AUTHOR
Don Gotterbarn

ABSTRACT

Spam is a consequence of the advances of information technology and as technology changes spam has changed in scope, purpose, and ethical impact. What originated as unsolicited bulk messages constrained by the capacity of individual machines now uses unsuspecting compromised personal computers to transmit millions of messages a day. Everyone receives spam. “Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren’t so irritating.” (Bill Gates- 2004 Wall Street Journal)

Originally, the primary purposes of sending spam was a childish prank or to sell products. As the technology has changed, new motives for spam have emerged. These banal motives have changed. We now receive advertising spam, porn spam, and scam spam. Even more distressing is the development of a gangster mentality engaged in taking over and compromising PCs, injecting viruses and flooding recipient networks in a denial of service attack. Spam has also changed. The unsolicited distribution of bulk messages has now extended beyond e-mail to Instant Messaging (SPIM) and to Internet Telephony (SPIT). (Cerf, V. “SPAM, SPIM, and SPIT” Communications of the ACM April 2005).

The rise and evolution of spam has generated a broad range of responses ranging from a deferential attitude ignoring its impact to the aggressive approach of those who will supply tar and feathers to anyone willing to apply it to spammers and to those who provide tools spammers can use. I argue that both of these views are mistaken. The former position rests on what James Moor calls “a virtual fallacy”; assuming that because something happens in the virtual world, that it does not have real impact.

The more aggressive position is marked by the development of spam filters and black lists distributed by organizations like Spamhaus in the UK. These filters, unfortunately, often give false positives preventing the delivery of appropriate messages. Lessig has argued against this aggressive unilateral approach saying, “Those making the policy are not accountable to anyone.” This approach to policy development denies a public forum, denies a voice to the stakeholders involved. (Lessig, L. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, New York Basic Books 1999)

The real problems created by spam are clear. “But spam is worse than irritating. It is a drain on business productivity, an increasingly costly waste of time and resources that clogs corporate networks and distracts workers. Among consumers, it spreads scams, pornography and even computer viruses. Worse, spammers prey on less sophisticated e-mail users, including children, threatening their safety and privacy. And as everyone struggles to sift spam from their inboxes, valid messages are sometimes overlooked or deleted, which makes e-mail less useful and reliable as a channel for communication and legitimate e-commerce. In short, spam threatens to undo much of the good that e-mail has achieved.” (Bill Gates 2004)

Many countries and several US jurisdictions have laws against spam. According to PC World (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,118493,00.asp), on 14 August 2004 in Virginia, Jeremy Jaynes will spend “nine years in prison for sending hundreds of thousands of unwanted e-mail messages. Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore said Jaynes was found guilty under a Virginia state law that prohibits e-mails marketers from sending more than a certain amount of spams within a given time frame and prohibits the use of fake e-mail addresses?A Loudoun County jury decided that Jeremy Jaynes? flooded tens of thousands of AOL email accounts with unsolicited email.” Between 11 July and 9 August 2003, he sent over 10,000,000 emails a day. “And those 10 million pieces of spam a day yielded between 10,000 and 17,000 paying responses a month, and an obscene $400,000 to $750,000 a month. Jayne’s total expenses per month were estimated to be approximately $50,000, netting him a cool $350,000 to $700,000 a month in profit.” (http://www.aunty-spam.com/portrait-of-a-spammer/) The illegality of spam in the USA is not new. Even as early as 1998 in Hotmail Corporation v. Van$Money Pie, Inc. 1998 spam was legally viewed as a form of trespass.

As early as 1999 there have been ethical critiques of spam. Spam shifts the costs from the sender to others including the Internet, ISPs, receivers of the spam, network bandwidth, and disk storage. In ” Ethical Reflections on the Problem of Spam,” Ethics and Information Technology vol 1 no 3 185-191 (1999) Spinello argues against spam on utilitarian grounds for this abuse of resources and argues against it on deontological grounds for its lack of respect of persons and because spamming cannot be justified by a universalizable principle.

If the decisions are made-spam is illegal and spamming is unethical-why bother discussing it at an ethics conference? Identifying the problems with spam appears to be easy, but it is not an easy ethical task to determine how best to prevent spam, spim, and spit. Pointing the finger of blame and guilt after the fact is easy. The hard problem is for an ethical person to identify and pursue an ethical action that will prevent or reduce the occurrence of spam. Ethcal decision making helps here.

