AUTHOR
Hannah Haviland

ABSTRACT
This paper will explore the ethical and legal implications of human computer dependency, concentrating on the possibility of considering intelligent computer decision support systems (DSS) to be agents in both the moral and legal sense, thus making them partially responsible for their decisions. By utilising case studies of the real-life, widespread use of advanced DSS by professionals in the healthcare, finance, and insurance industries, I will be able to examine how the concepts of free will, autonomy, and rationality mediate the related but separate concepts of moral agency and responsibility, from both an ethical and a legal perspective. Case studies and scenarios ground the research, which is by nature hypothetical, in the real world. Ethicists are increasingly paying attention to the questions of moral agency and responsibility that might arise in intelligent computers systems; however, not much current work analyses the issue using concrete examples of the issues in those sectors in which it is most prevalent. In the process of highlighting current and potential problems in DSS use, the paper also hopes to make an original contribution to current Best Practices dialogue.

At present, few philosophers and even fewer legal scholars would argue that DSS can be considered agents in either the moral or legal senses, for a number of reasons. Such systems lack the supposedly solely ‘human’ criteria necessary to establish agency, namely self-awareness, moral reasoning ability, rationality, and autonomy (and the list is open to debate, depending on one’s perspective; e.g., Kantian vs. utilitarian). From a traditional ethical perspective, such intelligent computer systems lack the criteria for moral agency, even if as technological artefacts they do reflect and reinforce values. (Even in the case of human moral agency, ethicists would be hard-pressed to agree on the specific reasoning paths that agents must follow in order to deliberate ethically). From a traditional legal perspective, legal responsibility for the quality and impact of such computer systems falls most often somewhere along a spectrum from the system’s user to its vendor to its designer. The same spectrum is often used in most traditional ethical analyses to assign moral responsibility and, to a lesser extent, moral agency.

But the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), including the development of ‘affective computing,’ appears to be chipping away at the traditional building blocks of moral agency and responsibility. Spurred by the realisation that fully autonomous, self-aware, even rational and emotionally-intelligent computer systems may emerge in the future, professionals in engineering and computer science have historically been the most vocal to warn of the ways in which such systems may alter our understanding of computer ethics (e.g., Weizenbaum 1995; Picard 1997). Now tech-minded philosophers are beginning to show interest (e.g., Allen et al. 2000; Bechtel 1985; Snapper 1985; Moor 1995). In fact, many of the ethically-concerned in these fields have discussed the possibility and feasibility of building ‘artificial moral agency’ (AMA) into For example, modern DSS in healthcare and finance feature, more often than not, some level of AI. [The brevity of this abstract does not permit more than a brief review of the case studies; for illustrative purposes, I will summarise just one case study that I will present from the healthcare industry.] In healthcare, GIDEON, Help, and Iliad are just a few of the AI systems in routine use in primary care and point of care (systems listed in the Open Clinical directory, made by Enrico Coiera. Available on-line at http://www.openclinical.org/aisinpractice.html. Healthcare professionals rely to various degrees on these systems for diagnosis, treatment routes, and education. The design and operation of these systems poses a number of potentially problematic issues. These issues influence the way the user operates and navigates the system, and how she interprets and applies the information or decisions it provides. Here I cite just a few issues that can arise when a doctor uses an advanced DSS system. For example, DSS can restrict the doctor’s treatment or diagnostic options to only those options programmed into the system at its conception. In addition, the architecture of the system’s reasoning and logic paths is seldom transparent, which means that the doctor might not be able to understand why the DSS reached its decision. In short, the DSS frames the doctor or healthcare professional’s decision-making process, to various degrees. Does this have any effect on the conditions required for moral agency? Does it affect the criteria for moral or legal responsibility, or both?

Of course, DSS is essentially a tool. The doctor has direct contact with-and ultimate responsibility for-the patient, and no doctor would be acting legally or ethically soundly if she either implemented or ignored the DSS’ recommendations per se, without further deliberation. But, given the very possible shortcomings of such systems, shortcomings which mediate the doctor’s ability to evaluate the soundness of the decision, should the doctor still be classified as the moral agent? Should she bear all moral or legal responsibility? Should the hospital bear partial moral responsibility, if by law it must share legal responsibility? What about system’s programmer? Or its vendor? Given that many healthcare providers today rely on (if not demand) DSS largely for utilitarian considerations (both to shorten and improve treatment, to decrease education costs, etc., and given that the legal risks to the doctor that such a system poses, it would seem that the issues of moral and legal agency deserve a much closer look, one which also considers as yet unexplored alternatives. As these issues arise in all instances where advanced DSS are in use today, the research has widespread relevance.

