Cyberethics


Cyberethics is the philosophic study of ethics pertaining to computers, encompassing user behavior and what computers are programmed to do, and how this affects individuals and society. For years, various governments have enacted regulations while organizations have defined policies about cyberethics.

Privacy history

In the late 19th century, the invention of cameras spurred similar ethical debates as the internet does today. During a seminar of Harvard Law Review in 1890, Warren and Brandeis defined privacy from an ethical and moral point of view to be:
Over 100 years later, the internet and proliferation of private data through governments and ecommerce is an area which requires a new round of ethical debate involving a person's privacy.
Privacy can be decomposed to the limitation of others' access to an individual with "three elements of secrecy, anonymity, and solitude."
Anonymity refers to the individual's right to protection from undesired attention. Solitude refers to the lack of physical proximity of an individual to others. Secrecy refers to the protection of personalized information from being freely distributed.
Individuals surrender private information when conducting transactions and registering for services. Ethical business practice protects the privacy of their customers by securing information which may contribute to the loss of secrecy, anonymity, and solitude. Credit card information, social security numbers, phone numbers, mothers' maiden names, addresses and phone numbers freely collected and shared over the internet may lead to a loss of Privacy.
Fraud and impersonation are some of the malicious activities that occur due to the direct or indirect abuse of private information. Identity theft is rising rapidly due to the availability of private information in the internet. For instance, seven million Americans fell victim to identity theft in 2002, and nearly 12 million Americans were victims of identity theft in 2011 making it the fastest growing crime in the United States.
Public records search engines and databases are the main culprits contributing to the rise of cybercrime.
Listed below are a few recommendations to restrict online databases from proliferating sensitive personnel information.
  1. Exclude sensitive unique identifiers from database records such as social security numbers, birth dates, hometown and mothers' maiden names.
  2. Exclude phone numbers that are normally unlisted.
  3. Clear provision of a method which allows people to have their names removed from a database.
  4. Banning the reverse social security number lookup services.

    Private collection

Data warehouses are used today to collect and store huge amounts of personal data and consumer transactions. These facilities can preserve large volumes of consumer information for an indefinite amount of time. Some of the key architectures contributing to the erosion of privacy include databases, cookies and spyware.
Some may argue that data warehouses are supposed to stand alone and be protected. However, the fact is enough personal information can be gathered from corporate websites and social networking sites to initiate a reverse lookup. Therefore, is it not important to address some of the ethical issues regarding how protected data ends up in the public domain?
As a result, identity theft protection businesses are on the rise. Companies such as LifeLock and JPMorgan Chase have begun to capitalize on selling identity theft protection insurance.

Property

Ethical debate has long included the concept of property. This concept has created many clashes in the world of cyberethics. One philosophy of the internet is centered around the freedom of information. The controversy over ownership occurs when the property of information is infringed upon or uncertain.

Intellectual property rights

The ever-increasing speed of the internet and the emergence of compression technology, such as mp3 opened the doors to Peer-to-peer file sharing, a technology that allowed users to anonymously transfer files to each other, previously seen on programs such as Napster or now seen through communications protocol such as BitTorrent. Much of this, however, was copyrighted music and illegal to transfer to other users. Whether it is ethical to transfer copyrighted media is another question.
Proponents of unrestricted file sharing point out how file sharing has given people broader and faster access to media, has increased exposure to new artists, and has reduced the costs of transferring media. Supporters of restrictions on file sharing argue that we must protect the income of our artists and other people who work to create our media. This argument is partially answered by pointing to the small proportion of money artists receive from the legitimate sale of media.
We also see a similar debate over intellectual property rights in respect to software ownership. The two opposing views are for closed source software distributed under restrictive licenses or for free and open source software.
The argument can be made that restrictions are required because companies would not invest weeks and months in development if there were no incentive for revenue generated from sales and licensing fees. A counter argument to this is that standing on shoulders of giants is far cheaper when the giants do not hold IP rights. Some proponents for open source believe that all programs should be available to anyone who wants to study them.

Digital rights management (DRM)

With the introduction of digital rights management software, new issues are raised over whether the subverting of DRM is ethical. Some champion the hackers of DRM as defenders of users' rights, allowing the blind to make audio books of PDFs they receive, allowing people to burn music they have legitimately bought to CD or to transfer it to a new computer. Others see this as nothing but simply a violation of the rights of the intellectual property holders, opening the door to uncompensated use of copyrighted media. Another ethical issue concerning DRMs involves the way these systems could undermine the fair use provisions of the copyright laws. The reason is that these allow content providers to choose who can view or listen to their materials making the discrimination against certain groups possible. In addition, the level of control given to content providers could lead to the invasion of user privacy since the system is able to keep tabs on the personal information and activities of users who access their materials. In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act reinforces this aspect to DRM technology, particularly in the way the flow of information is controlled by content providers. Programs or any technologies that attempt to circumvent DRM controls are in violation of one of its provisions.