Ethical decision-making has several functions. The easiest function is to use some decision procedure to evaluate the ethicality of an act after it has occurred and after its impacts are clear. Another but much more difficult use of ethical decision models is to make a proactive choice that may, in an ethical way, reduce or prevent an unethical act. I address the latter function concerning the prevention of spam. Assume the debate about the legality and ethicality of spam and its variants is decided. Given the strong profit motives to spam, what is the best way to prevent spam? The answer to this requires careful application of an ethical decision procedure.

Over a decade ago Terry Winograd described three stereotypes of ethical decision making which he called “devil or angel”, “the morality computer”, and “troupe of jugglers”. In the devil or angel situation, you know what is right or wrong and it is simply a matter of choosing. In the morality computer, you have a clear set of moral rules and a clear set of facts and you deduce from the rules the correct moral choice. In the troupe of jugglers model, you are engaged in a complex social interaction with evolving practices and technologies. This Jugglers model describes many of ITC ethics decision points; the identification of the complexity of the situation however did not provide direction for decision-making. There are some clear ethical situations where ethical decisions are made every day. There are however some ethical decisions which are not as obvious and in a foggy area; these require the application of ethical decision-making procedures.

It is important to justify and document these decisions. Doing so may later help reduce the shadows in other ethical situations and provide a basis for future decision-making. It is not simply enough to express personal dislike for a particular aspect of technology. Bill Gates’ article from the Wall Street Journal cited above started out with “I hate Spam.” The world seems to have made a decision about spam- – at least that it is illegal in some jurisdictions. However, even when the law or some legislature makes the basic legal decision for us, we are still left with the question of how to address the problem.

The question “How do we address spam?” is ambiguous. It is really two questions.. What shall we do with those who are judged guilty of spamming? The courts provide an to this question in terms of sanctions and penalties. The other part has to do with the prevention of the crime to begin with. In criminal law, there are specific constraints on the range of behavior of law enforcement agents. Authorities are not allowed to use “excessive force”. In normal law enforcement, the enforcing agent has a wide range of approaches. Similarly, in attempting spam prevention there is a wide range of solutions. The choice of technical solution is an ethical decision requiring a juggling of a complex set of values including privacy, security, and property rights.

In what follows I will examine two approaches to ethical decision-making applied to the ethical choice of using sender id to facilitate SPAM reduction. The two decision-making methods are the Paramedic method, and Bynum’s heuristic method of ethical case analysis. There are two goals in doing this analysis. First using both methods will demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of each and point us toward a hybrid approach to ethical decision-making. Second, the analysis will bring us once again into the battle (on Crispin day) of adjudicating the ethical trade-offs involved in making decisions related to privacy and respect for human beings in a complex society with rapidly changing technology. The use of sender id and other sender authentication techniques to prevent the negative impacts of spam raises issues that were left unresolved in discussions of earlier technologies of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips and smart cards; issues that have not yet been moved into a clearer area of ITC ethics. Seeing the relationship between the ethical issues raised by these technologies may reduce some of the fog.

AUTHOR
Sara Wilford

ABSTRACT

The growth of e-government has been rapid particularly in developed countries and yet the success and extent of the services being provided varies greatly from fully interactive web-sites in which consumers can pay council tax bills and arrange services, to simple web-pages that merely provide contact details. In the UK, Central government is continuing its push towards universal access to online services, but there are concerns that insufficient resources may have been made available to local government organizations to enable them to fulfill this obligation. It is also likely that variation in e-government service provision may be dependent on the priorities of individual local government organizations and that in some instances; organizations may merely pay lip service to central government policies, or may take short-cuts in other areas in order to comply with centrally directed priorities.

The UK governments’ requirement that local authorities should continually review and assess performance, involves Comprehensive Performance Assessments (CPA), target setting, league tables and voluntary competitive initiatives such as the Beacon Council Scheme. This is designed to encourage innovation and improvement in service provision and the dissemination of learning. The government’s aim is to encourage innovation and improvement in service provision, and access to e-government services is just one element of the Local Government Modernization Agenda (LGMA). This means that local authorities are under constant pressure to deliver a variety of high quality services, and to provide evidence of continuing innovation and high performance

As each new initiative requires the allocation of resources, civil liberties issues may be overlooked in the drive towards meeting targets. This paper discusses how issues such as privacy may not be considered sufficiently important to policy makers when faced with what they see as the ‘bigger picture’. However, privacy may be ignored at our peril and its loss viewed with concern. Privacy of personal information must be considered both prior to and during the implementation of any services that governments wish to provide, requiring a ‘built in’ rather than ‘bolted on’ approach.

