Computer ethics today is rapidly evolving into a broader and even more important field, which might reasonably be called “global information ethics”. Global networks like the Internet and especially the world-wide-web are connecting people all over the earth. As Krystyna Gorniak-Kocikowska perceptively notes in her paper, “The Computer Revolution and the Problem of Global Ethics” [Gorniak-Kocikowska, 1996], for the first time in history, efforts to develop mutually agreed standards of conduct, and efforts to advance and defend human values, are being made in a truly global context. So, for the first time in the history of the earth, ethics and values will be debated and transformed in a context that is not limited to a particular geographic region, or constrained by a specific religion or culture. This may very well be one of the most important social developments in history. Consider just a few of the global issues:
Global Laws
If computer users in the United States, for example, wish to protect their freedom of speech on the internet, whose laws apply? Nearly two hundred countries are already interconnected by the internet, so the United States Constitution (with its First Amendment protection for freedom of speech) is just a “local law” on the internet — it does not apply to the rest of the world. How can issues like freedom of speech, control of “pornography”, protection of intellectual property, invasions of privacy, and many others to be governed by law when so many countries are involved? If a citizen in a European country, for example, has internet dealings with someone in a far-away land, and the government of that land considers those dealings to be illegal, can the European be tried by the courts in the far-away country?Global Cyberbusiness
The world is very close to having technology that can provide electronic privacy and security on the internet sufficient to safely conduct international business transactions. Once this technology is in place, there will be a rapid expansion of global “cyberbusiness”. Nations with a technological infrastructure already in place will enjoy rapid economic growth, while the rest of the world lags behind. What will be the political and economic fallout from rapid growth of global cyberbusiness? Will accepted business practices in one part of the world be perceived as “cheating” or “fraud” in other parts of the world? Will a few wealthy nations widen the already big gap between rich and poor? Will political and even military confrontations emerge?
Global Education
If inexpensive access to the global information net is provided to rich and poor alike — to poverty-stricken people in ghettos, to poor nations in the “third world”, etc. — for the first time in history, nearly everyone on earth will have access to daily news from a free press; to texts, documents and art works from great libraries and museums of the world; to political, religious and social practices of peoples everywhere. What will be the impact of this sudden and profound “global education” upon political dictatorships, isolated communities, coherent cultures, religious practices, etc.? As great universities of the world begin to offer degrees and knowledge modules via the internet, will “lesser” universities be damaged or even forced out of business?Information Rich and Information Poor
The gap between rich and poor nations, and even between rich and poor citizens in industrialized countries, is already disturbingly wide. As educational opportunities, business and employment opportunities, medical services and many other necessities of life move more and more into cyberspace, will gaps between the rich and the poor become even worse?
Privacy and Anonymity
One of the earliest computer ethics topics to arouse public interest was privacy. For example, in the mid-1960s the American government already had created large databases of information about private citizens (census data, tax records, military service records, welfare records, and so on). In the US Congress, bills were introduced to assign a personal identification number to every citizen and then gather all the government's data about each citizen under the corresponding ID number. A public outcry about “big-brother government” caused Congress to scrap this plan and led the US President to appoint committees to recommend privacy legislation. In the early 1970s, major computer privacy laws were passed in the USA. Ever since then, computer-threatened privacy has remained as a topic of public concern. The ease and efficiency with which computers and computer networks can be used to gather, store, search, compare, retrieve and share personal information make computer technology especially threatening to anyone who wishes to keep various kinds of “sensitive” information (e.g., medical records) out of the public domain or out of the hands of those who are perceived as potential threats. During the past decade, commercialization and rapid growth of the internet; the rise of the world-wide-web; increasing “user-friendliness” and processing power of computers; and decreasing costs of computer technology have led to new privacy issues, such as data-mining, data matching, recording of “click trails” on the web, and so on.
The variety of privacy-related issues generated by computer technology has led philosophers and other thinkers to re-examine the concept of privacy itself. Since the mid-1960s, for example, a number of scholars have elaborated a theory of privacy defined as “control over personal information”. On the other hand, philosophers Moor and Tavani have argued that control of personal information is insufficient to establish or protect privacy, and “the concept of privacy itself is best defined in terms of restricted access, not control”. In addition, Nissenbaum has argued that there is even a sense of privacy in public spaces, or circumstances “other than the intimate.” An adequate definition of privacy, therefore, must take account of “privacy in public”. As computer technology rapidly advances — creating ever new possibilities for compiling, storing, accessing and analyzing information — philosophical debates about the meaning of “privacy” will likely continue.
Questions of anonymity on the internet are sometimes discussed in the same context with questions of privacy and the internet, because anonymity can provide many of the same benefits as privacy. For example, if someone is using the internet to obtain medical or psychological counseling, or to discuss sensitive topics (for example, AIDS, abortion, gay rights, venereal disease, political dissent), anonymity can afford protection similar to that of privacy. Similarly, both anonymity and privacy on the internet can be helpful in preserving human values such as security, mental health, self-fulfillment and peace of mind. Unfortunately, privacy and anonymity also can be exploited to facilitate unwanted and undesirable computer-aided activities in cyberspace, such as money laundering, drug trading, terrorism, or preying upon the vulnerable
Professional Responsibility
Computer professionals have specialized knowledge and often have positions with authority and respect in the community. For this reason, they are able to have a significant impact upon the world, including many of the things that people value. Along with such power to change the world comes the duty to exercise that power responsibly. Computer professionals find themselves in a variety of professional relationships with other people, including:
employer — employee
client — professional
professional — professional
society — professional
These relationships involve a diversity of interests, and sometimes these interests can come into conflict with each other. Responsible computer professionals, therefore, will be aware of possible conflicts of interest and try to avoid them.
