First, Promoting the use of child safe Internet Service Providers and
Second, The use of local screening software.
The Government should not be fully Responsible for censorship. If so they must do it as a whole and this would be unconstitutional. So the best way to Eliminate the problem by choice not by force.
The other emerging ethical issue in IT is online auction scam (Non delivery of goods, fraudulent payments and selling of illegal and odd items). Online Businesses can improve efficiencies, reduce paperwork, and streamline their operations. Online auction Web sites have begun to spring up all over the Internet. Now hundreds of thousands of people flocking to sites like eBay, Amazon.com Auctions and Bid.com. These auctions places where people sell their goods, and anyone can bid on the item just like the physical auction and the highest bidder wins and then pays the seller some form of compensation for the good. The sales are generally based on a system of trust, but some people are finding profit in abusing the trust of others, while some are stretching the limits of the law via online auctions.
This article FBI on the trail of online scam from THE AUSTRLIAN dated 5th June shows that there are basically two types of fraud emerge on auction. The non-delivery and misrepresentation of goods. This article depict that the victims bid for the product and pay the price for the good but never received the good. The another and very amazing auction on eBay is bidding of odd items like surface to air missiles, human organs and drugs (article 4 published on February 24, 1999, 4:00 a.m. PT in CNET News. Com). In my opinion these auctions are illegal as well as unethical and in one bidding a bidder bid for kidney for 4 hundred thousand dollar.
These are the real problem (because innocent buyer loose there money and as well as encourage illegal trading which is danger to society) what people are facing in online auction. If the seller fails to deliver the goods to customer then it is the duty of seller to inform the customer the cause of delay because if the problem is genuine like-lost shipment, damage of item or any other mishap, which is beyond the control of seller. But people like Craig Lee, scammed 25 people in online auction of used and new computer and collect 25000 to 30000 dollar from people in USA and Canada and never deliver the goods is a clear cut intention of fraud and must go beyond the bar. The actual problem is in most of the cases the victim pay through money order or check and knew only the email address and post-box address of the scammers, which is very difficult to track the convict.
However looking at pros and cons of online auction I would like to say, ethics play a large role in the development of auctions on the Internet. If people with little or no ethics continue and become a problem, the fallout will harm everyone. If, on the other hand, they are stopped (implementing strict law and regulation) or kept to a bare minimum, the phenomenon of bidding for merchandise can continue to grow. Whether it's for fun or business, online auctions are a great new medium for finding just about anything from anywhere just sitting on desk.
Electronic monitoring and privacy is another important issue, which is frequently discussed in media. Privacy means different things to different people but in general, privacy is the right to be left alone and the right to be free of unreasonable personal intrusions. Privacy has long been a legal and social issue in many countries. Complete privacy is almost impossible in this computer age. By using a credit card or check cashing card, entering a raffle, or subscribing to a magazine, people provide information about themselves that can be sold to marketers and distributed to databases throughout the world. When people use the worldwide web, the sites they visit and download things from, make a record that can be traced back to the person. This is not protected, as it is when books are checked out of a library. Therefore, information about someone's personal preferences and interests can be sold to anyone. A health insurance company could find out if a particular person had bought alcohol or cigarettes and charge that person a higher rate because he or she is a greater health risk. Although something like this has not been reported yet, there are no laws against it, at this point. Is this an ethical use of Information Technology?
Electronic monitoring of employees/surveillance is a big debate whether it is ethical or not and as well it is legal or illegal. The article published in informationweek.com dated 20th august 2001 “beware employees monitoring is on the rise” depict that if a manager doing wrong things means he is not doing his job properly and these people didn’t believe in surveillance on the other hand there are cases like printing of pages from porn site from companies printer encouraged companies to take necessary steps to stop these activity. The question is monitoring by way of checking monitor, reading electronic mail and other electronic documents does matter? The employer might argue that when an employee at work, he or she is paid for what he is working so it is employee’s duty to pay attention for what he or she is paid for but Surveillance makes the employee feel mistrusted, unappreciated, and irresponsible in the eyes of the employer and “it is highly likely to harm those watched, by increasing stress and lowering moral and it is certainly not showing them any respect as person (p.85 Weckert & Adeney.D).
In conclusion, I believe that, in most situations involving Information Technology, the morality or immorality of an action is up to the individual to decide, as it would be if IT were not involved. We have seen, though, that there are many instances in which people have, without a doubt, acted immorally and unethically.
