Answer to Self- Assessment Questions

1. Ethics is intertwined with customs and traditions believed in or adopted by a particular community.

In this concept, the definition of ethics would depend on the custom or tradition of a particular country or state. For example, in an Islam country such as Saudi Arabia, Saudi women are obliged to wear a black cloak and veil ( abaya ) when they leave the house, to protect their modesty. Therefore, taking-off their abaya would be unethical in their culture.

I was shocked when i discovered how strict they were with regards to this policy. There was actualy one incident when Saudi Arabia's religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress. One witness said he saw three policemen "beating young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the abaya".

2. Ethics is the study of the morality of human actions.

In this context,it is said that ethics concerns human actions which are judged as ethical or unethical based on certain starndards accepted by a particular community.

This means that what is ethical to a Class A family might not be ethical to "some" Class C family. Allow me to site some examples here. Eating at the dinning table while talking or singing is unethical for a Class A family but not to "some" Class C family. Shouting and uttering foul words is considered unethical to a Class A family, but for "some" Class C family it might not be unethical because it's already part of their culture and it is also accepted by their community.

3. Ethics is the study and philosophy of human conduct with emphasis on the determination of right and wrong.

It is said that ethics involves the study of the standards and judgments that people create. In this context, ethics can involve questions such as:

3. Case of Rona

Being the judge of Rona and Jojo's case, i would say Rona is liable for copying and reproducing Jojo's computer software design.

4. Before i state my opinion about ethics, i would like to define how i understand the difference and the relationship of ethics and morality since most of the time ethics and morality are interchangeble being used.

Morality and moral behavior is based upon decisions that are made by a community in reference to actions, words or deeds that reflect a rule, custom, culture, tradition, and belief that dictates a certain way of acting or a particular way of living in that community. While and ethical behavior is based upon decisions that are made by a group in reference to actions, words or deeds that reflect an agreement that is made by a certain community with regard to the acceptable behavior by those members of that community.

This means that an action, word or deed that may be immoral can be ethical and conversely, an action, word or deed may also be unethical but moral.

Let me site an example here. The Philippines is a christian country. Therefore, it is immoral for two persons of the same sex to get married. We consider the act immoral because, since we are a christian country, we will generally base our definition of the act as being immoral from the bible. In our society we consider this act as unethical. But in other countries such as Europe, this is not a big issue. Maybe they do not consider it bad since the two persons love each other, regardless of their sexuality. And since they do not base the act to any rule, law, custom, or culture, the act is therefore not evil, therefore, for them, this is not unethical.

5. If i am given the chance to formulate at least five ethical norms to govern computing, it would be the following:

ASAQ 4-1

1. Among the the three theories discussed in the module, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics otherwise known as the "Virtue Ethics" was the one that appealed to me the most.

The Nicomachean Ethics states that happiness will always be the end goal of man. Aristotle emphasizes that man's understanding of happiness differ from one another because he is a rational being. Thus, the idea of happiness will always be unique from person to person.

He further said that the two types of virtues, moral virtue and intellectual virtue, is man's basis for the attainment of happiness. The former are actions or habits that is already inate in the person while the later are actions performed out of the man's own wisdom, comprehension, and intelligence.

I believe that Aristotle's theory is more realistic than the other two. This is due to the following reasons:

I'll sight an example to defend my statement. August and some former classmates from the first batch of CS graduates in their institution wants to create a group forum for their college batch. But since they needed a server to make the forum work, August voluntered to use some memory space from one of the servers of the company where he works for. Since August is the one incharge of the servers in the company, he did not ask for anyone's permission to use some space from their company's server. Now, the whole batch is happy because they are able to exchange private messages, post anything or any topic, and just basicaly talk about anything under the sun. August's action can be considered morally good using Kant's theory because his intention was good for his batch which should not be the case because August is already stealing from his company.

1. Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people.
   • Aside from the ones stated in the module, some examples of action that can violate this commandment can include most of the computer crimes sited in module 3 such as the creation of worms or viruses, the infringment of intellectual property right, and computer hacking and cracking. This commandment can be best evaluated using the concept of Ethical Absolutism because the action of harming other people will always be bad at any given instance.
2. Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness
   • Because of the technologies that we have these days, we cannot deny the fact that there are a number of individuals who engage in these kind of activities. The action of using the computer to create illegal documents, either soft copy or hard copy, can be classified as an egoistic act. This is because people who engage into these kinds of activities do this mainly for their own interest which is the payment, and acknowledgement that they would be getting for doing such.
3. Thou shalt not use or copy software for which you ave not paid for
   • According to the fifth definition of ethics in module 1, ethics is the study and philosophy of human conduct with emphasis on the determination of right and wrong. This definition of ethics tells us that the basis of an ethical or unethical act would depend upon the goodness or badness of an act. Acts such as software piracy, theft, or infrigement of intellectual property rights are immoral. Thus violating this commandment becomes unethical.

C.

1. Pornography of the Internet

   The uncontrolable abuse of women on the internet brings about a lot of ethical issues. Since anyone who has internet access can view all kinds of websites and pop-ups anytime, viewing pornographic sites should be blamed mostly on the creators of these kinds of sites.
   
   One issue that can be seen here would be identifying who is to be blamed for this kind of acts. We can say that the creators should be the one to be blamed. Because by doing such kinds of sites, they have already violated some commandments of computer ethics such as the following:
   
   

   • Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people
   • Thou shalt use a computer in ways that show consideration and respect
   • And also, thou shalt think about consequences of the program you write

   But others would say that the viewers should be the one to be blamed. Because, the act of viewing the site will be done by the viewers. Therefore, the immoral act here would come from the person viewing the site.

2. Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights

Infringement of intellectual property rights or stealing the intellectual property right of a person without his/her consent is another ethical issue. For one, it violates Computer Ethics commandments such as the following:

• Thou shalt not interfere with other people's computer work
• Thou shalt not snoop around in other people's files
• Thou shalt not use or copy software for which you have not paid
• Thou shalt not use other people's computer resources without authorization.
• Thou shalt not appropriate other people's intellectual output

The sixth definition of ethics from module one tells us that ethics also deals with the basic principles of right action with reference to a particular profession. The act of infringement of intellectual property right is definitely unethical based from the number of computer ethics commandment the act will be violating. Acts such as these can be considered egoistic in nature. It becomes egoistic because other people who do this would say that they infringe or steal because they they want to create a more enhanced version of the programs they are infringing or maybe they'll get to be the one acknowledged by others because of what they've done,

D.

As a computer professional, i definitely approve of an ordering principle to be formulated and enforced to govern computer use.

My reason for such answer is because i believe that without these laws ruling the industry of computing, there will be no governing body to control the acts of anyone using the computer. We are all aware that the field of information technology is so large, and that anything can be done through the use of these technologies that we have now. That means, if we do not create rules, then anything can be done by anybody with that person not having to think twice about what acts he's going to do because that person knows that he will not be violating any kind of law anyway.

A good example here would be the issue on the "love bug" virus that happened a few years ago. There were a lot of complaints with the person who did the virus, but since there were no rules then, even the Pentagon who lost millions of dollars can not even file even a single case to arrest the guy who did the act.

All kinds of computer abuse are considered morally wrong. From the term "abuse" itself, it is imposibble for something "abusive" not to be considered as such. One good example here would be flamming.

Flamming is the act of sending emails to insult, curse, or hurt someone. I consider sending flamming mails as an unethical act due to these following reasons:

• Based from the earlier discussions, ethics is defined as the study of the morality of human acions. Insulting, cursing , or hurting someone is definitely not a moral act, thus flamming becomes unethical.
• Ethics is also said to focus on the care for the soul. Since the act of insulting, cursing, or hurting someone are considered elements of sin, flamming becomes unethical.
• Flamming becomes unethical using the divine law because in Mathew 5:22, it is stated that
  "But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever * says to his brother, 'You good-for-nothing,' shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever * says, 'You fool,' shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.

A. Here are my own definitions of the some of the many privacy issues that we have in the field of Information Technology:

1. Database privacy - This involves keeping the computer user's database resources secured or hidden from unauthorized persons.