AUTHOR
Janne Lahtiranta and Kai Kimppa

ABSTRACT

Telemedicine, or use of ICT in health care, is a commonplace practice nowadays. Different applications and systems of telemedicine are widely employed in different institutions and they can be found in the pockets of a common person. Just to name few, these applications include smart personal assistants for certain specific disorders, such as diabetes, and early health recognition alarm telemonitoring systems (for these and other practical examples, see European Commission, 2003). As practically in every area related to ICT, its applications are becoming smaller, smarter and more integrated.

Globally, armed forces of different countries have employed different applications and systems of telemedicine from early days of maritime. For example, ship-to-shore telemedicine has been widely used by both civilian and military seafaring since establishment of Morse-code (International Telecommunication Union, 1997). However, use of telemedicine in individual (or small unit level) in military is a coming trend. Due to expenses and extensive requirements (weight, power consumption, weather proofing etc.) different applications and systems have mainly been used in the troop or platoon level, or they have been at the disposal of a selected individuals such as medical personnel.

At the moment, there are different military modernization programs executed world-wide. Some of these programs go beyond updating the used military hardware, modernizing the personal equipment of an individual warfighter. In these programs ICT is gradually harnessed to bring different applications and systems of telemedicine to personal and small unit level. For example, in the visionary Future Warrior program (U.S.) an individual warfighter is equipped with bio-sensors, which are aware of the warfighter’s current condition as well as current situation in the crisis area. In addition, the near-future equipment of an individual warfighter is capable for relaying the information from the integrated sensors to the commanding officers and to the military physicians, providing a real-time situational awareness of the conditions in the crisis area (for different military modernization programs, see Hellsten et al., 2002).

The members of military live a life, which is relatively controlled and regulated by the authorities. Thereof, the members of military are more prone to coercion than civilians (Beam & Howe, 2003). Furthermore, in a crisis situation it is not always possible or viable to seek the consent of each individual warfighter, let alone honor their refusals (FitzPatrick & Zwanziger, 2003). As the applications and systems of telemedicine become more advanced and integrated, providing real-time situational awareness to the commanding officers and military physicians, ethical problems related to the fundamental right of an individual warfighter for independent decision making start to emerge. In this article we look back to the history for some real-world examples on the coercive use of medicine in the military. Then we examine what kind of ethical risks and threats applications and systems of telemedicine in the military context may create in the future.

One way to approach the potential risks and threats is to consider them from three different viewpoints: individual warfighter, commanding officer and military physician (or other health care professional). From the perspective of an individual warfighter, the risks and threats include human performance enhancement, such as staying alert in the crisis area for a prolonged period of time by using psycho-stimulants, protection from battlefield conditions, such as from possible exposure from chemical weapons by using experimental drugs, and acting as a human test subject to serve purposes of science and common good irrespective of their will. While there are practical examples from early days of Nazi experiments to the Gulf War where individual’s basic right for independent decision making in these areas has been discarded, the consideration on the potential impact of new technologies has been left for lesser degree of attention.

Some of the ethical risks and threats discussed above may directly involve commanding officers and military health care professionals. However, there are issues that are more specific to their spheres of responsibilities. Potential risks and threats from the viewpoints of a commanding officer and military health care professional share a common factor: distancing. For example, the possibility of administration of medical substances into the system of and individual warfighter via robotic surgery may de-humanize health care by distancing the physician from the patient. This may affect to the decision making process of a military health care professional and change the formation and nature of the patient-physician relationship.

Distancing from the perspective of a commanding officer may occur when the real-time situational awareness of the conditions in the crisis area is enhanced. By using this information, the officers may falsely justify and rationalize their actions. For example, they may use the information to emotionally detach themselves from the troops under their command when prioritizing evacuations, or when ordering the use of force in the crisis area.

Some of the ethical issues presented in this article are applicable in the near-future when the results from a military modernization programs are institutionalized, while others are not. Hopefully this article provides some insight into potential ethical risk and threats the use of applications and systems of telemedicine in the military context may create in the future, and facilitates in avoiding them.