Accessibility, censorship and filtering

Accessibility, censorship and filtering bring up many ethical issues that have several branches in cyberethics. Many questions have arisen which continue to challenge our understanding of privacy, security and our participation in society. Throughout the centuries mechanisms have been constructed in the name of protection and security. Today the applications are in the form of software that filters domains and content so that they may not be easily accessed or obtained without elaborate circumvention or on a personal and business level through free or content-control software. Internet censorship and filtering are used to control or suppress the publishing or accessing of information. The legal issues are similar to offline censorship and filtering. The same arguments that apply to offline censorship and filtering apply to online censorship and filtering; whether people are better off with free access to information or should be protected from what is considered by a governing body as harmful, indecent or illicit. The fear of access by minors drives much of the concern and many online advocate groups have sprung up to raise awareness and of controlling the accessibility of minors to the internet.
Censorship and filtering occurs on small to large scales, whether it be a company restricting their employees' access to cyberspace by blocking certain websites which are deemed as relevant only to personal usage and therefore damaging to productivity or on a larger scale where a government creates large firewalls which censor and filter access to certain information available online frequently from outside their country to their citizens and anyone within their borders. One of the most famous examples of a country controlling access is the Golden Shield Project, also referred to as the Great Firewall of China, a censorship and surveillance project set up and operated by the People's Republic of China. Another instance is the 2000 case of the League Against Racism and Antisemitism, French Union of Jewish Students, vs. Yahoo! Inc and Yahoo! France, where the French Court declared that "access by French Internet users to the auction website containing Nazi objects constituted a contravention of French law and an offence to the 'collective memory' of the country and that the simple act of displaying such objects in France constitutes a violation of the Article R645-1 of the Penal Code and is therefore considered as a threat to internal public order."
Since the French judicial ruling many websites must abide by the rules of the countries in which they are accessible.

Freedom of information

Freedom of information, that is the freedom of speech as well as the freedom to seek, obtain and impart information brings up the question of who or what, has the jurisdiction in cyberspace. The right of freedom of information is commonly subject to limitations dependent upon the country, society and culture concerned.
Generally there are three standpoints on the issue as it relates to the internet. First is the argument that the internet is a form of media, put out and accessed by citizens of governments and therefore should be regulated by each individual government within the borders of their respective jurisdictions. Second, is that, "Governments of the Industrial World... have no sovereignty ... We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one,... You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear."
A third party believes that the internet supersedes all tangible borders such as the borders of countries, authority should be given to an international body since what is legal in one country may be against the law in another.

Digital divide

An issue specific to the ethical issues of the freedom of information is what is known as the digital divide. This refers to the unequal socio-economic divide between those who had access to digital and information technology, such as cyberspace, and those who have had limited or no access at all. This gap of access between countries or regions of the world is called the global digital divide.

Sexuality and pornography

Sexuality in terms of sexual orientation, infidelity, sex with or between minors, public display and pornography have always stirred ethical controversy. These issues are reflected online to varying degrees. In terms of its resonance, the historical development of the online pornography industry and user-generated content have been the studied by media academics. One of the largest cyberethical debates is over the regulation, distribution and accessibility of pornography online. Hardcore pornographic material is generally controlled by governments with laws regarding how old one has to be to obtain it and what forms are acceptable or not. The availability of pornography online calls into question jurisdiction as well as brings up the problem of regulation in particular over child pornography, which is illegal in most countries, as well as pornography involving violence or animals, which is restricted within most countries.

Gambling

Gambling is often a topic in ethical debate as some view it as inherently wrong and support prohibition or controls while others advocate no legal. "Between these extremes lies a multitude of opinions on what types of gambling the government should permit and where it should be allowed to take place. Discussion of gambling forces public policy makers to deal with issues as diverse as addiction, tribal rights, taxation, senior living, professional and college sports, organized crime, neurobiology, suicide, divorce, and religion."
Due to its controversy, gambling is either banned or heavily controlled on local or national levels. The accessibility of the internet and its ability to cross geographic-borders have led to illegal online gambling, often offshore operations. Over the years online gambling, both legal and illegal, has grown exponentially which has led to difficulties in regulation. This enormous growth has even called into question by some the ethical place of gambling online.

Related organizations

The following organizations are of notable interest in cyberethics debates:
Four notable examples of ethics codes for IT professionals are listed below:

RFC 1087

In January 1989, the Internet Architecture Board in RFC 1087 defines an activity as unethical and unacceptable if it:
  1. Seeks to gain unauthorized access to the resources of the Internet.
  2. Wastes resources through such actions.
  3. Destroys the integrity of computer-based information, or
  4. Compromises the privacy of users.

    The Code of Fair Information Practices

The Code of Fair Information Practices is based on five principles outlining the requirements for records keeping systems. This requirement was implemented in 1973 by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
  1. There must be no personal data record-keeping systems whose very existence is secret.
  2. There must be a way for a person to find out what information about the person is in a record and how it is used.
  3. There must be a way for a person to prevent information about the person that was obtained for one purpose from being used or made available for other purposes without the person's consent.
  4. There must be a way for a person to correct or amend a record of identifiable information about the person.
  5. Any organization creating, maintaining, using, or disseminating records of identifiable personal data must assure the reliability of the data for their intended use and must take precautions to prevent misuses of the data.

    Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics

The ethical values as defined in 1992 by the Computer Ethics Institute; a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advance technology by ethical means, lists these rules as a guide to computer 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 computer 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 are writing or the system you are designing.
  10. Thou shalt always use a computer in ways that ensure consideration and respect for your fellow humans.

    (ISC)² Code of Ethics

, a professional association which seeks to inspire a safe and secure cyber world, has further defined its own code of ethics. The code is based on four canons, under a general preamble.
Code of Ethics Preamble:
The safety and welfare of society and the common good, duty to our principles, and to each other, requires that we adhere, and be seen to adhere, to the highest ethical standards of behavior.
Therefore, strict adherence to this Code is a condition of certification.
Code of Ethics Canons:

Canon One: Protect society, the common good, necessary public trust and confidence, and the infrastructure.
Canon Two: Act honorably, honestly, justly, responsibly, and legally.
Canon Three: Provide diligent and competent service to principles.
Canon Four: Advance and protect the profession.