Lecture 7
ETHICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES IN INFORMATION
SYSTEMS
1
Learning Objectives
• What ethical, social, and political issues are raised by
information systems?
• What specific principles for conduct can be used to guide
ethical decisions?
• Why do contemporary information systems technology and
the Internet pose challenges to the protection of individual
privacy and intellectual property?
• How have information systems affected everyday life?
2
Behavioral Targeting and Your Privacy: You’re the Target
• Problem: Need to efficiently target online ads
• Solutions: Behavioral targeting allows businesses and
organizations to more precisely target desired demographics
• Google monitors user activity on thousands of sites; businesses
monitor own sites to understand customers
• Demonstrates IT’s role in organizing and distributing information
• Illustrates the ethical questions inherent in online information
gathering
3
Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems
• Information systems and ethics
– Information systems raise new ethical questions
because they create opportunities for:
• Intense social change, threatening existing
distributions of power, money, rights, and
obligations
• New kinds of crime
4
Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems
• Model for thinking about ethical, social, political issues:
– Society as a calm pond
– IT as rock dropped in pond, creating ripples of new
situations not covered by old rules
– Social and political institutions cannot respond overnight
to these ripples—it may take years to develop etiquette,
expectations, laws
5
Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems
THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN ETHICAL,
SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL
ISSUES IN AN
INFORMATION SOCIETY
The introduction of new information
technology has a ripple effect, raising
new ethical, social, and political
issues that must be dealt with on the
individual, social, and political levels.
These issues have five moral
dimensions: information rights and
obligations, property rights and
obligations, system quality, quality of
life, and accountability and control.
6
Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems
• Five moral dimensions of the
information age
1. Information rights and obligations
2. Property rights and obligations
3. Accountability and control
4. System quality
5. Quality of life
7
Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems
• Key technology trends that raise ethical issues
1. Doubling of computer power
• More organizations depend on computer systems for critical
operations
2. Rapidly declining data storage costs
• Organizations can easily maintain detailed databases on
individuals
3. Networking advances and the Internet
• Copying data from one location to another and accessing personal
data from remote locations is much easier
8
Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems
• Key technology trends that raise ethical issues (cont.)
4. Advances in data analysis techniques
• Companies can analyze vast quantities of data gathered on
individuals for:
– Profiling
» Combining data from multiple sources to create dossiers of
detailed information on individuals
– Nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA)
» Combining data from multiple sources to find obscure hidden
connections that might help identify criminals or terrorists
9
Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems
NONOBVIOUS
RELATIONSHIP
AWARENESS (NORA)
NORA technology can take
information about people from
disparate sources and find
obscure, non-obvious
relationships. It might discover,
for example, that an applicant
for a job at a casino shares a
telephone number with a
known criminal and issue an
alert to the hiring manager.
FIGURE 4-2
10 © Prentice Hall 2011
Ethics in an Information Society
• Six Candidate Ethical Principles
1. Golden Rule
• Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
2. Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative
• If an action is not right for everyone to take, it is not right for
anyone
3. Descartes’ Rule of Change
• If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take at all
11 © Prentice Hall 2011
Ethics in an Information Society
• Six Candidate Ethical Principles (cont.)
4. Utilitarian Principle
• Take the action that achieves the higher or greater value
5. Risk Aversion Principle
• Take the action that produces the least harm or least potential
cost
6. Ethical “no free lunch” Rule
• Assume that virtually all tangible and intangible objects are owned
by someone unless there is a specific declaration otherwise
12 © Prentice Hall 2011
