In: Computer Science
What are the SIX Ethical dilemmas and the Analysis that are related to social, legal and ethical issues of the privacy on web.
You are expected to:
(i) Analyze these ethical dilemmas, evaluate their importance, research and understand the viewpoints of multiple stakeholders.
(ii) Provide divergent view when examining the ethical dilemmas from a perspective of a specific stakeholders
.(iii) Provide an analyze some of the debates that occurred among the stakeholders.
In this solution we discuss about below key topics
Ethical dilemma
An ethical dilemma describes a conflict between two morally correct courses of action. There is a conflict between values or principles. The dilemma is that you would be doing something right and wrong at the same time, and by taking one right course you will negate the other right course
An ethical dilemma (ethical paradox or moral dilemma) is a problem in the decision-making process between two possible options, neither of which is absolutely acceptable from an ethical perspective.
Ethical dilemmas are extremely complicated challenges that cannot be easily solved. Therefore, the ability to find the optimal solution in such situations is critical to everyone.
How to Solve an Ethical
Dilemma?
The biggest challenge of an ethical dilemma is that it does not offer an obvious solution that would comply with ethics al norms. Throughout the history of humanity, people have faced such dilemmas, and philosophers aimed and worked to find solutions to them.
Approaches to solve an ethical dilemma are:
Some examples of ethical dilemma examples are:
Three common types of Ethical dilemmas – Methods of resolution are:
Stepwise approach in decision-making process
ISSUES concept of Ethical decision-making approach
This process is captured in the acronym ISSUES
Identify the Ethical Issue and Decision-making Process:
· Engage in reflective practice and consider your "gut reaction" to the situation: What preconceptions and judgements might you bring to the situation? What are your loyalties and intuitions? Where do these come from?
· State the conflict or dilemma as you currently see it: Try to articulate the issue in one sentence. If you can’t, it may be better to break the problem down into two questions or issues and tackle them one at a time. Example of ethics question: “Given (state uncertainty or conflict about values), what decisions or actions are ethically justifiable?”
· Determine best process for decision-making: How urgent is the situation? How can stakeholders best be engaged? Who ultimately has decision-making authority? Stakeholders deserve to know and understand how and why a decision that affects them was made. It is important to remember that transparency is not just about the transmission of information; it is also about keeping people engaged constructively in the process. In the rare cases where confidentiality is ethically necessary, the process should still be made as transparent as possible while identifying the confidentiality constraints explicitly.
Study the facts:
· In any complex situation, different parties will have different views of the facts of the situation. Ideally, all stakeholders should have a chance to present their views to one another in a respectful, open environment, considering both the context of the situation and the evidence.
· Stakeholder Perspectives: all stakeholders should have an opportunity to voice their views about the issue (staff, community, patients, partners, etc.)
· Evidence: include risks and benefits to the organisation and patients; impact of situation on quality or services; best practices, etc.
· Contextual Features: internal and external directives and partnerships (i.e. academic commitments); legal considerations (i.e. agreements, legislation, etc.); past cases; cultural or environmental issues (i.e. staff morale); public opinion
· Resource Implications: human and financial
Select Reasonable Options:
· Always look for more than two. Try brainstorming options without evaluating at first, or start by describing your “ideal” solution and work backwards to options that are more realistic given the context.
Understand Values & Duties:
· Which values are in conflict? Where values may be compromised, what can you do to minimise the negative impact?
· Are there professional or legal obligations or standards to consider?
· Consider how various options reflect or support the duties, principles and values
Evaluate & Justify Options:
· For each option consider: What are the possible harms to various stakeholders?
· What are the probable benefits to various stakeholders?
· What will be the impact on staff, our mission and quality of care?
· Which duties, principles and values support this option?
· What if everyone in these circumstances did this? (Does this set a good example? Are we making it easier or harder for others to do the right thing?)
· Does it meet Organisational Justice requirements: procedural justice, distributive justice, relational justice?
