WHAT IS ETHICS?

PRIVACY – PART I
Chapter 2
 COMPUTER ETHICS

Outline

From Chapter 1: What is Ethics?

1.4.1 What is Ethics Anyway?
1.4.2 A Variety of Ethical Views
1.4.3 Some Important Decisions
Chapter 2: Privacy
2.1 Privacy and Computer Technology
2.1.1 Introduction
2.1.2 New Technology, New Risks
2.1.3 Terminology and Principles for Data Collection and Use
2.2 Big Brother is Watching you
2.2.1 Databases
2.2.2 The Fourth Amendment
2.2.3Video Surveillance

2 © Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS

ETHICAL ISSUES

 We consider technology from a detached

perspective. Wrong!!
 Technology is controlled by humans, they make
decisions related to:
 New products, when to release and how to use them
 Access to and use of personal information

3 © Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS

ETHICAL ISSUES (CONT.)

 Should you download movies from unauthorized

websites?
 Should you hire programmers who work at low
salaries?
 Should you install software to monitor what sites
employees visit?

4 © Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS

ETHICS

 Ethics is the study of what it means to do ‘the right

thing’.
 Ethical theory assumes that people are rational and
make free choices. Individual is responsible for
his/her actions. Always true?!
 As characteristics of human beings , reasonably
assumed as the basis of ethical theories.
 Most theories have the same goal: enhance human
dignity, peace, happiness and well-being, while
respecting our individuality.

5 © Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS

ETHICS (CONT.)

 Ethical rules, should be followed in interactions with

other people. Rules clarify our obligations and
responsibilities.
 Rules can be viewed as:
 Fundamental and universal
 Like laws of science
 Made up framework
 Like rules of a game, football for example
 Behaving ethically is often practical
 Rules work for people
 Social institutions encourage us to do the right thing.
6 © Prentice Hall 2011
 COMPUTER ETHICS

DEOTONOLOGICAL THEORIES

 Deontology: the theory or study of moral obligation

 Emphasize duty and absolute rules to be followed, whether
they lead to good or ill consequences
 One act is ethical if it complies with ethical rules
 Immanuel Kant: Principle of Universality
 Logic or reason determines rules of behavior
Actions are good if they follow from logic.
 People should not be treated as means to an end, but as ends
in themselves.
 Always wrong to lie, even in the case when a serial killer asks
for the location of his future victim!!!
7 © Prentice Hall 2011
 COMPUTER ETHICS

UTILITARIANISM

 Increase happiness, utility = what satisfies persons’

needs and values.
 John Mill: aggregate utility should be calculated
 An act is right if it tends to increase aggregate utility
and wrong if it tends to decrease it.

8 © Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS

UTILITARIANISM VARIATIONS

 Act Utilitarianism
 Calculate the impact of a single action by its net impact
 It is difficult to determine all consequences
 How do we quantify happiness?
 How can we measure utility of freedom.
 Does not recognize or respect individual rights.
 Robbing one rich person and distributing his health would be
considered a good action
 Rule Utilitarianism
 Applied to general ethical rules
 For ex killing and stealing decrease security and happiness of
all.

9 © Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS

NATURAL RIGHTS

 Let’s define a sphere of freedom in which people can

act freely according to their own judgment, without
coercive interference.
 Ethical behavior: acting in such a way that respects a
set of fundamental rights of others, such as rights to
life, liberty and property.
 Can be derived from natural behavior
 Ethical interaction involves voluntary interactions
and free made exchanges, where parties are not
coerced or deceived.

10 © Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS

ETHICAL JUDGMENTS

 Right, wrong ,okay : ethically obligatory, ethically

prohibited, or ethically acceptable.
 Negative and Positive Rights =Liberties and Claim
Rights
 Negative Rights: rights to act without interference
 Positive Rights: obligation on some people to provide
things for others
 They often conflict
 Wrong and Harm: Careless Harm does not tag a
behavior as unethical and lack of harm as unethical.
11 © Prentice Hall 2011
 COMPUTER ETHICS

ETHICAL JUDGMENTS (CONT.)