REFERENCES

Beam, T.E. & Howe, E.G. 2003. A Look Toward The Future in Military Medical Ethics, 2003. pp: 831-850. URL: http://www.bordeninstitute.army.mil/

European Commission, 2003. Applications Relating to Health. Fifth Research and Development Framework Programme 1998-2002. Final Report.

FitzPatrick, W.J. & Zwanziger, L.L., 2003. Defending Against Biochemical Warfare: Ethical Issues Involving the Coercive Use of Investigational Drugs and Biologics in the Military. The Journal of Philosophy, Science & Law. Volume 3, March 2003.

Hellsten, M., Harriet, M. and Anttonen, H., 2002. Alykkyytta sotilaan kylmavaatetukseen. Alymatine projektin loppuraportti.

International Telecommunications Union, 1997. Telemedicine and Developing Countries. ITU-D Study Groups, Document 2/155 (rev. 2) -E. 5 August 1997. URL: http://www.unifesp.br/dis/set/disciplina/materialdeapoio

AUTHOR
Jose V. Camacho

ABSTRACT

Globalization or the global integration of markets has further strengthened the supremacy of economic and structural adjustment geared towards enhancing market efficiency and competitiveness. One significant driver of globalization is the rapidly changing landscape of information and communication technology (ICT). The access and capacity of an economy to adapt modern ICT has spelled a lot of difference in its economic growth and development path, in particular, in altering the workplace and in changing the face of its labor market, employment and industrial relation. New innovation and technology led firms and companies to require its workforce constantly oriented to new ways of doing things, in producing goods and services. Thus, the new knowledge worker and the knowledge-intensive forms of production and delivery of products and market transactions have emerged. The transaction cost of market transactions and business operations had significantly declined as greatly facilitated by the information highway. In the global labor market, globalization has intensified capitalists’ various forms of efficiency enhancing strategies in all phases and facets of labor-industrial relation. Indeed, globalization offers huge benefits for the world ‘ s labor force – but there are no assurance as some economic and social cost are internalized particularly by those in the vulnerable sectors. As World Bank 1995 argues, sound domestic and international policies are indispensable for realizing the promise of a prosperous, integrated global workplace.

For instance, labor process and structures are altered leading to multiskilling of workers, the computerization and automation of labor processes and market transactions thereby increasing competition and a greater division of labor on a global scale. In order to maintain or improve their position, many firms have sought flexible labor arrangements and production patterns through downsizing their labor force, using contract labor and introducing lean management systems, for example, on more impersonal and intangible mode of service delivery such as outsourcing, telemarketing and call centers. However, the deregulation of product and labor markets has also weakened labor market institutions, promoted high work turn over, greater job insecurity, deskilling and discouraged formation of labor unions, all with the aid and facilitation of information and communication technology.

This paper will describe the dynamics of ICT globalization and its impact on the Philippine labor market, specifically, on the rapidly increasing employment in call centers service industry. It will examine the changing patterns of flexible labor arrangements in call center firms and their effects on Philippine economic performance, for instance, on national output, foreign direct investment, poverty alleviation, human resource development as indicated by employment, unemployment, underemployment, and investment in human capital of firms and the government. It will analyze policies and institutions being put in place in order for the economy seize the opportunities and advantages of ICT-driven knowledge economy, and therefore the subsequent impacts on labor market policies and development strategies to achieve a more equitable income distribution, strong job security, and higher workplace standards, while enhancing the efficiency of labor market and its economic consequence on other productive sectors of the economy.

For some decades now, the Philippine labor market was not able to exploit the potentials of its growing labor surplus in order to effectively facilitate poverty alleviation. For example, with a large informal sector employment, unemployment rate in 1992 was 8.6 percent or about 2.26 million unemployed. This has climbed to 3.42 million workers or 10.2 percent in 2002. Urban employment is higher in the same period soaring to 13.2 in 2002 from 11.4 percent from 1992 (National Statistics Office, 2003). The Philippine government aims to generate six to ten million new jobs in the next six years and much of the hope lies on the service industry, particularly on call centers firms who are very much dependent on modern ICT facilities.