· Does your solution answer the question you described above?
· Choose the option with the best consequences overall and closest alignment with key duties, principles and values
· Clearly state reasons for the decision. Remember that you are not aiming at “the perfect” choice, but a good and defensible choice under the circumstances.
· Anticipate how you might answer criticisms.
Sustain & Review the Plan:
· Accepting responsibility for an ethical choice means ensuring that the decision made is enacted by articulating a clear plan of action, communicating it to stakeholders appropriately and addressing systems that might have contributed to the problem. It also means accepting the possibility that you might be wrong or that you may need to revise your decision in light of new information or changing circumstances. In reviewing the plan consider:
· How well did the decision-making process work?
· Was the decision carried out?
· Was the result satisfactory?
· Does this situation point to a systems problem (e.g. policy gap)?
· What lessons were learned from the situation?
· How will the team respond to similar situations in the future?
· Are there opportunities to appeal or modify the decision based on new information?
· Have new questions emerged? (If so, do they require similar deliberation?)
· Is there a formal evaluation plan in place to monitor progress, good practices and opportunities for improvement?
Ethical Dilemmas in Business
Ethical dilemmas are especially significant in professional life, as they frequently occur in the workplace. Some companies and professional organizations (e.g., CFA) adhere to their own codes of conduct and ethical standards. Violation of the standards may lead to disciplinary sanctions.
Almost every aspect of business can become a possible ground for ethical dilemmas. It may include relationships with co-workers, management, clients, and business partners.
People’s inability to determine the optimal solution to such dilemmas in a professional setting may result in serious consequences for businesses and organizations. The situation may be common in companies that value results the most.
In order to solve ethical problems, companies and organizations should develop strict ethical standards for their employees. Every company must demonstrate its concerns regarding the ethical norms within the organization. In addition, companies may provide ethical training for their employees.
Six ethical dilemas of any professional are :
Common ethical dilemmas among individuals
Five potential legal risks that can occur where a business uses social media
Issue related to Privacy on Web
Information security professionals are in urgent need of effective and pragmatic guidance for developing data privacy protection standards for two major reasons.
Internet privacy is a major concern today. It has raised certain ethical issues. Advertisers track your web activities and intrude on your privacy. Your online transactions, emails, and social networking profiles are scanned, thus invading your online privacy.
Invasion of Internet privacy can be avoided with the strict implementation of privacy laws. But every act cannot be classified as legal or illegal. It’s ethics that draw the line between ensuring network security and breaching user privacy.
✦ When sharing personal or confidential information through email, transactions occur through the email server, which means your information does not remain confidential in the exact sense of the term.
✦ When shopping online, you share your credit card number or bank account details on the shopping portal. There is a potential of these details being used unethically or for fraudulent purposes.
✦ Online retailers collect data about your online behavior and use it in user profiling. Their intention is to make shopping recommendations and offers that suit your taste and budget.
✦ While carrying out banking transactions online, you share details about your finances with the bank. Malicious users may obtain this information by unethical means and use it to their advantage. For the same reason, some are skeptical about banking or shopping online.
✦ Your credit card or account information reveals your lifestyle choices, and your travel and other expenses.
✦ When you share personal details or financial records with organizations online, you expect your details to be protected by them. Even after the organization knows of a data security breach, there is no legal binding on them to let the users know of the same. It would be ethical on their part to notify the users of the breach as soon as they know of it.
✦ The other important ethical issue in Internet privacy is whether the websites that gather personally identifiable information from the users should store or share it
Modes of Data Privacy on web
Government & other agencies role in Data privacy
✦ The government holds a lot of important data about people. If the security of this data is compromised, it can threaten national security. Federal websites need to maintain high standards of privacy considering that they store such large amounts of critical information.
✦ The degree of access the government has to citizens’ personal records raises ethical issues in information privacy. Using the records responsibly and maintaining their confidentiality is a prime duty of the government agencies.