 Goals and Constraints: Distinction between Goals and actions

taken to achieve these goals.
 Preferences and Ethics: Distinction between what we
consider ethically right/wrong and what we personally
approve/disapprove.
 Law and Ethics:
 Some laws enforce ethical rules, while some others are not
consistent with them.
 Are we obliged to obey a law just because it is a law?
 New laws lag behind new technology. What are the reasons?
 Ethics fills the gap between the time when technology creates
new problems and the time when reasonable laws are passed.
12 © Prentice Hall 2011
 COMPUTER ETHICS

OUTLINE

 What is Ethics?

 Privacy and Computer Technology

 Big Brother is watching you.

13 © Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS

INTRODUCTION

 Invasion of privacy existed even before the digital age

through spies, informers, private investigators etc.
 Computer technologies have made new threats possible
and existing ones more potent.
 Understanding Risks and Problems is the first steps
toward protecting privacy.
 Three key aspects of privacy:
 Freedom from intrusion
 Control of information about oneself
 Freedom from surveillance

14 © Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS

INTRODUCTION (CONT.)

 Do we expect full privacy?

 not for someone who initiates a conversation in a public place
 if people know nothing about you they will risk when interacting
with you
 Is privacy a good thing? (it covers deception, hypocrisy and
wrongdoing)
 What are some type of data we prefer keeping private?
 Health, relationship, family issues
 Alcoholism, STDs, psychiatric treatments and suicidal attempts
 Religious beliefs and political views
 Travel plans and financial data

15 © Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS

PRIVACY THREATS

 Intentional, institutional uses of personal information

(CENSUS for example)
 Unauthorized use or release by insiders, people who
maintain the information
 Theft of information
 Inadvertent leakage of information through
negligence
 Trade-offs from our own actions

16 © Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS

NEW RISKS

 Anything we do online is recorded, at least briefly, and

linked to our computer ,if not to us.
 With the huge amount of storage available, companies,
organizations and governments save huge amounts of
data.
 People often are not aware that information about them
and their activities is being collected and saved.
 Leaks happen, the presence of data is a risk.
 A collection of many small items of information can give
a detailed picture of a person’s life.
17 © Prentice Hall 2011
 COMPUTER ETHICS

NEW RISKS (CONT.)

 Re-identification has become easier.

 The government sometimes asks personal data of
customers from businesses.
 Information on a public website can be found by
everyone.
 Once data goes into internet, it will stay there for a long
time.
 Data collected for one purpose is used for another one.
 We cannot directly protect information about us. We
must rely on businesses and organizations to do it.
18 © Prentice Hall 2011
 COMPUTER ETHICS
EXAMPLE: SEARCH QUERY
 When someone enters a phrase in a S.E, he expects that the phrase is gone:
like a friend conversation or phone call. True?!
 Search Engines collect many terabytes of data daily. Few years ago it would
be to impractical to store all of them. Not any more!
 Do S.E need these data?
 Yes, to improve their search algorithms
 Who else? Federal Gov.
 Fed.gov. presented Google with a subpoena for 2 months of user search
queries
 Google and many privacy advocates protested
 Against company’s permission, one employee put the search query data
on a website for technology researchers.
 It was easy to re-identify people based on their queries
 AOL removed the data, but it had been copied several times

19 © Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
DATA COLLECTION AND USE
 Invisible information gathering collection of personal information about
someone without the person’s knowledge
 ISP-s and websites can easily do that
 Even when we know they gather information, we do not know exactly what
information
 Data recorders in cars do gather information invisibly.
 Cookies: files a website stores on each visitor’s computer.
 Help companies provide personal customer service
 Supermarket club cards
 Now people are aware they are trading some privacy for discounts
 Customer contracts or policy statements inform customers, members and
subscribers about a business or website policy. Do people read them?
 Huge privacy impacts from automated systems which collect data unobviously

20 © Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
DATA COLLECTION AND USE (CONT.)
 Secondary Use
 Use of information for a purpose other than the one it was supplied.
 Data Mining
 Searching and Analyzing masses of data to find patterns and develop
new information or knowledge.
 Computer Matching
 Combining and comparing information from different databases, often
using an SSN to match records.
 Computer Profiling
 Analyzing data to determine characteristics of people most likely to
engage in certain behavior.

