Introduction to

Ethics and Legal

Issues
Ethical vs. Legal Issues

• Legal Issues : Determination is made by others who are in a

recognized authority.

• Ethical Issues: You determine your choice of action

The law doesn’t make it right

Being right doesn’t make it legal

Ethical vs. Legal Issues
Q: Using some examples differentiate between a legal issue

and an ethical issue?

• How do you determine which it is?

• Should you care which it is?

• What percentage of your time would you guess that you

will spend dealing with ethical or legal issues?

Ethical Issues
1. pertaining to or dealing with morals or the principles of morality;

pertaining to right and wrong in conduct.

2. in accordance with the rules or standards for right conduct or

practice, esp., the standards of a profession.

Examples:

❖Should companies collect and/or sell customer data?

❖Should IT specialists monitor and report employee computer use?

Ethical Issues (2)
Lets Consider our Views on Ethical Behavior

• In every job situation, we are all eventually faced with an

ethical dilemma

• How will you react? How will you determine what the

“right” course of action is? What are you willing to risk to

do the “right thing”?

• How far are you willing to bend? And when?

Ethical Issues (3)
Are Your Ethics Contextual?
Are they unchanging or contextual?
• Peoples know that downloading music or software they don’t own is
illegal, but do so anyway because they don’t believe that it hurts the
owners of the IP (intellectual property)

• You have an expectation of privacy (lockers, email, etc) except if there

is suspicion of wrong doing

• Never tell a lie….except if ……

• Somehow, legal doctrine must codify these complicated and

contextual courses of action
The Types of Ethical Choices
• Choosing right from wrong

• Most of us know that stealing, lying, and cheating are wrong

• These three actions are taboos of a commonsense morality

• Choosing right from right

• Some ethical choices are harder when the situation is not as clear

• Lying may be wrong but if you visit a sick friend is it wrong to exaggerate how
well they look?

• Some might lie about how the friend looks to achieve a perceived higher
good

• The quick recovery or general welfare of the patient

• Is it wrong to steal food if one is starving?

• Is it wrong if one’s child is starving?

• Is it wrong to keep money found in an empty class?

Types of Ethical Choices (2)
• These trivial examples illustrate the complexity of ethical

choices

• The necessity to choose a course of action from two or more

alternatives

• Each having a desirable result

• In an ethical choice then, an individual must often choose

between two or more goods or the lesser of two evils

Why Should we Care About Ethics
• There are so many ethical situations that we encounter each day

that we should care.

• Some unethical actions can violate law.

• Others, though not illegal, can have drastic consequences for our

careers and reputations.

• We should care about ethics for our own self interest.

Framework for Ethics
• What motivates us to view issues a certain way?

Are we consistent in the way we approach ethical issues?

How do we resolve conflicts in approach?

Two basic camps:

1. consequence-based
2. rule-based
Consequence-Based Ethics

Priority is given to choices that lead to a

“good” outcome (consequence)

The outcome outweighs the method

-Egoism: the “right choice” benefits self

-Utilitarianism: the “right choice” benefits the
interests of others
Rule-Based Ethics

Priority is given to following the rules without undue

regard to the outcome

Rules are often thought to codify principles like

truthfulness, right to freedom, justice, etc.

Stress fidelity to a sense of duty and principle (“never

tell a lie”)

Exist for the benefit of society and should be followed

Example
Scenario:
Student copies answers on a final exam. As per policy, I
confront student with evidence

My perspective: The right thing to do is to tell the truth

regardless of the consequences

The student’s perspective: “If I confess now, will the

penalty be less than if I roll the dice with the University
disciplinary Counsel and am found guilty?”
Four Ethical Issues of the Information Age1
*Privacy - right of individual to control personal information
*Accuracy – who is responsible for the authenticity, fidelity, and
accuracy of information?
*Property – Who owns the information? Who controls
access? (e.g. buying the IP verses access to the IP)
*Accessibility – what information does an organization have
the right to collect? Under what safeguards?
Privacy Issues
Many ethical issues (and legal issues) in security seem to be in the
domain of the individual’s right to privacy verses the greater good of a
larger entity (a company, society, etc.)

Examples: tracking employee computer use, managing customer

profiles, tracking travel with a national ID card, location tracking [to
spam cell phone with text message advertisements], ….

A key concept in sorting this out is a person’s expectation of privacy

Legal Issues
We need to know this because: ?

-Emerging legal requirements for C.I.A. of data

-Requirements for due process

-Liability for not exercising “best practice” security?

