AUTHOR
Richard Lucas, Yeslam Al-Saggaf

ABSTRACT

Introduction

The Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) in partnership with the Australian Computer Society has received funding from the Australian government’s Australian Research Council for a project to examine ethics and regulation in the ICT industry.

The project will provide a new integrity system for the ICT industry that is relevant to the industry as a whole. This system will include an ethics framework which contains, amongst other material, a code of ethics and a code of conduct. Material for educating and training the professionals, and for that matter students, will also be considered.

Among the things the project will also deliver are promotional and motivational mechanisms that will encourage professionals to act ethically, and accountability and preventative mechanisms that should discourage them from engaging in misconduct. Most importantly, there would be regulatory frameworks, both external and internal, which will monitor the conformance to the standards and provide a disciplinary role in case of breaches.

In this paper we outline the framework and report on the preliminary results of a survey that examined the beliefs of ICT professionals concerning the state of ethical behaviour and regulations in Australia. This framework is used along with the survey in this and subsequent analysis to show the strengths and weaknesses of the codes and regulatory mechanisms that are currently in play in Australia. In this paper we will focus on the responses given to the questions about occupational specialty and those about ethical notions. Specifically we seek to understand the relationship between occupational specialities within the industry and the priority ordering that respondents gave to ethical notions.

The Survey

One of the methods used to gather data for this project is a survey which has been conducted to determine the ICT professionals’ beliefs about the state of ethics and regulations within the industry. The survey was placed on a secure server managed by the Centre for Educational Development and Methodology at the Australian National University. This made the survey available to participants to complete online.

The survey methodology was fourfold with the online survey being the first part. Initially a snowball technique was employed. A few identified ICT professionals were selected to seed the initial survey responses. These were then asked to forward the URL of the survey to other ICT professionals. Subsequent to this, targeted email lists were constructed and sent. Also details of the survey were included in the Branch newsletters sent to members of the Australian Computer Society as well as the Society’s publication, Information Age.

Following the survey detailed interviews were conducted. Individuals identified from the survey as well as those separately chosen were interviewed. Finally, focus group interviews were conducted.

The survey consists of three parts; demographic data, substantive questions, and follow-up indicators. The demographic data consists of twelve questions of the usual: age, gender, experience, geographical location, work classification, formal credentials. The substantive questions section consists of twenty-five questions. These relate to knowledge of and reaction to (un)ethical behaviour in the Australian ICT industry. The final section of the online survey is a follow-up indicator. Here respondents are asked if they wish to participate further in this research and are given several ways to indicate this.

Results

The results of the survey that are reported on in this paper relate to the self-described occupational category question (job, position title), industry sphere (systems development, systems maintenance) and industry area (public or private sector) of the demographic data section; and the most important ethical issues facing the ICT industry question of the substantive questions section.

The Null hypothesis for this examination is that there is no relationship between speciality occupational group and the priority ordering of ethical notions. The confirmation/rejection of the Null hypothesis will be supplied in the full paper.

The ethical framework explained below is used as a coherent rationale in choosing the null hypothesis.

Interpretation

An interpretation of the analysis of the relationship between the selected questions will be supplied in the full paper.

The Ethical Framework

The framework consists of four sections; general beliefs and values, a code of ethics, a code of conduct and decision making, and governance considerations. In the first section general ethical notions (beliefs and values) are explored. The section containing the code of ethics examines what our ethical beliefs and values are. It answers the question: What do we belief? The section containing the code of conduct explores how do we live up to our ethical beliefs and values. It answers the question: How do we decide and act? The final section of the framework looks at general ethical governance issues such as laws, regulations, and policies. Notions such as compliance, violation of the codes, and consequence (usually punishment, sometimes benefit) are examined. The ethical framework will be used as part of an integrity system to be recommended for the ICT industry in Australia. Schematically the framework is depicted in the diagram below.

Conclusion

By assisting in the development of regulatory frameworks designed specifically for the ICT industry, professionals and corporations, this project will facilitate higher levels of professional competence, more effective delivery of ICT services, more transparent complaint and disciplinary procedures, and higher levels of stakeholder satisfaction. The project thus will have significant economic and social benefits. It will directly benefit the Australian Computer Society in further development of its codes of ethics and conduct and in its advisory role in government policy. Other conclusions from this survey will be supplied in the full paper.

