Ethics, Morality, and Law

Ethics vs. Morality vs. Law

• Ethics: A set of beliefs about right and wrong behavior within a society.
• Morality: Shared social conventions about right and wrong that become the basis for an established consensus.
• Law: A system of rules, enforced by a set of institutions, that dictates what one can and cannot do.

Ethical Decision-Making Approaches

• Fairness Approach: Decisions can be influenced by personal bias.
• Utilitarian Approach: Measuring and comparing the values of certain benefits and costs is difficult.

Organizations

• Business Software Alliance: A trade group that represents the world’s largest software and hardware manufacturers.
• IEEE-CS: One of the oldest and largest IT professional associations, with about 85,000 members.

Unethical Acts and Practices

• Whistleblowing: An employee's effort to attract attention to a negligent, illegal, unethical, or abusive act by a company that threatens the public interest.
• Fraud: Obtaining goods, services, or property through deception or trickery.
• Misrepresentation: Misstatement or incomplete statement of a material fact.
• Bribery: Providing money, property, or favors to someone in business or government in order to obtain a business advantage.
• Doxxing: Publicly revealing someone’s private information without their consent, often leading to harassment.

Laws and Regulations

• Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA): Bank deregulation law that repealed the Glass-Steagall law.
• CAN-SPAM Act: Emails should be identified as an advertisement and include the sender’s physical postal address [this is actually false]

Online Issues

• Disinformation: Deliberately spreading false or misleading information online, often undermining public trust.
• Censorship: Restricting access to specific online content by governments or organizations, sometimes leading to overblocking.
• Hate Speech: Posting harmful or offensive content targeting specific groups or individuals based on race, gender, or beliefs.

Technology

• Web Filtering: Technology used to filter or block specific online content, often implemented in schools and workplaces.
• Anonymous Browsing: An online feature that allows users to hide their identity while posting or browsing.

Scenarios

• Wire tapping: Records electronic impulses to identify the numbers dialed for outgoing calls [This statement is actually false]
• E-discovery: Can be expensive, can reveal data of a private or personal nature, and raises many ethical issues.
• Cloud Computing: [Cloud Computing is not a business policy that permits employees to use their own mobile devices to access company computing resources and applications]
• Content Moderation: Social media platforms or online communities remove content that violates their guidelines, often leading to debates over free speech.

Constitutional Rights

• First Amendment: Guarantees freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly, and petition.
• Symbolic Speech: Includes non-verbal forms such as hand gestures, art, and flag burning, which are still protected under freedom of speech.

IT Profession

• Professionals are often quick to help each other obtain new positions but slow to criticize each other in public.
• IT user: A person who uses a hardware or software product.