance interests and desires of (private and public) organizations against the interests and desires of individuals?

Argument FOR information gathering and exchange

1. We value profit, social goods and services (govt efficiency, law enforcement), privacy, and the freedom to gather and exchange information. [Values]
   
   
2. Businesses, service organizations want to make informed self-interested or profit-motivated decisions about clients. [Assume]
   
   
3. Business want to know more about potential and actual clients so that they can serve clients better. [Assume]
   
   
4. Businesses perpetuate values by gathering and exchanging public and private information. [Assume]
   
   
5. Businesses and individuals benefit more from the gathering and exchange of personal information than from access to it being restricted and controlled. [Assume]
   
   
6. Whatever does more social good than harm is morally permissible. [UTIL Principle]
   
   
7. Therefore, profit and freedom of information concerns should override privacy concerns. [Judgment]
   
   

Argument AGAINST personal information gathering and exchange

When a person is watched they tend to take on the perspective of the observer: You are what you do, where you go, what you buy.

Your educational records, work records, health records, political activities, criminal activities make you think before you act and so you do not act as you wish but as others expect.

RESULT: Others control how you act, think and feel.

People need to control what relationships they have and how close they will be by controlling the flow of personal information to others. When people lose control over information that others have about them, this reduces their autonomy.

How? This reduces one's ability to establish and influence the sorts relationships one has since it inhibits our actions. It reduces our power to do as we wish without our activities being recorded. Others in effect control our activities because we fear their watchful eye. The potential and actual harm that ensues given the free exchange of personal information beyond one's control far outweighs other social goods derived from a narrow-minded construal of privacy.

RESULT: Loss of autonomy.

Reasons Individual and Record-keeping Organization Relationships are problematic

Unlike personal face-to-face relations, individual-organization relationships can be

• INVOLUNTARY (we don't get asked),
• NONCONSENSUAL (we don't permit),
• ANONYMOUS (we don't know they are gathering and analyzng data about us),
• SECRETIVE (they know more about us than we do about them),
• DAMAGING (perpetuating erroneous claims without our having a chance to correct)
  
  

Useful Guidelines for Data Managing Professionals

1. MINIMIZE data collected
2. LIMIT authorized access to data
3. PROVIDE effecive security for data
4. DETERMINE required retention period for data
5. ENSURE proper disposal of data
   
   
   

Legislation and policies

"Seven Generic Principles of Fair Information Practices" has become a generic standard for preserving personal privacy.

1. The Principle of Openness. The existence of record-keeping systems and databanks that contain personal data must be publicly known, along with a description of the main purpose and uses of the data.
   
   
2. The Principle of Individual Participation. Individuals should have a right to view all information that is collected about them; they must also be able to correct or remove data that is not timely, accurate relevant, or complete.
   
   
3. The Principle of Collection Limitation. There should exist limits to the collection of personal data; data should be collected by lawful and fair means and should be collected, where appropriate, with the knowledge or consent of the subject.
   
   
4. The Principle of Data Quality. Personal data should be relevant to the purposes for which it is collected and used; personal data should be accurate, complete, and timely.
   
   
5. The Principle of Finality. There should be limits to the use and disclosure of personal data: data should be used only for purposes specified at the time of collection; data should not be otherwise disclosed without the consent of the data subject or other legal authority.
   
   
6. The Principle of Security. Personal data should be protected by reasonable security safeguards against such risks as loss, unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification or disclosure.
   
   
7. The Principle of Accountability. Record keepers should be accountable for complying with fair information practices.

This formulation of a code of fair information practices is derived from several sources, including codes developed by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (1973), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (1980), and Council of Europe (1981).

Actions private individuals can take to achieve some privacy (Gary Marx [1991])

1. Don't give out any more information than is necessary.
2. Don't say things over a cellular or cordless phones that you would mind overheard by stangers.
3. Ask you bank to sign an agreement that it will not release information about your accounts to anyone lacking legal authorization and that in the event of legal authorization, it will contact you within two days.
4. Obtain copies of your credit, health, and other records and check for accuracy and currency.
5. If you are refused credit, a job, a loan, or an aprtment, ask why (there maybe a file with inaccurate, incomplete or irrlevant information).
6. Remember that when you respond to online, telephone or door-to-door surveys, that informatin will go into a databank.
7. Realize that when you purchase a product or service or file a warranty card or participate in a rebate program, your name will be sold to a mailing-list company.
   
   

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY = property that derives from the work of the mind or intellect, e.g., an idea, invention, trade secret, process, program, data, formula, patent, copyright, or trademark or application, right, or registration relating thereto...