AUTHOR
Mason Leege

ABSTRACT

In America, people are barred from purchasing or owning anti-aircraft missile-launchers, bazookas, and other military-grade weapons. This is because they serve no purpose other than to kill people, and their “casual use” would endanger innocent people. At one point in America’s recent history, encryption ciphers were regarded as military-grade weapons, as munitions. For this reason, the transfer of encryption ciphers out of the USA was illegal. Do encryption ciphers actually merit this kind of treatment? Are ciphers as dangerous as military weapons? The answer is “possibly so”, because encryption can be the ultimate “uncrackable safe” and can store or transfer deadly information. But perhaps calling encryption “munitions” may be going a too far, even though encryption can be used maliciously. A better analogy might be bullets or handguns or shotguns. These are weapons, but they also can be used ethically, such as to defend innocents from harm or to engage in target practice or marksmanship competitions.

Like small arms, encryption can be used for many useful purposes, for example to safely store any conceivable amount and type of data. But also like small arms, encryption can be used maliciously. It can even be used nontraditionally to encrypt nonsense. For example, a terrorist could encrypt a transmission of absolutely nothing of worth, using an extremely complex cipher and a long key length. This would trick law enforcement agents into wasting time and resources “brute forcing” the key or attempting otherwise to crack the encryption. Another example of a misuse of encryption would be a company that adopts a policy to encrypt all their data and then somehow “loses” the key if they ever come under investigation. These examples illustrate that encrypted information does not need to be valuable or retrievable to cause problems for authorities.

Given the possibility of using encryption maliciously, should people be given the powers of information encryption? How much encryption power should be afforded to individuals or businesses or government agencies? What is the appropriate balance between the right to privacy and freedom of the individual, which encryption can help to defend, and the legitimate interests of the government to provide security and prevent crime or terrorism? Also of note would be the government’s use of encryption for it’s own purposes. What are the kinds of encryption methods and tools that would make it possible to establish and preserve an ethically defensible balance between the rights of individuals and the legitimate concerns of society or the government? These are the kinds of questions that his paper will address.

One important issue that also will be examined is the possibility of massive decryption capabilities that could result in the near future when quantum computers become available. Will quantum computing make reliable encryption impossible, thereby destroying Internet commerce and the safety of credit/debit cards? Is there a kind of encryption that could resist cracking by powerful quantum computers? Consideration of these and related questions will be included in the paper.

AUTHOR
Andrzej Kocikowski

ABSTRACT

While an ordinary member of the North-Atlantic civilization still struggles to get fully accustomed to the most important achievements of the teleinformation revolution, there are already new, different, and much more serious challenges he or she will have to face. These challenges were generated by the biotechnology and nanotechnology revolutions.

Some selected consequences of the biotechnological revolution underwent already a serious scrutiny (e.g., by Francis Fukuyama, 2002). One can, therefore, say that we are aware of particular important threats that were generated by this technology, or could be generated by it in the future. Less well known and less analyzed are the potentially negative consequences of the nanotechnology revolution. This is due mainly to the fact that the subject of nanosciences is presently not known widely enough to allow such analyzes on a large scale. In addition, the nanosciences are still in their initial phase, and because of that it is impossible to present – in a complete and accurate manner – the area of potential benefits and threats they could cause. Therefore, one should applaud the fact that nanotechnology found its way to the list of “official” ETHICOMP topics this year. Without a doubt, it is a key issue for present debates on the future of the humankind; moreover, the connection between nanotechnology and ICTs is close and unarguable. Hence, nanotechnology fits very well the profile of the ETHICOMP conferences.

One of the nanosciences is nanomedicine. It focuses, among others, on the ways in which various nano-objects can be used for checkups, for diagnostics, and – in the case of illness – for therapy. For example, NASA carries out (with various results) a long-term nanomedical program as part of its preparations for the space travel to Mars. Since one of the effects of a long-lasting weightlessness are bone diseases, the NASA scientists attempt to construct nano-objects which could be inserted into the body of an astronaut in order to monitor the processes of unwelcome bone changes, and – most importantly – to cure him/her during the space travel, if necessary.

To the field of nanomedicine belongs also prevention, broadly understood. Specialized nano-objects are used for permanent monitoring of human bodies, and for transmitting the obtained information either to remote data banks or to other nano-objects located in the body of the same individual. Yet another area of interest for nanomedicine is the production of biochemical substances adapted for cooperation with nano-objects used in diagnostics or treatment. For obvious reasons, problems related to the remote control of above-mentioned nano-objects also belong to the field of nanomedicine.