The adage ‘too little, too late’ when applied to privacy protection may result in loss of freedom to choose how services are accessed. Such access may be dependent on individuals being forced to make choices about their personal information, which could ultimately result in a loss of privacy. Once our privacy is lost, it may prove to be an almost impossible task to regain. This paper therefore examines the nature and importance of privacy, and considers the potential problems that managers and policy makers may face if the provision of services and meeting government targets is prioritized without consideration of privacy issues.

Personal information to ensure identification and verification of individuals is of course vital to ensure security of systems and appropriateness of access. However, such information may provide government organizations with opportunities to utilize this information for crime prevention, detection or surveillance purposes; that may impact upon privacy and the privacy expectations of citizens. Public policy considers the needs of both the citizen and the state, but when faced with apparent threats from terrorism or crime, the temptation is to utilise new technologies to provide greater levels of security.

In a culture that is performance measurement driven, standardization is important to enable distinctions to be drawn between the best and worst performing services within local authorities, and which is achieved through the reporting of results, clearly defined data trails and tightly controlled budgets. Policies that promote the citizen’s right to choose at the same time as requiring standardized reporting of performance may result in practical end-user issues being overlooked in an attempt to juggle many different and sometimes conflicting central government initiatives.

A ‘one size fits all’ philosophy is not always appropriate when delivering services, and e-government provision is no exception. This paper further considers the attractiveness to policy makers of new technologies that appear to allow individuals greater choice in how services are accessed. However, e-government is being rolled out by individual authorities rather than according to a national template, and choices may be constrained by the priorities of individual authorities. This means that bridging the gap between information rich and information poor may still not be achieved.

This paper examines e-government implementation within a local authority context as just one of several resource intensive directives from central government, and considers that public sector management faces increasing and conflicting pressures in an ever more target driven environment. If these pressures become too great, resources too limited, and targets too prescriptive, privacy and choice, rather than being enhanced by innovation, may turn out to be the hidden victims of the LGMA.

AUTHOR
L. Jean Camp, Kalpana Shankar and Kay Connelly

ABSTRACT

The paper discusses privacy in ubicomp as a design, social, technical, and policy issue; outlines research challenges presented by the technical and social dimensions of using sensor networks as a monitoring technology, and describes the beginning and need for a methodology for designing for privacy in ubicomp.

I. Introduction & Overview

Ubiquitous and pervasive computing, also known as ubicomp, will result in large-scale transformational change as our environment becomes aware, active and responsive. Through the distribution of sensors and tags such as RFID, ubicomp environments become active as sensor data is processed, examined, then triggers response in the environment. Ubicomp has the potential to foster ubiquitous surveillance, or extend human autonomy. Meeting the potential, while minimizing troubling effects, requires that ubicomp be built with an appreciation of values and in particular the legal, social, cultural, and personal value that is privacy. This double-edged sword is of particular importance in the health care environment, where ubicomp has significant potential.

In this paper, we discuss the theoretical deciding in the design stage who will have access to and control of information can enhance functionality while protecting privacy.

Privacy has been addressed too simplistically in technical design because the designs start with a definition of privacy, instead of deriving a definition from the needs, preferences, and understandings of system users and embedding it in the technical design. More complex definitions of user-centered privacy incorporate computer security and various rights.

Computer security and privacy are closely linked, and in most cases, well aligned. Security is the control of information. Privacy is the control of information by the subject. Security can provide tools for anonymizing data, so that privacy is not a concern. Thus authentication is a foundational pillar of this work because of its ability to enhance personal privacy.

Yet security technologies also enable authorization, identification and verification of identity. When subjects can be identified, the inability of that subject to control information linked with their identities is a threat to privacy.

Privacy can also be a right to seclusion — “the right to be let alone”. [1,2] Privacy as seclusion is the underlying theory of privacy tort rights. Seclusion is violated by constant video ubicomp potentially even when there is anonymity. Intimacy and sphere of privacy does not require anonymity but would be served by characterization as described in the previous sections of the proposal. In such and methodological framework for the value-sensitive design and evaluation of privacy-enhancing technologies for informal caregivers to monitor and interact with chronically ill or aging family. In Section 2, we discuss the competing visions of privacy policy and privacy as a design principle. In section 3, we discuss our motivations for selecting our application domain, home health care, and the technical and social dimensions of ubicomp in that context. We close by arguing that the design for values framework offers great promise for privacy in healthcare.