Call centers are telemarketing firms where the products and services of a particular firm are being promoted offering multilingual and multi-media supported premium services for marketing, sales, customer care, crisis management, investor relations and other key business applications. These firms hire computer-literate staff that receives incoming or make outgoing telephone calls which are processed and controlled either by predictive dialing or an automatic call distribution system. The Philippine call center industry is rapidly emerging as the call center capital of the world, a development that is attributed to the English proficient, computer literate and highly skilled, educated and trainable Filipino professionals. In terms of software and hardware, in 2003, the Philippine call center industry spent US$9.8 million, ranking ninth in the Asian region after India that spent US$21 million and Singapore at US$20.3 million (Frost and Sullivan 2003). The government is exploiting the sizeable gains posed by the industry in recognizing its huge potential to generate jobs and earn dollar revenues. Curricular reforms with more emphasis on English, Math, Science and Technology are vigorously pushed geared towards the ICT trainings needs of the industry and in arresting the deteriorating educational quality.

AUTHOR
David S. Horner

ABSTRACT

Controversies over the future of nanoscience and nanotechnology indicate the need for ethically driven policies. The paper will consider whether or not James Moor’s just-consequentialist theory (Moor 1999) provides a practical and theoretically sound response to such a need. It will take a sceptical view of any attempt to justify policies on the strength of forecasting consequences. It will argue that a fallibilist approach is sympathetic to the reconceptualisation of ‘political ecology’ suggested by recent work in the social studies of science and emphasise the need for the democratisation of technological decision making.

The paper will review recent reports from the Royal Society, the ESRC and Greenpeace, for example, which explore a wide range of views on a future ‘nano society’. These suggest a wide disparity in assessments of a future shaped by nanotechnology and the recognition that policy should be shaped to avert unintended and undesirable consequences through public debate. An ESRC report (Wood, Jones and Geldart, 2003) on the social and economic challenges of nanotechnology identifies a continuum of evaluations of the impacts of nanotechnology from incremental (the continuation of existing research and development directions), through evolutionary (the scaling down of existing technologies towards the nanoscale) to very radical implications (fully functional nanoscale machines envisaged by Drexler in the 1980s). A Royal Society report indicates that the social and ethical issues raised by nanotechnology includes, amongst others, major economic impacts; the opening up of a ‘nanodivide’ intensifying the gap between rich and poor countries; information collection and the implications for civil liberties; ethical implications of human ‘enhancements’; and the potential for significant military applications. The report argues that even given the wide range of assessments ‘?what does seem clear is that genuinely new and/or unanticipated social or ethical issues are likely to be associated with radical disjunctions if they occur’ (The Royal Society, 2004, p.51). Similarly Greenpeace emphasises the characterisation of nanotechnology as a ‘disruptive technology’ and ‘?the need for wider participation in the control and direction of technological innovation’ (Arnall, 2003, p.4). What emerges then is a need to address the ‘policy vacuums’ created by the emergence of such ‘radical’, ‘disjunctive’ and ‘disruptive’ science and technology.

Nanotechnology is a ‘malleable’ technology, in Moor’s sense, in that it may be used in novel and unexpected ways which may escape our current methods of regulation or policies for controlling its use. The paper will evaluate Moor’s framework for tackling ethical decision making about such technologies. For Moor ‘?a basic job of computer ethics is to identify ? policy needs, clarify related conceptual confusions, formulate appropriate new policies, and ethically justify them’ (Moor, 1999, p.65). His framework seeks to combine ‘?considerations of consequences of action with more traditional deontological considerations of duties, rights, and justice’ to ‘?provide us a defensible ethical theory that yields a useful framework of applied ethics’ (Tavani, 2004, p.59). Moor’s approach involves the application of an ‘impartiality test’ and then an appraisal of the various outcomes and consequences of actions and policies, weighing the good consequences and the bad consequences, of those policies surviving the impartiality test.