In my paper, I will focus chiefly on an attempt to sketch out the threats for humanity generated in the above-mentioned areas of nanomedicine. After a brief presentation of selected aspects of the accomplishments (current and future) of this science, I will discuss their “dark side.” For example, the dark side of using nano-objects inserted into the human body is the possibility to construct these objects in such a way that it would create “programmed threats,” to use Eugene Spafford’s and his colleagues term. To be more specific (focusing only on one facet of the functions of intra-bodily nano-objects), let me refer to the following:

— While inserting into a human body nano-objects capable of receiving, transporting, and releasing biochemical substances, and of monitoring the body’s vital functions, one can do it with the knowledge and permission of that partticular individual, or without it.

— Nano-objects capable of receiving, transporting, and releasing biochemical substances within a human body can be used not only for the purpose of curing, but also for causing harm, e.g., through delivering toxic substances.

— Nano-objects capable of receiving, transporting, and releasing biochemical substances within a human body can be used for carrying medicines, but of a wrong kind, and intended to harm rather than cure.

Of course, these are not new problems. Unethical, even criminal behavior in the field of medicine is as old as the field itself. Because of this, there are safeguards, some of them very effective. What is new, and what should cause great concern is the fact that these safeguards don’t protect against unethical, or criminal acts commited against humans with the use of nanotechnology. Nano-objects are practically undetectable now, and most likely they will be generally undetectable in the future as well. Hence, nanotechnology, including nanomedicine, can be a great threat for humanity, if used by ill-intended people. The threat is especially great in the case of nano-objects programmed for future activation (similarly to “sleeper” terrorist cells), therefore causing programmed threats.

AUTHOR
Jocelyne Kiss, Sidi O. Soueina, Behrouz Far

ABSTRACT

The Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) allows the formation and development of concomitant virtual communities through special types of discussions, where actions can have various real life effects. In this kind of games players prefer disguising theirs identities and they are able to carry out actions of different complexities seeking to achieve different goals and embodying a personification within a given virtual community. In this line of work, our interest lies beyond the effects of “catharsis” and “distance”, which are designed to theatrically represent the world within the game environment as we show that the MMORPG are not solely intended to produce procedural effects. In fact, MMORPG is engendering a growing interest to address the social and ethical problems and further the management of the non-quantitative components of the game – as many are starting to tackle the implementation of relevant interfaces on the web. Such examples include for instance introducing a panel of different types of e-democracy Kraland, which proposes a ludo-educational mode in the creation of virtual governments, or even of others more famous plays, such as Word off warcraft, or more lucrative ones as Project Entropia. These plays have player, groups and conversation management goals, all of which are inherently founded in social life. This role is normally assigned to the regulator of the play, where it gives them the responsibility of censuring certain behaviours and restoring the rules of consensual common: an rather ill-definition of what is called cyber-ethic.

Thus, the concept of cyber-ethic, rests on a fragile balance between the freedom left for each player to use the interface and the respect of the statutory values which in our view should not only be limited to the virtual communities there in, but rather go beyond that to include the human values. Although the complexity of the data to be treated in these cases as well as the number of games allowed with a single RPG all make a computational solution more difficult, one of the current objectives of these game engines still remains the automation of such monitoring tasks. Furthermore, the knowledge of the personality of the player and the possibility of being able to predict some of these actions constitute considerable information in the value of the game nonetheless – this is why the interest of the manufacturers of these engines is gearing towards more complex informational contents such as eyes-movement, for the sake of behaviour classification.

We propose to explore the advantages of these standard unquestionable systems of recognition of personality. Through an experimental example of MMORPG, we implemented play that relies on a framework do discover players personality and allowing to test various social and personal conditions. Our work is driven by the fact that interest in Personality Traits Recognition has grown in the past few years for several reasons, of which we mention, the need for human emotions’ recognition and representation.