References
CNET News.com, Odd buys are everywhere
By Staff Writer February 24, 1999, 4:00 a.m. PT
Informatinweek.com News, Beware: Employee Monitoring Is On The Rise
Employee privacy gives way to business needs for electronic surveillance
By Sandra Swanson August 20, 2001
()
Kizza, J.M. (1996). Social and Ethical Effects of the Computer Revolution. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. London
Ten Commandments for Computer Ethics by CEI THE TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR COMPUTER ETHICS. From the Computer Ethics Institute. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR COMPUTER ETHICS.
The Cincinnati Enquirer, Guard accessed porn, prosecutors charge: He worked around county's computers, BY DAN HORN, Saturday, March 04, 2000
)
The Cincinnati Enquirer, Cyber cop busts local porn seller By Paul A. Long, Post staff reporter Publication date: 11-19-97
USA TODAY, FTC bars man from using Net
01/26/99- Updated 08:31 PM ET
Weckert, J. & Adeney.D. (1997). COMPUTER AND INFORMATION ETHICS. Greenwood Press. London
ARTICLE IN NEWSPAPER AND MAGAZINES
- The Cincinnati Enquirer
Saturday, March 04, 2000
Guard accessed porn, prosecutors charge
He worked around county's computers
BY DAN HORN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Part of Michael Gooden's job as a security guard was to make sure no one got close to Hamilton County's computer system after work hours.
Instead, prosecutors say, he used those computers to access pornography on the Internet.
Mr. Gooden, 46, was indicted Friday on charges of theft and unauthorized use of county property. If convicted, he faces up to three years in prison.
Prosecutor Mike Allen alleged Mr. Gooden gained access to the computers while working as a supervisor for a firm that is paid by the county to provide security at several offices.
Mr. Gooden, of Coryville, is accused of using the computers after hours on Dec. 16 and Dec. 17 at the county's Department of Human Services.
Mr. Allen said county employees were alerted to Mr. Gooden's activities when they noticed new icons on their computers.
Many of those icons contained sexual terms.
The employees clicked on the icons and discovered that someone had connected the computers to sexually explicit Internet sites.
They reported it to the sheriff, who determined that the only people who had access to the building after hours were cleaning crews and security personnel.
He said many of the computers were in areas that could be entered only with keys used by security officers.
Prosecutors say the charge of unauthorized use of property applies to illegally accessing the computers.
The theft charge was filed because a 16-channel radio supplied to him by the county was not returned.
(SOURCE: - )
- The Cincinnati Enquirer
Publication date: 11-19-97
Cyber cop busts local porn seller
By Paul A. Long, Post staff reporter
A Taylor Mill man, charged with peddling child pornography on the Internet, was nabbed by a New Hampshire cop who regularly patrols chat rooms looking for sexual activity.
''Our agency has decided to try to make the Internet a safer place,'' said James McLaughlin, a detective with the Keane, N.H., and police. ''We've made an investment to return some inhibitions to the cyberworld.''
For about an hour a day, McLaughlin goes online, talking to people, looking for those who are looking for pictures of naked children having sex. His activity in the case against James Keith Maget is outlined in a search warrant filed in Kenton District Court.
Maget, 34, is charged with distribution of matter portraying a sexual performance by a minor and possession of matter portraying a sexual performance by a minor. He has pleaded not guilty, but faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. His case is pending before a Kenton County grand jury.
Police believe the Internet is a gold-mine for monitoring a person's activity.
''Subjects who frequent online . . . services boast of exploits hidden by the perceived anonymity of cyberspace,'' the search warrant said.
The Maget case underscores the lack of privacy on the Internet. Attorney Michael Folk, a computer enthusiast who has been using the Internet in one form or another for some 20 years, said computers save more information than most people realize.
''I tell people, when you're online, pretend you're sitting in the middle of Fountain Square, at noon on Friday, with your mother sitting beside you,'' he said. ''If you won't say it there, don't say it online.''
Folk, who now works for the Kenton County public defender's office, spends several hours a day online, either for his own pleasure or to investigate cases.
''About half of the people in these pervert chat rooms are cops,'' Folk said.
McLaughlin disagrees.
''There's not enough police officers out there,'' he said.
According to the search warrant, McLaughlin was surfing the Internet last month when he met ''KevininKy'' in a chat room called ''gayphonesex.''
They went to a private chat room, where ''KevininKy'' sent McLaughlin ''photographs depicting minors in a sexual performance'' via e-mail, according to the warrant.