The paper will argue that both the future prospects indicated by the reports discussed above and Moor’s just consequentialism are premised on what Bruno Latour (2004) has called the “old” modern Constitution. This he opposes to the “new” Constitution of political ecology. He encapsulates this in a conception of a political ecology which shifts from ‘matters of fact’ to ‘matters of concern’ where we move ‘?from certainty about the production of risk-free objects (with their clear separation between things and people) to uncertainty about the relations whose unintended consequences threaten to disrupt all orderings, all plans, all impacts?An infinitesimal cause can have vast effects; an insignificant actor becomes central; an immense cataclysm disappears as if by magic; a miracle product turns out to have nefarious consequences; a monstrous being is tamed without difficulty’ (Latour, 2004, p.25). The problem for Moor’s theory is to provide at one and the same time both ethical and epistemological justifications for policy. But our moral judgements are fallible in much the same way as our empirical judgements might be. There may be morally relevant facts which will falsify our decisions. As Wood, Jones and Geldart (2004, p.51) suggest ‘forecasting people’s needs and values 20 years or more into the future is fraught with uncertainty’. Indeed it is! The paper, therefore, will argue for a fallibilist approach to the ‘policy vacuums’ arising from nanoscience and nanotechnology. However, this moral-fallibilist approach will be in the context of Latour’s (2004) “new” Constitution of political ecology.

REFERENCES

ARNALL, A.H., (2003). Future Technologies, today’s choices: nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and robotics; a technical, political and institutional map of emerging technologies. London: Greenpeace Environmental Trust.

LATOUR, B. (2004) Politics of nature: how to bring the sciences into democracy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

MOOR, J.H., (1999). Just consequentialism and computing. Ethics and information technology. 1 (1), pp.65 – 69.

TAVANI, H., (2004). Ethics and technology: Ethical issues in an age of Information and Communication Technology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING, (2004). Nanoscience and nanotechnologies: opportunities and uncertainties. London: The Royal Society and The Royal Academy of Engineering.

WOOD, S., JONES, R. and GELDART, A. (2003). The social and economic challenges of nanotechnology. Swindon: Economic and Social Research Council.

AUTHOR
Janusz Wielki

ABSTRACT

Currently it would seem that there is no need to convince anyone of the impact of the development of the Internet and internet technologies on the functioning of contemporary organizations, which has been taking place for over a decade. Its influence on almost all aspects of function of contemporary organizations has been something extremely visible and obvious for many years now and in the case of some industries this impact has even significantly deepened recently. On the one hand this impact concerns single organizations and their ways of functioning and competing, while on the other hand it affects consumers, their attitudes and behavior. Both these issues are mutually interrelated.

Already by the middle 1990s organizations were functioning in a more or less stable business environment, concentrating their efforts on conducting business activities in their own sectors and facing typical challenges such as: cost reduction and the introduction of new products in the marketplace. It was clearly necessary to contend with changes taking place in the business environment but they were predictable to a large extent.

The second part of the 1990s saw the end of such relative stability, the main reason being due to the arrival of the Internet into the contemporary economy and the beginning of its utilization in business. An important element of this process was the emergence, within the space of a year, two Web browsers with intuitive users interface, allowing both companies (i.e. their employees) and their customers easy access to and use of the multimedial resources of the Internet. At the same time, built-in Web browsers client e-mail programs gave users the possibility of trouble-free utilization of electronic mail. Additionally, at the end of the 1990s two other tools, based on the utilization of Internet technologies spread: instant messaging and P2P programs. Along with Web browsers and e-mail programs they very quickly became the most often utilized tools based on internet technologies, available to contemporary organizations in business sphere.

Analyzing the impact of the Internet on the business environment of contemporary organizations it seems that for a long time only one side of the process was perceived.

Namely, the advantages which resulted from the commercial utilization of the Internet. So the most commonly underlined issues were:

• procurement cost reduction,
• reduction in inventory level,
• lowering cycle times,
• improvement of customer support/service and the lowering of related costs,
• diminishing sales and marketing expenditures,
• emergence of more effective forms of work.

But there is another side of the process connected with the virtualization of contemporary economy. Looking at these processes from today’s perspective, at the almost ten years experience connected with the commercial utilization of Internet technologies, it can clearly be seen that functioning in the electronic environment is far more complicated and brings many more challenges than was initially predicted. This is especially so with regards those previously almost completely unnoticed aspects connected with internal work environment of organizations. Thus the basic goal of this paper is the analysis of the real impact of the utilization of tools based on internet technologies on the internal work environment of organizations virtualizaing their business processes, along with the resulting social and ethical implications.

The paper is composed of three parts. In the first part an overview of the situation connected with the virtualization of the contemporary economy and the consequences of this processes is briefly provided.