II. Theoretical Foundation: Privacy as a Design Value

On the surface, there is a seemingly inherent tradeoff between ubicomp and privacy. Yet, privacy-enhancing ubicomp is not an oxymoron. Privacy and ubiquitous computing can, together, serve to enhance individual autonomy. Of course there can be a conflict between the designer’s desire to have information to make optimal use of the system and the subjects right to privacy, that is, their control of information about themselves. Yet carefully selecting information and a case, accuracy of depiction would be the primary issue. Consider, for example, ubicomp in a bathroom. Accurate depictions would violate privacy in the sense of seclusion even without the association of a unique name to any user. Consider, for example, ubicomp in a bathroom. Accurate depictions would violate privacy in the sense of seclusion even without the association of a unique name to any user. Yet such ubicomp may be necessary not only for the widely-hyped war on terror to prevent bombings in crowded public facilities but also for the simple reason that the bathroom is a most common location for injuries from falls for the elderly.

Privacy is also a property right [3]. Control over privacy can yield economic advantage. [4]. Video ubicomp that provides demographic information and enables price discrimination can violate this dimension of privacy.

Understanding how these meanings can inform design is fundamental to designing for privacy. In previous work Prof. Camp has offered and tested a set of mechanisms for the design of privacy enhancing technologies for Internet commerce based on data availability. [5]. Yet examination of designs in the Internet wired context is far ore simple than in the ubicomp context. In order to illustrate the complexities consider the case of home health care.

REFERENCES

[1] Prosser, W.L. Handbook of the Law of Torts, West Publishing Company, St, Paul, MN. , 1941.

[2] Bloustein, E.., “Privacy as an aspect of human dignity: an answer to Dean Prosser,” New York University Law Review, Vol. 39, 1968, pp. 962-970.

[3] Mell, P. “Seeking shade in a land of perpetual sunlight: privacy as property in the electronic wilderness”, Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 1996 (http://www.law.berkeley.edu/journals/btlj/index.html.)

[4] Odlyzko A., “Privacy and price discrimination” in L.J. Camp & S. Lewis (eds), The Economics of Information Security, Springer/Kluwer, Waltham, MA, 2004.

[5] Camp, L.J. Trust and Risk in Electronic Commerce, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001.

AUTHOR
Andrzej Kocikowski

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to provide some arguments in support of the thesis that the Humanities in general, and the Studies of Culture in particular, are in urgent need of some help from Computer Science. In the academic world there seems to be a great amount of misunderstanding and misconception about Computer Science among the representatives in the Humanities. As a result, scholars reflecting on the various changes that occurred in our civilization as a result of the application of ICT express views and opinions, make diagnoses, and use terms that cannot be taken seriously from a strictly scientific point of view.

Scholars in the Humanities/Social Sciences (e.g., Heim, Castells, Kerckhove, Wallace) write with increasing frequency and boldness about the new social phenomena caused by the large-scale use of ICT. The fact that there is an interest in these issues is commendable; one should hope that it will lead to a better, fuller understanding and explanation of the world’s major problems. However, I could see for quite some time now a certain flow in many of the works these scholars were producing; namely, a stunning carelessness in the creation and application of terminology. A case in point: the adjective “virtual.” For more than a decade it has been used in combination with a variety of nouns in almost every work written within the Humanities and dealing with the use of computers and the Net. Virtual corporations, virtual communities, virtual groups and teams, virtual worlds, virtual objects, virtual museums and schools, virtual art, virtual life, virtual stores, virtual offices, virtual passions, virtual spaces – these are but some of these terms. In the last five years the use of the term “virtuality” in various, sometimes strange combinations, reached a dramatically high level. There are many indicators that this trend will continue.

If one would assume, following what the scholars in the Humanities seem to suggest, that the term “virtuality” came to the Humanities from the field of Computer Science, then there is a problem one has to wonder about. In Computer Science, there are exact, precisely defined technical terms, like virtual memory, virtual machine, virtual disc, virtual net. In the Humanities, on the other hand, although the term “virtual” is used in many more combinations, there are hardly any clear definitions. Moreover, one has the impression that scholars in these disciplines hardly think that there is any need to define the terms they use. Everyone, it seems, should know perfectly well what it means, e.g., “virtual passion,” or “virtual groups” – no need to explain. Yet, I heard Computer Scientists many times asking what does it mean “virtual society,” “virtual feeling,” “virtual community” and so on. I don’t know. I wonder about it myself.