In this work we will discuss the foundation of a reliable methodology, based on the Theory of the Enneagram, whereby the relationship between the central motivator called “ego-self” as the primary originator intentions and the Human Actions can be defined. We argue that the use of classical personality recognition tests is not reliable simply because they explicitly invoke the Motivator by directly asking questions. Based on a previous definition of personality as being the set of basic fears and basic desires, we are introducing a model of an experimental MMORPG game whereby user’s selections embed patterns of actions that hint to personality traits. Our interest further lies in educational impact within these virtual communities to potentiality recognize certain features of personality and the behaviour of the players. We will discuss the advantages of game moderation and game control as well. While presenting the concrete prospects that our interface offers, we will propose a discussion around the cyber-ethic concept within these virtual communities emanating from these plays.

AUTHOR
Kerr Ian, Bailey Jane

ABSTRACT

While the rest of North America was ringing-in 2004, JenniCam, the electronic eye providing the digital window into Jennifer Ringley’s postmodern soul, briefly blinked and was then forever shut. From its inception in 1996, JenniCam provided interested viewers a continuous, uncensored glimpse into Ringley’s home. Every aspect of her domestic life, from the mundane to her most intimate moments, was streamed over the web as a public offering consumed by anonymous viewers in the privacy of their own homes. By exploiting the potential inherent in the new technology, Ringley sought to challenge prevailing social conceptions of womanhood and the position of women within the public/private divide. While Ringley’s live feed has now ceased, the online peepshows cobbled together from downloads and archived sexual excerpts caught by her webcam’s once-unblinking eye are still available. As a result, the critical consciousness that informed Ringley’s self-described “social experiment” has been co-opted into enduring vignettes of sexual objectification that, by robbing her documentary of its context, reinforce many of the messages she may have hoped to contradict.

During the same year that marked the cessation of Ringley’s seven years of relentless recording, the Association of Computing Machinery hosted an international workshop that would give new meaning to the phrase “Seize the Day”. Aptly named “CARPE”, the subject of the workshop was the “Continuous Archival and Retrieval of Personal Experiences”. Inspired by the great vision of Vannevar Bush’s futuristic memex[1], leading researchers from across the globe gathered at Columbia University to investigate the manner in which the continuous archival paradigm fundamentally alters our relationship to biological memory. Professor Steve Mann, the workshop’s keynote speaker, described an invention called EyeTap,[2] a “visual memory prosthetic” that enables Mann to continuously archive and retrieve his entire life by turning his eye into a camera and his body into a web server. In explaining the social implications of continuous personal experience capture, Mann described his notion of “equiveillance”: a state in which the watcher becomes the watched in a balance of countervailing images and perspectives. According to Mann, the ability to capture, archive, and retrieve one’s personal experiences is a privacy-enhancing antidote to excessive state and private sector surveillance. Likening his EyeTap to the blackbox flight recorder in an airplane, Mann claimed that a first-person recording of an activity, where the person doing the recording is a participant, enhances public safety and provides participants with a means to counter traditional power structures. It provides an alternative documentary of events should disputes arise.

Though Mann has sought to distance himself from what he sees as the “puerile” focus of Ringley’s on-line presence, he shares with her a profound sense of techno-optimism. Ringley and Mann both seemed to cherish the unblinking gaze. Refusing to be defined by the intrusive and objectifying gaze of our surveillance based society, Ringley and Mann launched their own projects of self-definition by voluntarily adopting personal experience capture devices as an apparent means of social empowerment. Seizing control of the camera, Ringley and Mann attempt to influence how they are viewed, framing the image in ways that capture a more personal and more subjective truth. The new technology, ideally, offers a means of inverting the power dynamic. It allows individuals access to modes of image production previously beyond their reach. While the practices pioneered by Ringley and Mann allow more people to create more and more images, it is unclear what effect this will ultimately have on the surveillance society. In a world of “equiveillance” or, perhaps more precisely, omniveillance, how do we conceive of privacy and its role in identity formation and collective empowerment?

In this presentation, Ian Kerr and Jane Bailey examine these two forms of personal experience capture and their implications for privacy and identity. While contemplating the value of personal experience capture, the presenters consider its impact on collective and communal interests. Topics to be addressed include: the privacy rights of those individuals unwittingly captured; the limits of consenting to exposure in a context of facile image dissemination and editing; and the ostensible integrity of the image and the role of the viewer in producing meaning. In examining these questions, Kerr and Bailey hope to expose some of the conceptual and theoretical oversights that, if left unaddressed, might eventually result in technology undermining, rather than promoting, self- or group-empowerment.

[1] A device “in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.” In 1945, Bush famously predicted the advent of this and various other technologies in an essay published in the Atlantic Monthly titled, “As We May Think”.