21 © Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
PRINCIPLES FOR DATA COLLECTION AND USE
 1st principle for ethical treatment: informed consent
 People vary in how much they value privacy
 Based on their attitude to privacy, the can decide of whether to
interact with the organization or not
 2nd: Some control on secondary uses
 Opt-out/opt-in policies
 Advocates argue for an opt-in policy for all secondary uses.
 A policy of destroying data no longer needed protects privacy
 Both public and private sectors need strong sanctions against
employees who release information with no authorization.

22 © Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
PRIVACY PRINCIPLE
 Inform people when personally identifiable information about them is
collected. what is collected and how it will be used.
 Collect only the data needed.
 Offer a way for people to Opt out from mailing lists, advertising, transfer
of their data 10 other parties and other secondary uses.
 Provide stronger protection for sensitive data, for example, an option
policy for disclosure of medical data.
 Keep data only as long as needed.
 Maintain accuracy of data. Where appropriate and reasonable,
 provide a way for people to access and correct data stored about them.
 Protect security of data (from theft and from accidental leaks).
 Develop policies for responding to law enforcement requests for data.

© Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
RE-CONSIDERING SEARCH QUERIES
 Advocates want to restrict S.E-s from collecting and storing
data in such a way that allows re-identification. Not easy to
make the difference!
 Informed consent: S.E-s are used without registration
 No direct link to statement about data collection
 S.E-s are businesses. It is acceptable that they will use some
data to improve themselves.
 It is not clear how long they keep the data.

© Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS

OUTLINE

 What is Ethics?

 Privacy and Computer Technology

 Big Brother is watching you.

25 © Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
GOVERNMENTS’ ACCESS TO INFORMATION
 Government agencies maintain thousands of databases
containing personal information.
 Tax records, medical records, marriage & divorce, property
ownership, welfare records, school records, voter registration,
applications for grant and loan programs ,professional and
trade licenses, bankruptcy records, arrest records etc.
 They ask/order businesses for customers’ information
 They buy information from information resellers.
 Aim: determine eligibility for financial aid, detect fraud,
collect taxes, prevent terrorism, catch lawbreakers etc.
 Governments are coercive by nature: they can arrest people,
jail them and seize their assets.

© Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
GOVERNMENTS’ ACCESS TO INFORMATION

 Privacy Act 1974: main law about government’s use

of personal data
 Response to government abuses of data
 GAO: watchdog agency, continuously discovers lack
of compliance.
 In 2005 the GAO reported that the IRS, FBI, the State
Department and other agencies that use data mining
to detect fraud or terrorism did nor comply with all
rules for collecting information on citizens.

© Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
GOVERNMENTS’ ACCESS TO INFORMATION

 IRS: major secondary user of personal information

 Matches tax data with a variety of other records like
vehicle registration, professional license records,
database of suspicious transactions.
 Each year, employees of IRS are investigated for
unauthorized snooping in people’s tax files.

© Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
GOVERNMENTS’ ACCESS TO INFORMATION

 Many gov. agencies outsource collection of

information it would be controversial and illegal to
collect themselves. Choice
Point: big company
 The Privacy Act did not anticipate the huge amount
of info governments can buy. (??!!)

© Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
EXAMPLE: TRACKING COLLEGE STUDENTS
 Department of Education proposed establishing a database to
contain records of any student enrolled in a college or university
in USA.
 Benefits
 Evaluate federal student aid programs
 Provide accurate data on graduation rates and college costs
 Privacy Risks
 Government will find new uses of data (such as investigating
criminal behavior of students or military recruiting)
 Ideal target for identity thieves
 Leaks are possible and likely

Questions: Is it worth it? Are there any other methods, no so coercive?

© Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
BURDEN OF PROOF AND ‘FISHING EXPEDITIONS’
 Police used to start from a crime and investigate
 Now they can start by looking for behavior in large amounts
of data, replacing the presumption of innocence with that of
guilt.
 Innocent people are subject to embarrassing searches and
investigations.
 On the other hand, crimes are more complex and easily
hidden.

© Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
DATA MINING AND COMPUTER MATCHING
TO FIGHT TERRORISM

 Before attacks on US in 2011, law enforcement agencies

lobbied for increased powers that conflicted with privacy.
 After September 2011, people accepted some intrusion in
their personal data such as airport searches, in exchange of
security.
 CAPPS(Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System)
gave governments access to passenger information in airline
databases.

© Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

 Is the information collected accurate and useful?

 Will less intrusive means accomplish the same results?
 Will the system inconvenience ordinary people while being
easy for criminals to thwart?
 Once high tech devices and laws for more intrusive
surveillance are in place, will we able to remove these threats
to privacy and freedom after threat recedes?

© Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
THE FOURTH AMANDMENT, EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGIES

 Weakening the Fourth Amendment

 It sets limits on the government’s right to legally search
citizens’ homes and businesses and seize documents.
 Government should have probable cause and good
evidence to support the search.
 Two key problems from technology:
 Personal info is not safe in our homes, offices of
doctors and financial advisers.
Government can search even without citizens’
awareness.

© Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
THE FOURTH AMANDMENT, EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGIES

 Automated Toll Collection

 Toll road operators store every kind of travel
information, which can be misused by governments
and marketers.
 A judge ruled that police could get such info without a
court order, because movement is in public view, and
one does not have reasonable expectation that
information about his/her travel is private, therefore
4th Amendment does not apply. Discuss!!!

© Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
THE FOURTH AMANDMENT, EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGIES

 Noninvasive but deeply revealing searches

 Technologies that can search our homes or vehicles
without police physically entering.
 Devices that can search our bodies beneath our
clothes from a distance without our knowledge.
 Satellite Imaging
 Check if people grow illegal plants
 Check if there are non-allowed changes to house
exteriors.
 Should 4th Amendment prohibit it?
 X-Ray machines at airports
 ACLU describers it as ‘virtual strip search’
© Prentice Hall 2011
 COMPUTER ETHICS
THE FOURTH AMANDMENT, EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGIES

 Supreme Court Decisions and expectation of privacy

 In 1928 Supreme Court allowed wiretaps bcs 4th
Amendment applied only to physical intrusion
 In 1967, it reversed its position stating that it applied
to conversations too.
 If law reduces actual expectations of privacy by actions
‘alien’ to well recognized
 Fourth Amendment freedoms, this should not reduce
Fourth Amendment protection.
 In 1976 Supreme Court ruled that if we share
information with businesses such as banks, we have no
reasonable expectation of privacy for that information.
© Prentice Hall 2011
 COMPUTER ETHICS
THE USA PATRIOT ACT AND NATIONAL SECURITY LETTERS

 Passed in 2001, very controversial

 Before it passed, FBI could obtain various kinds of records (calls, emails
etc) without any court order, just with a National Security Letter (NSL).
 Only certain senior FBI officials could issue NSL-s.
 Patriot Act expanded FBI’s rights to issue NSL-s, by allowing the issuance
right to any field officer. It expanded the kind of information FBI would get
with an NSL.
 Recipients of an NSL are prohibited by telling any other person rather
than their lawyer.
 Level of secrecy and lack of court review present opportunities for abuse.
2003-2005 report found "widespread and serious misuse" of the FBIs
national security letter authorities

© Prentice Hall 2011

 COMPUTER ETHICS
VIDEO SURVEILLANCE

 Cameras + Face recognition systems raise privacy issues.

 Tampa, Florida Police used a computer system to scan faces of 100.000
fans and employees who entered 2001 SuperBowl.
 People were not told they were scanned.
 In two years, the system did not recognize anyone that the police was
looking for.
 Occasionally identified innocent people as wanted.
 Early 2000’s, face recognition systems accuracy < 50%.
 It is estimated that there are 4 million cameras in Britain, many outdoors.
 Study found abuse of operators of surveillance cameras.
 There is a clear need for control, limits and guidelines.
 Should people be informed about where and how cameras are used?
© Prentice Hall 2011