This state of affairs does not help interdisciplinary communication. Moreover, it can easily breed suspicion regarding the scholastic value of certain kind of research.

The problem described above is really a continuation of the old debate on the epistemological status of the Humanities. Making some simplifying assumptions, one can interpret it today in the context of the controversy between scientism and postmodernism. It seems to me that the present situation in the Humanities has been adequately described by Jean Baudrillard in The Precession of Simulacra: the map precedes the territory. The Humanities are enchanted with – created by themselves and for themselves – simulacra. In short, the terms used for the description of social reality sound nice, are “in,” but they are not necessarily related to the reality which they are supposedly describing. There are many indicators that the Humanities lost – hopefully only for the time being – the ability to differentiate between literature (in the sense of fictional narrative) and scholarship. This is probably the reason why many representatives of the Humanities borrow so readily from Sci-Fi (Gibson) or from cyberpunk literature.

Doing so, however, the Humanities (including Social Sciences), do not fulfill satisfactorily their task of describing and analyzing social reality, thereby causing growing distrust not only among computer scientists, but scientists in general. This could be a contributing factor to the lowering of the prestige of the Humanities in the sense that the work of scholars in these disciplines will be seen as not matching properly the standards of rigorous research. This could further mean the marginalizing of the Humanities within academic structures; and this in turn could lead, among others, to more cuts in the financial support of these disciplines. Not necessarily a future to look forward to for someone who, like myself, works in the field of Humanities.

One way of regaining some of the credibility would be for the representatives of the Humanities to actually learn, truly understand, and properly use some of the terminology used in the field of Computer Science, e.g., words like computer (yes, computer), computer network, computer simulation, network service, virtual machine, virtual memory, and so on. Otherwise, they will continue to create their own visions, theories and diagnoses of social reality that are full of literary fantasy and fancy words – intriguing, but useless for the empirical study of the ICT-era reality. Their study becomes the study of a “(bad) map” instead of a “territory,” to recall Baudrillard once again. Of course, computer scientists should show understanding and should give as much assistance as needed by the scholars in the Humanities in solving of this problem. A friendly collaboration between both branches of Academia, and an interdisciplinary effort to create a good theory of social reality in the era of ICT is what I consider an important task for the next few years.

AUTHOR
Alexandre Lazaretti, Porfirio Barroso and Gloria Melara

ABSTRACT

This study aims to examine the perceived benefits of teaching Computer Ethics in the computer sciences curriculum. The research focuses on what classroom topics are of greatest interest to instructors, and what pedagogical techniques are most often utilized in the classroom. The research originated1 in the United States in the State of California, and it has been expanded through Spain and Portugal.

The study was conducted through surveys that were sent out to various university professors in the fields of computer sciences and computer engineering at the universities of Spain and Portugal. The survey’s questions address generalities as professor education and experience, curricula of their departments in terms of general requirements and more specific items relating to Computer Ethics and Law. The items of key focus address specific pedagogical techniques employed in the classroom, in terms of their perceived usefulness and their frequency of use. Other key items address issues of general ethics, such as concepts and ethical theories that are specifically addressed in the curriculum.

The objectives of this study were to examine the perceived benefits of teaching Computer Ethics and Law in the fields of information sciences and engineering. The questions guiding this study are “What is taught in Computer Ethics and Law (topics, lessons, discussions) today in the universities of Spain and Portugal? What the professors find most interesting? How this subject is taught (types of teaching techniques)? What are the most successful teaching techniques?”

The methodology used surveys and interviews of university professors in the fields of information sciences ethics, engineering ethics and law. The surveys were first conducted by email, then by phone, and finally, by visiting the universities and departments in the universities of Spain and Portugal. The surveys were sent to all the Information Science and Engineering departments in all universities of Spain and Portugal.

The first part of the survey gathered a rough profile of the professors who answered the survey and their individual opinions about Computer Ethics and Law. In the second part, which is of more importance, the questions focussed on the topics the instructors considered essential for the students to learn ethics. These questions are framed within the analysis of the traditional theories and fundamental concepts of ethics in general. The second part the most common methods used by professors when teaching Computer Ethics and Law, are examined more in depth. The respondents selected the methods that they find most useful for effective learning.

The facts revealed on this study are that only 64 universities on Spain have Faculties or Schools of Computer Science. From these 64 universities 91% responded, drawing the following results: 53 percent of the respondent universities with Computer Science programs do not have Computer Ethics, Computer Law or similar courses. And only the 38 percent of the respondent universities with Computer Science programs have Computer Ethics and/or Computer Law.

