Ethics And Professional Practice For ICT

Ethical Implications of the Usage of Information and Technology

Discuss about the Ethics and Professional Practice for ICT.

The use of Information and Technology has been causing various issues especially in terms of ethical concerns related to the protection of personal privacy in various terms like protection of personal and intellectual property, protection of personal information, user responsibility issues, access to information and inappropriate use of information, issues of proper licenses in terms of usage of software for various applications and piracy issues. In this article, we would explore the topic: Privacy is a perennial issue”. Privacy on internet and its usage has to be protected. The software companies should be aware of the usage of the personal information of various Users and the Government should also exercise proper control in establishing rules and policies in order to curb any additional and illegal usage of personal information on the internet.

Exploring the usage of Information and Technology involves various malpractices related to the ethics and the technological advancements. These ethical issues are increasing with an urge to be resolved. In the present times, the usage of Information and Technology has increased drastically and has been raising various ethical questions with relation to individuals and Organizations. The major ethical issues which have been on the increasing side are intrusion into the personal privacy of a person’s life, getting to know their personal information, usage of their personal passwords in relation to various transactions, invasion of personal and societal rights and value preservation.

The main cause of the issue is that the present period in which we are leading our lives involves Information and Technology arena even in the cases where we are to deal with our personal and financial transactions owing to the high end development of Information and Technology. These issues can also be owed to the increase in the knowledge of the employees and willing to work in the field of Information and Technology and people becoming more developed and open in their thinking and accepting newer technologies to deal with their lives (National Security Agency 2016).

The paradigm shift has led to newer ethical and judicial issues. Even before we deal with solving the issues of Information and Technology, we need to look into the concept of Information and Technology.

Information and Technology has a major impact on collecting and storing information which has been entered in the systems where the main ethical issue is that it stores and helps in manipulating the information and helps in providing the information simultaneously to any sources who might be trying to procure the information legally and illegally (HIPAAdvisory nd). 

Impact

The major impact of this context is that the personal information of a person becomes available to almost any source. The usage of technology monitors any transaction of a person including their personal information. Some of these areas are

• Electronic monitoring of the mails and any communication which is being made by all its employees in the work environment. There could be situations where some of the personal information also could be passed to any required source and this might be stored in the company records. This is called as a panopticon phenomenon where this method gives rise to causing great concerns to the Employees that they are being monitored at all times
• The transmission of all types of email communication where in some situations the employees might have to share some personal information to their friends and this information is also monitored and stored in the records
• Integration of personal information is a common issue where some of the Companies integrate all the personal information of the people into one main database. The issue here in this context might not be the integration however it is the purpose of integration and maintenance of the personal information. Benjamin 1991 has confirmed that “The US Government has taken measures to pass the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act”
• Shopping also poses major risks with the usage if buying cards where whenever we make a purchase using a shopping card, it stores the information in a microchip within it and it stores the complete information of the shopper. The Marketing Companies retrieve all the information from these data bases and use it to contact the Customers later
• Hacking has become a common trait of most of the illegal Information and Technology Users where these Hackers have the potential to get the personal information of the Users
• There are software which are available to decode any personal information or information related to any aspect and this is the common method which is used to hack the personal information of the Users

The individuals and companies will have major effects with the type of issues Information and Technology poses where the people will suffer a loss of personal information and security and there are companies which have been established to do business with the personal information of the Consumers who use the internet technology to do any transactions (Branscomb 1994). 

Ethical Norms which can be applied to solve the issues with the usage of Information and Technology

The ethical norms can act as standard rules and regulations which can help in solving the ethical issues and they can be formed under 3 heads like

Integrity can act as the truth ethical norm where facts and information being collected should be used for appropriate reasons

The individuals should be given their space in order to let their information out to the companies looking for.

The Individuals should be allowed to choose the extent to which their information can be shared and they should also be able to restrict the usage of their personal information.