Intellectual property RIGHTS create incentives for innovation. They permit a right holder to prohibit others from using technology for a specified time which allows the right holder in maintaining property rights to rent or exclude use without permission, thus allowing the right holder to enjoy their "fruits of their labor." Intellectual property protections grant creators the liberty to decide who uses their property

PATENT and COPYRIGHT protections exclude others from the use of right holder's intellectual property. Patents and copyrights are not mutually exclusive, but there are key differences: (1) copyrights have a longer term of protection; (2) patent protection can apply to a method or process whereas copyright protection does not protect method but only the expression or the application of a method; (3) copyright protection is available the moment a work is fixed but patent protection only applies after the approval of an application; (4) patent protection has international law implications that copyright protection does not.

Copyright law confers EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS upon the owner of a copyrighted work:

The Copyright Act grants five rights

• the right to reproduce the copyrighted work;
• the right to prepare derivative works based upon the work;
• the right to distribute copies of the work to the public;
• the right to perform the copyrighted work publicly; and
• the right to display the copyrighted work publicly.

To infringe upon the owner's exclusive right to reproduce, it is not a necessary requirement that one make an exact copy of the copyrighted work. Courts have used the phrase "substantial similarity" to define the level of similarity that is necessary, along with a valid copyright, to establish copyright infringement.

Copyright law does not protect ideas alone, but rather the expression of ideas, and the accused work must therefore be substantially similar both in idea and in expression to the copyrighted work.

NOVEL and ORIGINAL test...

Copyright: Guardian of Intellectual Property

Property refers to a possession or something to which the owner has legal rights.

The World Intellectual Property Organization protects intellectual property.

Intellectual property refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce. Intellectual property is divided into two categories:

1. Industrial property, which includes inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial designs, and geographic indications of source;
   
   
2. Copyright, which includes literary and artistic works such as novels, poems and plays, films, musical works, artistic works such as drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures, and architectural designs. Rights related to copyright include those of performing artists in their performances, producers of phonograms in their recordings, and those of broadcasters in their radio and television programs.

 

Copyright is a form of protection provided by laws to the authors of original works, otherwise known as the owners of intellectual property. Protection extends to expression and not to ideas, procedures, or methods of operations.

Source code is protected, algorithms are not.

 

Intersection of Copyright and Computers

Producing photocopies of a textbook and distributing them to others is not lawful. This is because the WIPO Copyright Treaty states that authors of such literary works shall enjoy the exclusive right of authorizing the making available to the public copies of their works. No one but the author (or the owner of the copyright) has the right to make copies of the work.

Is software protected, just as literary works, from unlawful distribution? YES.

Computer programs are protected exactly as literary works are protected under Article 2 of the Berne Convention for Protection of Artistic and Literary Works.

The copyright privileges that literary and artistic works enjoy extend to computer programs as well. Therefore, only the owner of the copyright itself enjoys the exclusive right of authorizing the making available to the public of copies of the computer program in question. The same applies to computer games. U.S. Copyright Law states that although the idea for a game is not protected by copyright, the manner of expression of the author (in artistic, literary, or musical form) is. Therefore, it is unlawful to distribute copies of computer games without the copyright owner's explicit permission.

Are works made available to the public on the Internet protected by copyright? YES.

For works made available over a communications network (such as the Internet), the copyright protects original authorship. This, of course, applies only to those who wish to obtain the copyright. But the copyrighting of online works, according to the Copyright Law, does not protect ideas, procedures, systems, or methods of operation. This means that once such an online work has been made public, nothing in the copyright laws prevents others from developing another work based on similar principles, or ideas.

 

FAIR USE

The concept of Fair Use refers to section 107 of U.S. copyright law. It outlines when it is permissible to use copyright protected materials without getting permission from the author or creator of the work.

Use of a copyrighted work for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research is not an infringement of copyright. 

CRITERIA

1. PURPOSE and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. NATURE of the copyrighted work;
3. AMOUNT and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. EFFECT of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

COPYING IS defined as the USE of someone else's intellectual property, and it is therefore illegal.

But how do you know when copyright ownership belongs to you and when it belongs to others? In general, the following RULES resolve the problem:

• If you produced the work yourself, then you are the natural author and own the copyright yourself.
  
  
• If you as an employee created the work in the scope of employment, your employer owns the copyright and is in fact considered the author.

  Fair Use in Higher Education

 

Copyright infringement constitutes the reproduction of a work without express permission. If the copied work is substantially similar to the original, it is considered to have infringed upon the copyright of the original.

 

Copyright Infringement

The accused work must have been copied from the original copyrighted work and not have been the product of independent coincidental effort, or else there is no infringement of the exclusive rights conferred by law upon the owner.

 

Encryption

An apparent solution to the lack of privacy on the internet is a technique known as encryption.  Encryption is running data through filters.  One filter scrambles the message, a second unscrambles it.  Anyone who picks up the information in transit would (in theory) see nothing but garbled characters.  (To experience what this is like, try opening an image file in a word processor).  However, such encryption would also allow people to hide far more easily online.  Many hackers can also run intercepted data through filters of their own and recover the information.  Business moves far more slowly than the underground community of hackers.

In 1993, the government suggested that the government should hold a key to all encryption...

 

Friday, 13 July, 2007 13:27