Finding the real name of ''KevininKy'' and where he lives was easy - that information is available from the user's Internet Protocol Number, which is on the e-mailed photos, according to the search warrant. It was made even easier when ''KevininKy'' gave McLaughlin his home phone number.
McLaughlin monitored how ''KevininKy'' used the Internet. He learned what time he logged on, how long he was online, and what websites and chat rooms he visited.
Such information is available on the main computer of every Internet provider, said Folk. Police officers simply have to ask for it, and the company generally provides it. Maget's Internet service was from America Online. A warrant is not required because the computer online service - not the individual user - owns the information, Folk said.
McLaughlin turned over what he learned to local police in Kentucky. That's when Kenton County Police Detective Darrin Gilvin sought and received a search warrant for Maget's computer.
''He did a wonderful job on the case, but he's the exception,'' McLaughlin said.
Only about one-third of the cases he starts are investigated further, McLaughlin said.
He said he has caught people who turned out to be abusing or taking pictures of children in their neighborhoods, or even of their own kids, McLaughlin said.
(SOURCE: - )
- Informatinweek.com News
Beware: Employee Monitoring Is On The Rise
August 20, 2001
Employee privacy gives way to business needs for electronic surveillance
By Sandra Swanson ()
Gary Mitchell didn't believe in electronic monitoring of employees. He thoroughly resisted it. "I thought that if your employees were doing wrong things, then you weren't doing your job as a manager," says Mitchell, manager of technical services for Marley Cooling Technologies, a cooling-tower manufacturer in Overland Park, Kan.
But that was last year, before the printer incident. An employee printed out several pages from a porn site--and forgot to retrieve them. That encouraged the company to take its corporate Internet policies to another level. While Marley already had a written policy in place indicating it could monitor Internet use by its 500 online employees, it hadn't actually done so.
Marley joined a growing group of businesses that electronically monitor employee work habits. Nearly half of companies monitor E-mail, up from 38% last year, according to a recent American Management Association survey, while Internet monitoring increased to 62.8%, up from 54.1%. Ninety percent of the more than 1,600 managers queried are at companies with revenue of $10 million or more. Another study by the nonprofit Privacy Foundation shows that Internet and E-mail use of one out of three employees is monitored daily. Big Brother is watching more employees, more closely, and more often than in the past.
Companies like Marley say they're motivated by legal liability: More than two-thirds of respondents in the American Management Association survey claim that concern over lawsuits is highly important in the decision to monitor. Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions back up these fears. The court found that once a case of harassment comes to an employer's attention, the company must try to stop the abuse. Otherwise, the company would be held liable. Without monitoring, companies reason, how can they become aware of problems?
But other issues are spurring the trend, too. When monitoring started to catch on a few years ago, it was in response to several high-profile sexual harassment cases, says Susan Getgood, VP of marketing for SurfControl plc, a Web and E-mail filtering company. Now, employers are increasingly concerned about productivity and bandwidth.
That's certainly true at Marley. When the company first ran a report of Internet usage with SurfControl's product, Mitchell was surprised by the magnitude of nonwork activity online. "Companies are doing an awful lot of business through the Net, and when my bandwidth is tied up by casual use, that's a problem," he says.
Many businesses feel justified in finding out how spending time online affects productivity. But Mitchell also knows "there's no such thing as an eight-hour job anymore." As companies demand more of employees, they need to let them shop online or check on their retirement accounts.
Monitoring technology is getting more sophisticated, too. One product from filtering software company Elron Software Inc. includes a SurfTime Meter: Enter an employee's hourly wage, and it calculates a company's cost in lost productivity as a result of inappropriate Web surfing.
Despite what Mitchell sees as good reasons for the monitoring, Marley is aware of privacy concerns. The company notifies employees that they're being monitored, even though it's not required to by federal or state law. In fact, Connecticut is the only state that requires employers to tell employees if they're being monitored. The federal Notice of Electronic Monitoring Act was discussed in Congress last year, but never passed. It's expected to be reintroduced again this year.
Surveillance laws favor employers so heavily, they're even allowed to violate their own privacy policies. That's what happened in a 1996 case, Smyth vs. Pillsbury. The court determined that an employee did not have privacy in using the internal E-mail system to communicate with his supervisor, even though the company previously stated that E-mail communications would remain confidential. Accordingly, the court found that it was lawful for the company to intercept the employee's E-mail and terminate him for transmitting inappropriate communications over the company's system.