Professional organizations in the USA, like the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), have established codes of ethics, curriculum guidelines and accreditation requirements to help computer professionals understand and manage ethical responsibilities. For example, in 1991 a Joint Curriculum Task Force of the ACM and IEEE adopted a set of guidelines (“Curriculum 1991”) for college programs in computer science. The guidelines say that a significant component of computer ethics (in the broad sense) should be included in undergraduate education in computer science [Turner, 1991].
In addition, both the ACM and IEEE have adopted Codes of Ethics for their members. The most recent ACM Code (1992), for example, includes “general moral imperatives”, such as “avoid harm to others” and “be honest and trustworthy”. And also included are “more specific professional responsibilities” like “acquire and maintain professional competence” and “know and respect existing laws pertaining to professional work.” The IEEE Code of Ethics (1990) includes such principles as “avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest whenever possible” and “be honest and realistic in stating claims or estimates based on available data.”
The Accreditation Board for Engineering Technologies (ABET) has long required an ethics component in the computer engineering curriculum. And in 1991, the Computer Sciences Accreditation Commission/Computer Sciences Accreditation Board (CSAC/CSAB) also adopted the requirement that a significant component of computer ethics be included in any computer sciences degree granting program that is nationally accredited .
It is clear that professional organizations in computer science recognize and insist upon standards of professional responsibility for their members.
Professional Ethics and Computer Ethics
In the early 1990s, a different emphasis within computer ethics was advocated by Donald Gotterbarn. He believed that computer ethics should be seen as a professional ethics devoted to the development and advancement of standards of good practice and codes of conduct for computing professionals. Thus, in 1991, in the article “Computer Ethics: Responsibility Regained”, Gotterbarn said:
There is little attention paid to the domain of professional ethics — the values that guide the day-to-day activities of computing professionals in their role as professionals. By computing professional I mean anyone involved in the design and development of computer artifacts. … The ethical decisions made during the development of these artifacts have a direct relationship to many of the issues discussed under the broader concept of computer ethics. (Gotterbarn, 1991)
Throughout the 1990s, with this aspect of computer ethics in mind, Gotterbarn worked with other professional-ethics advocates (for example, Keith Miller, Dianne Martin, Chuck Huff and Simon Rogerson) in a variety of projects to advance professional responsibility among computer practitioners. Even before 1991, Gotterbarn had been part of a committee of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) to create the third version of that organization's “Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct” (adopted by the ACM in 1992, see Anderson, et al., 1993). Later, Gotterbarn and colleagues in the ACM and the Computer Society of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) developed licensing standards for software engineers. In addition, Gotterbarn headed a joint taskforce of the IEEE and ACM to create the “Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice”.
In the late 1990s, Gotterbarn created the Software Engineering Ethics Research Institute (SEERI) at East Tennessee State University ; and in the early 2000s, together with Simon Rogerson, he developed a computer program called SoDIS (Software Development Impact Statements) to assist individuals, companies and organizations in the preparation of ethical “stakeholder analyses” for determining likely ethical impacts of software development projects (Gotterbarn and Rogerson, 2005). These and many other projects focused attention upon professional responsibility and advanced the professionalization and ethical maturation of computing practitioners.
Reasons for the Importance of Computer Ethics
James Moor believes there are three main reasons for society's high level of interest in computer ethics. He call these reasons logical malleability, the transformation factor, and the invisibility factor.
Logical Malleability By logical malleability Moor means the ability to program the computer to do practically anything you want it to do. The computer performs exactly as instructed by the programmer. It is this logical malleability that frightens society. But society is not really fearful of the computer. Rather, it is fearful of the people behind the computer, who are telling it what to do.
The Invisibility Factor The third reason for society's interest in computer ethics is because it views the computer as a black box. All of the computer's internal operations are hidden from view. Invisibility of internal operations provides the opportunity for invisible programming values, invisible complex calculations, and invisible abuse.
• Invisible programming values are those routines that the programmer codes into the program that may or may not produce the processing that the user desires. During the course of writing a program, the programmer must make a series of value judgments as to how the program should accomplish its purpose. This is not a malicious act on the part of the programmer but, rather, a lack of understanding. A good example of the impact that invisible programming values can have is the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster. The plant operators had been trained in handling emergencies by using a mathematical model. The model was designed to simulate single malfunctions occurring alone. What happened, however, was that multiple malfunctions occurred simultaneously. The inability of the computer to give the users what they needed was due to this invisibility factor.
• Invisible complex calculations take the form of programs that are so complex that users do not understand them. A manager uses such a program with no idea of how it is performing its calculations.
• Invisible abuse includes intentional acts that cross legal as well as ethical boundaries. All acts of computer crime fall into this category, as do such unethical acts as invasion of individuals' right to privacy and surveillance.
Society is, therefore, very concerned about the computer -- how it can be programmed to do practically anything, how it is changing many of the ways that we do things, and the fact that what it does is basically invisible. Society expects business to be guided by computer ethics and thereby put these concerns to rest.