The sample of interest is the respondent universities with Computer Science programs that have Computer Ethics and/or Computer Law courses. From this sample the 38 percent of them have a Computer Law course and 33 percent of them have similar course that focus on Compute Law. Similar result of 38 percent of them have Computer Ethics course. The last relevant data is that 17 percent of them have both courses: a Computer Ethics and a Computer Law course.

The facts drawn from the analysis of the data are compared with the previous study make a reference to the past paper. at the state of California. At this stage of the study, the conclusion is that the teaching of Computer Ethics and Law at Spain universities is more often done in a separated course such as Computer Ethics and/or Computer Law.

REFERENCES

Teaching of Computer Ethics at the State of California’s Universities and Other Countries. Challenges for the Citizen of the Information Society. ETHICOMPT 2004. Published by Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering. Syros Greece. April 2004. ISBN 960 – 7475 – 26 -7. pàginas 106-115.

AUTHOR
Porfirio Barroso, Gloria Melara and Alexandre Lazaretti

ABSTRACT

This study aims to examine a comparative analysis of Syllabi of Computer Ethics at universities of the State of California. The study includes an assessment of the Computer Ethics compliance with either the Computing Curricula 19911 (CC1991) and/or the latest Computing Curricula 20012 (CC2001). The Computer Curricula is the recommended curricula by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and it is the curricula followed by accredited computer programs. The Computer Ethic course was not an established core course in computer science programs. Nevertheless, since the ACM Computing Curricula 1991 identified topics on computer ethics as fundamental knowledge that all computing students must possess, computer ethics courses started to be part of the core of computer sciences programs. As a result several Internet resources and textbooks have appeared since 1991. However, there is not data to know how, and what computer ethics topics are taught. The purpose of this study was to investigate “The Computer Ethics topics that are taught, the breath and depth of the topics covered, the methodology used, and the degree of compliance they have with the CC2001”.

The methodology consisted on selecting, categorizing and analysing the communality and differences of the gathered information. The main focus was on the extraction and statistic analysis of topics gathered from syllabi. Then, the analysis of these topics was compared to the recommended topics from the reports CC91 and CC2001. The CC91 recommended topics: Historical and Social Context of Computing, Responsibilities of the Computer Professional, Risk and Liabilities, and Intellectual property with a minimum of eleven hours. The CC2001 added 5 hours and the topics of civil liberties, Computer crime, Economic issues in computing, and Philosophical frameworks.

The gathered data was separated on five main categories: General Information, Text Books, Course Descriptions, Topics, and Academic Standards. The analysis of the data on “general information, text book, course description, and academic standards” found correlation to the standard guidelines to create a syllabus with the information of location, access time to professor and resources as well as the rules and level of professor’s expectation related to a grading scale and policies. The analysis on Topics unveiled that 58 percent of the respondents elaborate on “What is Ethics” in their course. The next topics were equalized or tied with 42 percent: “What is Morality, Property/ Plagiarism and Privacy”. In the third place, there are topics equalized with 33 percent: “Codes of Ethics, Internet Good/Bad, Responsibilities and Philosophical Theories” Followed with 25 percent “Philosophical questions” and “Theories” like “Utilitarism and Deontological Duties/Rights”. In the last significant place is Bioethics with 17 percent. Other topics with not statistical significance: Computer Ethics, Basics of Decision Making, Confidentially Rights vs. Justice, Public Good, Access. An analysis of the time spent on the topics is also an important parameter to elaborate on the depth of the topic. This analysis is used on the discussion of the relevance of the topics and their compliance to the recommended curricula

We concluded our studies with some remarks: First, the fact that from all universities of State of California, only 40% of them have a Computer Ethics Syllabus in their departments of Engineering and Computer Science. Second, a discussion of discrepancies found between topics from syllabi and ACM recommendations. Third, the result of this investigation established points of references on the teaching of Computer Ethics on the State of California. These points of references are of value to the international community as well as to professors interested on Compute Ethics research. Finally, recommendations for further investigation in the State of California to find out methodology or alternative forms that programs without a computer ethics course have to comply with the ACM recommended curricula on computer ethics. More over, extend this study to other states and countries to investigate computer ethics education.

REFERENCES

Computer Curricula 1991 Report: http://www.computer.org/education/cc1991/

Computer Curricula 2001 Report: http://www.computer.org/education/cc2001/