This means that if you happen to have an access to secured or confidential databases such as database that holds the pins of phone cards or active credit card numbers then, your action of securing or hidding these resources you have access to from other individuals or institution is good or moral, and therefore makes the act ethical. But if you decide to share, or worst sell, this data to unauthorized individuals, then that will make the act unethical.

2. Email privacy - I would define this as the right of any individual to keep his/her own mails from being opened and/or read by others.

Sneaking on someone else's email is definitely intrusive of their rights to privacy. I guess we can say that the right of anyone to privacy can be considered as a universal law. And since everyone is given a right to privacy, snooping on other's email is still a violation of that universal law. Because doing such is just like opening his/her files hidden on his personal cabinet or reading his/her snail mails or even a diary. If we try to analyze and relate this scenario to ordinary situations, this act looks similar to listening on other individual's conversation without their consent. This act therefore becomes unethical because doing so deprives the owner of the email of his/her right to privacy.

3. Privacy on the web - I consider this as the right of any individual to restrict any kind of access to keep track of his/her moves or actions on the web without his/her consent.

Privacy on the web is one of the major problems that we have today. As of this writing, there are still no rules or laws that prohibits computer users from checking or keeping track of other computer user's information. But this should be also concern because there doing such act is an intrusion of their right to privacy. No body should be given the right to check on all your activities. I remember the movie "The Truman's Show" which stars Jim Carey, where in his whole life from birth was being controlled and watched on tv. He only found out that his whole life was just a big drama when he already got old. That story where Mr. Truman's right to privacy was taken away from him is also similar to privacy on the web.

In the field of computing, social justice is basically concerned with equal access to the resources and benefits of information technology.

One concern here is people being unable to access the Net because of their differences in language. Well, in the Philippine setting, this is most probably not a big issue because majority of the Filipinos who have Internet access are also very much familiar with Engish which is the most common language used on the net today.

1. What constitutes a computer crime?

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has defined computer crime as "any violation of criminal law that involved the knowledge of computer technology for its perpetration, investigation, or prosecution." Others define computer crime as the deliberate action to steal, damage, or destroy computer data without any authorization, and which also includes accessing a computer system and/or account without authorization.

Based from the different cases given on the module, i would say a computer crime constitutes the following acts:

• the action is done to do harm to others
• the action results to personal/group/corporate damage
• the action is done without the victim's knowledge or consent
• the action is done for personal reasons
• the actor of the crime knows that he is not authorized to do so, but still knowingly accesses or causes any computer system to be accessed without authorization

2. The following are some more examples of computer crimes:

1. A former employee of Viewsonic was sentenced to one year for hacking into his company's computer, destroying data
   A man previously employed at the Walnut office of the Viewsonic Corporation was sentenced last February 23, 2004 to one year in prison for hacking into the company's computer system and wiping out critical data. the lost files rendered the server inoperative, and Viewsonic's Taiwan office was unable to access important data for several days.

2. A Louisiana man got arrested for releasing the 911 worm to WebTV users
   FBI agents arrested a Louisiana man last February 18, 2004 for sending an e-mail to certain users of a WebTV service that, once opened, reprogrammed their computers to dial "9-1-1" instead of a local Internet access telephone number. The 9-1-1 calls caused by the e-mail resulted in the dispatch of police in locations from New York to California.

3. Mr. Heckenkamp's pleads guilty to gaining unauthorized access and recklessly damaging computers of several high-technology companies including eBay and Qualcomm from his graduate school dorm room
   The United States Attorney's Offices for the Northern and Southern Districts of California announced that Jerome T. Heckenkamp of Los Angeles, pled guilty last January 29, 2004 in federal court in San Jose to gaining unauthorized access and recklessly damaging computer systems of several high-technology companies, including eBay in San Jose and Qualcomm in San Diego.
   Mr. Heckenkamp admitted that he gained unauthorized access to eBay computers during February and March 1999. Through this unauthorized access, he admitted that he defaced an eBay Web page using the name "MagicFX," and installed "trojan" computer programs on the eBay computers so that it secretly captures usernames and passwords that he later used to gain unauthorized access into other eBay computers.

Study Schedule

Reference

SAQ4-2

SAQ12-1