✦ There are many other organizations that store personal details and other critical information of their users. They include banks that have financial records of account holders, medical facilities that have medical records and other details of individuals, educational institutes that maintain personal and educational details of students, and companies that maintain employee records.
✦ With the online storage of these details comes the risk of security breach. Not letting this information fall in the wrong hands requires strict security measures and a strong ethic.
✦ It is the duty of these agencies to take measures against the manipulation or unethical use of these records. Those involved in managing this information should be moral enough to not make any illegitimate or wrong use of it.
Social networking websites role in data privacy
✦ Through status updates on social networking websites, you let everyone know of your location, and possibly some details about your personal life. Through utilities like Maps or Facebook’s Places service, you let the public know of your current location, whereby one can track you and know your whereabouts.
✦ You upload photos, your personal information, professional details, etc., onto your social networking profile. Technically, the social network owns the data you upload. This raises the ethical issue of whether these websites should store or use your information, and for what purposes. Even after an account is deleted, its details remain with the website. Do they permanently delete the records of deleted user accounts? Is the storing of records ethical?
✦ Through social networks, your personal information is made available to third-party tracking websites and advertisers.
✦ Judicial Codes of Conduct in different states put restrictions on social media interactions between attorneys and their clients, judges and lawyers, and between lawyers (or agents) from opposing parties.
✦ Social networking platforms, as also blogs and forums give the users a complete freedom of expression. It’s your moral responsibility as a user, to not make false statements or promote anything wrong.
✦ Mailing lists and forum posts are a part of search results
✦ In forums, chat rooms, communities, and blogs, you can voice your opinions on any and everything. You are entitled to your opinions, but while voicing them, are you as responsible as you would be, if you were talking face-to-face. On a social networking platform, you could be interacting with people from different backgrounds and age groups. You could be influencing them to follow something wrong (maybe unintentionally).
✦ Scientific discoveries and ongoing studies are discussed on online forums. This raises issues in research ethics pertaining to the privacy of research subjects and informed consent of those involved.
✦ Spreading the wrong information or saying something under a false name is like taking undue advantage of privacy protection on the Internet. It’s only unethical
Internet cookies role in data privacy
✦ Simply put, cookies are pieces of text sent by a server (website) to a browser and stored on your computer for future use. They are of use by the website or advertisers to track your preferences and serve you with information tailored to your needs. But cookies raise a privacy concern as they can be used by hackers too.
✦ Blocking or deleting cookies frequently, is how users can protect themselves from this potential threat. This is mostly true with HTTP cookies, but not so easy with Flash cookies and Evercookies.
✦ Flash cookies are not easily blocked. But Privacy Browsing setting can help you avoid them. Evercookies make multiple copies of themselves on your computer and are stored in different types of storage mechanisms. They store your unique identifiers, and advertisers use them to track your behavior and know your preferences. This helps them target potential customers. Evercookies can track you even after they are deleted. This raises the question of whether it is ethical to have no means for the users to block the advertisers from tracking them.
✦ Third-party cookies are used to track users across multiple websites. Advertisers use them to track your visits to different domains, thus tracking your web preferences in general. Ethical issues arise when websites do not notify you of third-party cookies being used. It can damage your trust in the website. It is recommended that websites using third-party cookies disclose the same to the users through their privacy policy.
Internet service provider role in data privacy
✦ Your internet service provider can track the IP addresses you visit. This enables the ISPs to know the websites you browse. Also, they can identify whether you are sending an email or visiting a web page, which is to say, they can track the type of Internet activity. They log the information such as IP addresses and port numbers for a limited period.
✦ ISPs do the tracking with the purpose of monitoring illegal downloads or sharing of copyrighted material, so that the concerned media companies can be informed of the guilty.
✦ Furthermore, your browsing habits and website preferences are of great use to the advertisers for attracting you by serving you advertisements that suit your choices.
✦ Many Internet service providers maintain copies of email messages on their servers. They are stored on the mail servers before delivery and the backups can remain with them even after the emails are deleted from the inbox. This tracking can potentially breach your privacy on the Internet.