[2] A recording device that captures each ray of light that enters his retina.

AUTHOR
Iordanis Kavathatzopoulos

ABSTRACT

Information technology has many advantages that can be used for the promotion of ethical competence. It saves time and space, it has an enormous memory storage capacity, it can process and reorganize information fast and reliably, etc. Recent technical developments in particular, which give us the possibility to construct advanced games and simulate the complexity of reality in micro-worlds, may further broaden the spectrum of opportunities and possibilities for support in ethical problem solving and decision making. In this paper our efforts to construct an ethical problem-solving support system and an ethical microworld are presented.

There are, however, certain important issues to consider before building such systems. The confounding of moral values with psychological processes can create many problems and sometimes makes it impossible (Blasi, 1980; Greene et al., 2004; Haidt, 2001; Jackson, 1994; Jaffee & Hyde, 2000). Accordingly, our theoretical basis is that successful information technology tools in ethics are those that are adapted exclusively on psychological problem-solving and decision-making processes.

When we are planning to use information technology tools to support ethical decision making we usually run the risk of disregarding the psychological skill aspects of ethical competence. The classical approach focuses normally on informing about moral philosophy, presenting lists of principles and stakeholder interests, or simply producing moral solutions based on predefined normative values (Collins & Miller, 1992; Gotterbarn & Rogerson, 2002; Pfeiffer, 1999). Creating and using information technology tools based primarily on this classical approach certainly has its strengths, but it also has many weaknesses (Winograd, 1995; Friedman, 2005).Ethical competence can be defined as based on the psychological ability described as autonomy. However, this skill is not so easy to use in real situations. Psychological research has shown that plenty of time and certain conditions are demanded before people can acquire and use the ethical ability of autonomy (Piaget, 1932; Kohlberg, 1985; Schwartz, 2000; Sunstein, 2005). When people face a moral problem they have great difficulties not confusing moral goals, values, feelings and emotions with the decision-making and problem-solving processes and the methods adopted for the solution of the problem. Usually, they do not clearly see the context of the problem nor do they analyze it in the same way they often do with problems of nature. In psychological theory this is described as the moral phase of heteronomy, which in contrast to autonomy, means that the individual does not use functional problem-solving strategies, that is, critical thinking. Autonomous and critical moral thinking is difficult, more difficult than autonomous technical thinking. In the searching to promote ethical competence we need to be assured that the autonomous ethical thinking is indeed stimulated by the support tools we use. Using information technology to support the acquisition and use of ethical autonomy is due to the special qualities and possibilities of this technology.

The use of real life simulations by decision makers may help them to learn easier how to handle morally complex and controversial situations satisfactorily. One way to do this is by connecting the progress of the simulation to the concrete way users treat moral problems rather than to general normative aspects of given solutions. For example, this can be done by incorporating in the simulation the interests, values, feelings, etc, of stakeholders whose reaction may influence the development of the simulation process.

Furthermore information technology tools have great advantages according to the hypothesis of autonomy. Their memory storage capacity is enormous. They are excellent in doing systematic work and analysis of data. Just by using them as a data base or an expert system in the effort to solve a concrete moral problem, the user can get information about certain values and interests, as well as about alternative ways of action, that otherwise might be overlooked. Reminiscence of the diversity, variety and complexity of the actual moral problem could effectively block decision makers’ natural tendency toward heteronomy, and stimulate autonomy.

The paper presents the structure and function of an ethical microworld simulation and of a support system in ethical problem-solving and decision-making. The ethical microworld simulation models realistic scenarios with interacting independent stakeholders. Users of the simulation are triggered to make autonomous decisions in dilemmas arising in the interaction between stakeholders. The goals are to investigate the possible approaches to implement the psychological approach to ethical problem-solving and decision-making, and to stimulate higher ethical competence.

The ethical support system is based on the theory of autonomy. By using it thinking is guided away from heteronomy and toward autonomy. Its basic features are: 1) not allow the user to use the system as a moral authority. 2) not present a ready made set of moral principles and values. 3) help the user to be unconstrained by moral fixations and authorities, 4) help the user to organize and analyze the facts, 5) help the user to weight the relevant values and principles against each other, 6) help the user to solve the moral problem at hand systematically, 7) force the user to motivate his/her decisions in regard to the relevant interests and values.

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