But are the scales tipping too far from employee privacy rights? Some backlash indicates that they are. In May, a group of San Francisco federal judges ordered their IT staff to disconnect an Internet monitoring program for one week. It has since been reconnected, but the debate isn't over--on Sept. 11, the Judicial Conference of the United States (the ultimate governing body of the courts) will meet to review this issue. Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Mary Schroeder said court employees were disciplined for unauthorized computer use, even though they weren't fully aware of the policy.
In fact, four out of every 10 employees don't know their companies' monitoring policies, according to a recent Harris poll of more than 500 employees. But many who are aware of such policies question whether workplace monitoring has become excessive. "The lines for justification of invading your privacy are becoming blurred by special interests and profit," says Gerald Lovell, senior electrical project engineer and IT manager at Advanced Handling Systems, a warehouse automation company in Lakeland, Fla. He believes that overzealous accounting departments and strong sales pitches from monitoring software salespeople are among the factors behind the current push for monitoring. He's concerned, too, about privacy breaches in everyday life as well as in the business world.
Some relief may be on the way: Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., will likely propose legislation this fall to limit employer surveillance. A similar bill was unsuccessful last year.
John Shaull, a senior technical analyst who serves as Lotus Notes administrator at Chicago Bridge & Iron, has oversight of 2,000 employees using the company's mail system. Thousands of messages travel through the company's gateway daily. Shaull's concern is inappropriate content and oversized attachments, so this year, the $630 million engineering and construction company implemented MailSweeper and PornSweeper from Baltimore Inc. With MailSweeper, the company can block large files from being sent. That's key, because the company wants to limit the cost of sending massive files to its offices around the world.
PornSweeper analyzes image attachments for nude or pornographic content and when an inappropriate message is caught, both the sender and recipient get E-mail letting them know that PornSweeper blocked the message. The E-mail is held until the sender contacts IT to explain why it needs to be sent. Shaull says about two or three E-mails are "quarantined" each week. Occasionally, PornSweeper will pick up false alarms, such as photos of newborn babies. That's not a problem, Shaull says. After the sender contacts IT, the photo is sent through immediately. "If the content is inappropriate, we don't hear from them," he says.
Some employees consider instant messaging the last bastion of workplace privacy. But not for long. Both Elron and SurfControl are examining the market potential for IM monitoring. Elron expects to have an IM-monitoring product within the next 18 months, but Larry Derany, the company's chief operating officer and VP of engineering, says there are myriad hurdles to overcome first. "It's a hard problem to solve--you've got a bunch of short messages with IM, so you need to aggregate the message flow." And IM users are more inclined to use shorthand than E-mail users, so the monitoring system would have to be familiar with scores of abbreviations and acronyms.
But as IM becomes an increasingly prominent collaboration tool, vendors are trying to keep pace. Raytheon Co. is already testing a new IM-monitoring feature for an existing product, Silent Runner. When such products hit the shelves, employers can expect even more dissent in the ranks. Still, it's something businesses say they have to do, considering the current economic and legal climate. Says Mitchell, "I don't know if we can ever get to zero liability, but we can at least make a fair stab."
- Odd buys are everywhere
February 24, 1999, 4:00 a.m. PT
By
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
First person I don't frequent flea markets, so I was surprised by the range of items for sale on a recent trip to eBay. Patiently awaiting my bid in the Collectibles/Science/Space Exploration section was a person hoping to unload his Nike Ajax surface-to-air guided missile, which the seller described as "32 feet of shark-like elegance."
Maybe Larry Ellison could buy it, to go with his MiG 29 fighter jet. He could certainly afford the deadly projectile--bidding starts at just $2,345 (warhead not included). However, there is the problem of shipping. The seller, who identified himself only by his email address, said he'd prefer it if the buyer came to pick up the missile at his home, which he said was somewhere in the "DEEP South."
- FTC bars man from using Net
USA today
01/26/99- Updated 08:31 PM ET
LAKE WORTH, Fla. -- The Federal Trade Commission has reached a settlement that bars a man for life from doing business on the Internet because he scammed 25 people in online computer auctions.
Craig Lee Hare, also known as Danny Hare, was accused by the federal agency of selling new and used computers through the auctions, then pocketing the money without shipping the equipment.
He made $20,000 to $30,000 from people in the United States and Canada, the FTC said. He was charged with four counts of using unfair or deceptive acts in mail or telephone commerce.
(Source: - )
Appendix
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR COMPUTER ETHICS
(SOURCE: - )