✦ To disclose information about your Internet activity to the government or any other party, the ISP needs to have a court order saying so.
Users responsibility on data privacy
✦ One common scenario where Internet privacy is at stake, rather is put to risk by the users themselves, is when they disclose personal details on websites without much thought. Be it posting your life’s events on social networking websites or sharing personal details via emails; be it while banking online or accepting lucrative offers on the Internet; it’s you, who agrees to share personal information, thus inviting an invasion of privacy.
✦ The laws pertaining to information privacy on the web differ across countries and keep being changed or updated. As users, it is your responsibility to keep yourself abreast of these laws so as to protect yourself from privacy breaches.
✦ How often do you read the terms and conditions of websites before clicking on ‘Yes’? How often do you read the privacy policies before accepting them? Surveys reveal that most users never read the policies or terms before accepting them, thus landing themselves into trouble.
✦ Many users are not aware that privacy settings on websites can be modified (especially social networking), thus allowing them to share their details with only a select few.
✦ The effort to ensure Internet privacy should start at the user’s end. Choice of the right operating system (one with optimum security features), wise decisions on what information should or should not be disclosed when online, and learning to identify trustworthy sources from the unreliable ones, are keys to protect your privacy during Internet use.
Social , Legal or Ethical issues on Privacy on Web
Social media has become widespread in today’s society and is used in ways that shape politics, business, innovation and much more. It provides an easy platform where organisations and individuals can share news, opinions and maintain contact easily.
Social media is also the current communication medium of choice for younger generations and this provides organisations with plenty of opportunities to expand their reach and increase their business. However, there are also significant risks that come with it.
The use of social media provides organisations with both challenges and opportunities. To address these, companies need to assess the risks involved and be open about how they use social media to influence or monitor their employees and other stakeholders.
Two major factors contribute to the privacy problem on the Web:
We can classify Web users' personal information as one of three types:
Web users' privacy can be violated in different ways and with different intentions. The four major sources are:
1.Unauthorized information transfer
Personal information is increasingly viewed as an important financial asset.
2. Weak security
The Web's inherently open nature has led to situations in which individuals and organizations exploit the vulnerability of Web-based services and applications to access classified or private information.
3.Data magnets
Data magnets are techniques and tools that any party can use to collect personal data. Users might or might not be aware that their information is being collected or do not know how that information is collected. Various data-magnet techniques exist:
4. Indirectly collecting information.
Users can authorize organizations or businesses to collect some of their private information. However, their privacy can be implicitly violated if their information undergoes analysis processes that produce new knowledge about their personality, wealth, behavior, and so on.
Ethical Issues of Social Media Usage
In media industry, Social Media is the rising revolution but as well as privacy and security parameters are prime concern to the users. In media industry, as technology is growing rapidly, many ethical issues are arising with applications used by the users. In India high percentage of youth population are so much eager about the social media that they are sharing their information without knowing any privacy and security policies.
Social media can be more dangerous for youth, if they share their personal information on Social Media. Somewhere, their data is not secure. The fact is third eye of Hackers is continuously seeking you and your personal data.
Some of ethical issues on social media.
a. Privacy at risk
b. Social Media create ethical Dilemma
c. Consent.
5 following questions can be raised here:
i. who is viewing the social Media information?
ii. How is the Social Media information accessed?
iii. For what purpose is the Social Information used?
iv. What are the criteria one uses for making judgments about Social Media information?
v. What is the nature of “Relationship” in Social Media?
Few guidelines has to be followed for ethics.
a) Social Media Policy
b) Code of Ethics
c) Code of Conduct
d) Ethical Guidance
e) Privacy Policy
f) Employee policy on Personal use of Social Media
More about Data Privacy
Data privacy (or information privacy or data protection) is about access, use and collection of data, and the data subject’s legal right to the data. This refers to:
International Data privacy principles