Computer Ethics Essay Topics Text

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The reason for so much attention is that society is realizing the computer can invade individual's privacy. Morals, ethics, and laws are the three key elements that help govern society's behavior. Acm code of professional conduct, dpma code of ethics, iccp code of ethics and many more. There must always be a plan on how to maintain ethical practices in the business world. Many times people have valuable information to be stored into computer systems and therefore we as a society in a whole have to make sure that they have some type of morals, what there ethics are and most important that they understand the law.

In this era of computer viruses and international spying by hackers who are thousands of miles away, it is clear that computer security is a topic of concern in the field of computer ethics. The problem is not so much the physical security of the hardware protecting it from theft, fire, flood, etc. Et al, 1989 divide into five aspects:

    privacy and confidentiality integrity assuring that data and programs are not modified without proper authority unimpaired service consistency ensuring that the data and behavior we see today will be the same tomorrow controlling access to resources
malicious kinds of software, or programmed threats , provide a significant challenge to computer security. Computer crimes, such as embezzlement or planting of logic bombs, are normally committed by trusted personnel who have permission to use the computer system. Computer security, therefore, must also be concerned with the actions of trusted computer users.

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Another major risk to computer security is the hacker who breaks into someone's computer system without permission. Some hackers intentionally steal data or commit vandalism, while others merely explore the system to see how it works and what files it contains. These explorers often claim to be benevolent defenders of freedom and fighters against rip offs by major corporations or spying by government agents. These self appointed vigilantes of cyberspace say they do no harm, and claim to be helpful to society by exposing security risks.

However every act of hacking is harmful, because any known successful penetration of a computer system requires the owner to thoroughly check for damaged or lost data and programs. Even if the hacker did indeed make no changes, the computer's owner must run through a costly and time consuming investigation of the compromised system spafford. 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.

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 see tavani.

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 tavani and moor, 2001 see also moor, 1997 .

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 see marx, 2001 and nissenbaum. One of the more controversial areas of computer ethics concerns the intellectual property rights connected with software ownership. Some people, like richard stallman who started the free software foundation, believe that software ownership should not be allowed at all. He claims that all information should be free, and all programs should be available for copying, studying and modifying by anyone who wishes to do so stallman, 1993.

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