What would we expect to see in “information
protection” legislation
Components:
-Statement of what we are trying to protect
(what type of data)
-Attributes that need protection (C.I.A)
-Changes to business practices
-Assigning accountability for protection
-Penalty for failure
-Specific areas that technology should address (e.g.
authentication, storage, transmission)
Examples:
1. Health Data Security
“All organizations that handle patient-identifiable health care
information – regardless of size – should adopt the set of technical
and organizational policies, practices, and procedures described
below to protect such information.”
1- Organizational Practices:
• Security and confidentiality policies
• Information security officers
• Education and training programs
• Sanctions
2- Technical Practices and procedures
• Individual authentication of users
• Access controls
• Audit trails
• Physical security and disaster recovery
• Protection of remote access points
• Protection of external electronic communications
• Software discipline
• System assessment
Computer Ethics and Regular
Ethics
• Is computer ethics different from regular ethics?
• Is there an ethical difference in browsing someone
else’s computer file and browsing their desk drawer?
No!
• What we have are ethical situations where computers
are involved.
• Computers allow people to perform unethical actions
faster than ever before
• Or perform actions that were too difficult or impossible
using manual methods
Identifying Ethical Issues
• A characteristic common to computer ethics is the
difficulty of identifying ethical issues
• Many who perform unethical practices with computers
don’t see the ethical implications
• When caught, their first reaction is:
• “I didn’t know I did anything wrong. I only looked at the file, I
didn’t take it.”
• If they copy a file they say:
• “I didn’t do anything wrong. The file is still there for the owner.
I just made a copy.”
Identifying Ethical Issues (2)
• Hackers often say,
• “I was just testing to see how secure the system was. I
was going to report the weakness to management. I
was performing a valuable service.”
• One goal of this course is to increase sensitivity
to ethical issues involving computers
• Computer ethics should have a strong link to
policy or strategy
• When an ethical problem is identified, a policy or
strategy should be developed to prevent the problem
from recurring
Relationship between Ethics
and Law
• The relationship between ethics and law leads to four possible
states

Legal Not Legal

Ethical I II

Not Ethical III IV

Some Examples of the Four
Categories
I. Ethical and Legal
a. Buying a spreadsheet program and using it to do
accounting for clients
b. Firing an individual who does not perform
according to expectations or who fails to follow
certain contractual obligations
c. Increasing the price of goods when the demand
for those goods increases
II. Ethical but not Legal
I. Copying copyrighted software to use only as a
backup, even when the copyright agreement
specifically prohibits copying for that purpose
Examples Continued
III. Not Ethical but Legal
• Revealing data that was expected to remain
confidential – for example, gossiping by data entry
operators, about the salary data they are processing
• Using a pirated version of a software product in a
foreign country that has no software copyright laws
IV. Not Ethical and Not Legal
I. Pirating copyrighted software
II.Planting viruses in someone else’s computer system
•When law does not provide an
answer, as in categories II and
IV, it becomes necessary to
consider the ethical situation
by using informal or formal
guidelines.
Practical Approaches to Ethical
Decision Making
• Making ethical decisions is not a science
• People do it differently
• In ethical decision making the individual must
decide what the answer depends on
• What the facts are
• What harm might be done by each alternative
• Which course of action results in the least harm
• Some ways to do this are to use laws, guidelines,
and ethical principles
Using Law to make Ethical
Decisions
• When a law tells us not to do something it implies
that a recognized authority has decided that the
action the law prescribes is of benefit to society
• What are some laws you like?
• What are some good laws?
• Often, an ethical principle was used prior to a law’s
construction
• Remember that ethical principles are ideas of
behavior that are commonly acceptable to society
• So, law is often grounded in ethical principles, a good
starting point for ethical decision making
Using Formal Guidelines
• When you have an ethical situation ask yourself:
• Is the act consistent with corporate policy?
• Either explicitly or implicitly, corporations often tell their
employees how to act.
• The policy may be a rule stating that no gifts are to be accepted
from vendors, or it may just be a motto, such as: “The customer is
always right.”
• Does the act violate corporate or professional codes of
conduct or ethics?
• Often companies and professional organizations adopt such
codes.
• Some are quite specific and can be helpful in directing the
activities of the members.
• Even if you do not belong to a professional society or your
organization does not have a computer ethics code, it may be
worthwhile to adopt a code as your personal guide.
Using Formal Guidelines Cont.
• Does the act violate the GoldenRule?
• That is, are you treating others the way you would
wish them to treat you?
• Does the act serve the majority rather than a
minority?
• Does it serve yourself only?
• Generally, an outcome that benefits the majority, or
serves the common good, is more desirable than one
that benefits a few or even one.
• As students in school of computing, you can
familiarize yourselves with the ACM and IEEE
code of Ethics
Using Informal Guidelines to
Make Ethical Decisions
• Informal guidelines help us to quickly evaluate a
situation in an attempt to resolve an ethical
dilemma
• Informal guidelines help us to arrive at a general
direction for an ethical action