Various rules and regulations can be formed in order to protect the privacy of the People using the Information and Technology. The rules and regulations should be under 2 heads like the individual rights and the legal rights. The rules which can be applied in this context are

• The Sites which take the personal information of the Users should declare that they would not use the information for any purpose than the one for which it has been shared for
• The Sites should also share the information records through email which they have been maintaining on behalf of the Users
• Merging of the procured Client information has to happen with the Client’s permission and the Clients have to be given the access of the information to which they can log into the Central data base and procure the information which belongs to them with a set of personal user name and password (Jakobs 2009)
• The use of the personal information which is maintained on the records should be communicated with the users
• Any unnecessary personal information should not be stored in the databases even unintentionally
• Any personal information which has been collected in the past and is no longer useful should be destroyed on a timely basis and should be notified to the Customers
• The Government should regulate norms and policies with regard to framing of rules with relation to segregating the information as personal and private and the limits of personal protection which has to be maintained

There are various laws with relation to solving the ethical issues of Information and Technology especially in the US where “The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act – 1986” has been framed in order to protect the individuals from computer and online fraud (Wójtowicz & Cellary 2013).This law has been amended in 1996 by the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act which has changed various reforms and has imposed higher penalties for any such occurrences of online crime. Countries like US have taken the ethical crime punishments to a different level where they have imposed stricter punishments like 20 years imprisonment (EPIC nd). 

Conclusion

The Organizations and Information security Professionals should help in maintaining the security through framing and implementing the security policies (Casanove  & Lambert 2016). The policies should also list the acceptable and nonacceptable behaviours of the employees at the work place and the policies should essentially consist of the following aspects (Averweg 2011).

Effects of the Growth of the Issues of Information and Technology

Laws of Discrimination – The laws which are made should be essentially available to all the employees without any discrimination

Review policies – The Organizations should ensure that all the employees have essentially read and understood all the policies and the rules with relation to the information security

The Organizations should be in a position to test and confirm that the employees have understood the rules and policies with relation to the Information and Technology Protection.  Compliance documents should be signed by the employees that they have agreed to the norms in order to ensure that they would comply with the policies by their acts.

All the Information and Technology Organizations should be well aware that the usage of technology raises various risks to the individual rights and protection acts.

What is the main component used in committing the online crime

Smart Shopping Cards is a method through which the Companies and the brands collect the personal information of the Consumers and in turn give it to the Marketing Companies

What is the key component of sharing as a violation to the privacy of an Individual

Data is being swapped as a commodity to share the personal information of an individual or an entity

Which law has amended the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, and what did it change?

“The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act – 1986” has been framed in order to protect the individuals from computer and online fraud. This law has been amended in 1996 by the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act which has changed various reforms and has imposed higher penalties for any such occurrences of online crime.

Which law was specifically created to deal with encryption policy in the United States?

Security and Freedom through Encryption Act of 1997 have changed the ways in solving any of the issues related to encryption policies in the US.

What are the three general categories of unethical and illegal behavior?

There are 3 categories under which unethical and illegal behaviour is caused like ignorance of the issue and ignorance of the law which prevails in order to protect the incident from taking place, accidental occurrence where the incidents happen without the knowledge of the person and intentional occurrence where the crime is committed with an intention to cause harm and damage to the Individuals and the Organizations (WTO nd).

References

Casanove, A & Lambert, I. (2016). Effective Standardization Management in Corporate Settings (pp. 1-17). Retrieved on Sep 29^th 2016. www.irma-international.org/chapter/how-corporate-standardisation-shapes-tomorrowsbusiness/141756/

Benjamin, L.M. (1991). Privacy, computers and personal information: Towards equality and equity in an information age. Communications and the Law, 13 (2): 3-16.

Branscomb, A.W. (1994). Who Owns Information?: From Privacy to Private Access. New York: Basic Books. A division of Harper Collins Publishers.

EPIC. (nd).  “The Clipper Chip.” Retrieved on Sep 29^th 2016. www.epic.org/crypto/clipper/.

HIPAAdvisory. (nd).  “HIPAA Primer.” HIPAAdvisory Online. Retrieved on Sep 29^th 2016. www.hipaadvisory.com/REGS/HIPAAprimer.htm.

Jakobs, K. (2009). International Journal of IT Standards and Standardization Research (pp. 76-77). www.irma-international.org/article/first-itu-kaleidoscope-conference/2600/

National Security Agency. (2016). Information Assurance.  Retrieved on Sep 29^th 2016.

www. nsa.gov/ia/

Averweg, U.R. (2011). Handbook of Research on Information Communication Technology Policy: Trends, Issues and Advancements (pp. 89-105). Retrieved on Sep 29^th 2016. www.irma-international.org/chapter/developing-internet-intranet-usage-policy/45381/

Wójtowicz, A & Cellary, W .(2013). IT Policy and Ethics: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 857-878). Retrieved on Sep 29^th 2016. www.irma-international.org/chapter/access-control-model-dynamic-applications/75060/.

WTO. (nd). “Understanding the TRIPS Agreement.” Retrieved on Sep 29^th 2016. www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/agrm7_e.htm