The second part forms the core of this paper. It is focused on the internal problems and challenges connected with utilization of the Internet technologies, and those tools based on it, in the work environment of companies. There are four basic aspects which are analyzed:

• employee access to WWW resources and Web browser utilization,
• utilization of electronic mail programs by employees,
• utilization of instant messaging programs by employees,
• employee access to the resources of P2P networks and P2P program utilization.

In all cases attention is concentrated not on the advantages of the mentioned tools utilization, which are quite well known and have already been discussed in length, but on the social and ethical consequences which have became to be more and more important and highlighted by companies. It is hypothesized that there are four groups of challenges related with the utilization of Internet technologies-based tools by employees. They include:

• lowering employee productivity risk,
• possible dangers related to company security,
• legal risks,
• challenges connected with the proper functioning of IT infrastructure.

All these issues are analyzed based on numerous reports devoted to these aspects. Also the problem of monitoring employees on-line activities is discussed and analyzed. In the final part of the paper, the most significant conclusions and suggestions are offered.

AUTHOR
Karen Mather

ABSTRACT

In his 2001 book “Being Good” the philosopher Simon Blackburn reproduces a drawing by the Swiss painter, Paul Klee, to illustrate a point that he is making about identity. Paul Klee is notable for having explained that his artistic method was that of “taking a line for a walk”. This reference to the technique of beginning with an abstraction and gradually working up to the material depiction of an idea, is here borrowed as an model for this paper on Information Ethics.

Looking back to the keynote paper at ETHICOMP 2004, given by Terryl Bynum, one learns of the birth in the middle of the last century of the current debate about Information Ethics. Other works of Bynum trace the line of thought from Norbert Wiener’s concern that automation would require new and more sophisticated ethical sensitivities, via Maner’s warning about the lack of computer ethics “policies”, to Gorniak-Kocikowska’s assertion that modern developments in Information Technology necessitate the uncovering of new, globally-relevant principles to replace the Euro-centric ethics of former times.

Since the late 1990s Luciano Floridi and colleagues have taken up the challenge and have proposed a theory of Information Ethics that is presently stretching current understanding and expanding the Computer Ethics body of knowledge in the finest tradition of vigorous discussion around controversial ideas.

This paper acknowledges the contrary positions taken by other recent writers on the subject of Information Ethics. One such is Mathieson, who suggests that it might be more a question of access to information as a Rawlsian primary good, rather than the nature of information itself, that is at the heart of Information Ethics. Also the purport of a recent careful and detailed critique by Himma is considered, particularly in terms of its rejection of Object Oriented theory as a means of elucidating or validating the Floridi concept of information objects.

Whilst according due respect to opposing views, the paper nonetheless follows the Floridi line, and explores the possibility of using the Floridi scheme of Information Ethics as a macroethic, that is as a high-level concept that could be called upon in constructing solutions to issues at the lower-level of applied computer ethics. The example used for this exploration is that of the issue of electronic workplace surveillance, where information technology is making it possible for employers to keep a very close watch on their employees – a situation that frequently invites examination from an ethical point of view.

Regarding workplace surveillance, and in the spirit of the Ethicomp 2005 conference entitled ‘Looking Back to the Future”, this paper looks back to the work of Norbert Wiener in the 1940s and 1950s, forward to the theorists who have followed in his footsteps, and on to the authors of emerging ideas and the issues they foreshadow in newly published scholarly work.

In this regard, January 2005 has already seen the publication of a book, edited by John Weckert, containing work by leading thinkers in the field of computer ethics, on the topic of electronic workplace surveillance. Here the fundamental issue can be traced back to Wiener – one of the bedrock principles that Bynum attributes to Norbert Wiener is that of “no unnecessary infringement of freedom”. Modern developments suggest that Wiener would be seriously discomforted by the status quo. For instance, in the recent popular press, the Los Angeles Times of 27 December 2004, there is an article by David Colker that seems to sum up the situation: “Go Ahead, Just Try to Disappear”.

Questions related to the ethics of workplace surveillance fall under many headings including privacy, trust and autonomy, informed consent, fairness, universal human rights and legal issues. Arguments for the practice consider the rights and responsibilities of employers in relation to their stakeholders, who, of course, include the people working for the organization. Arguments against the practice discuss such matters as the rights of the individual, psychological suffering, and the imbalance of power between employees and employers.

The question this paper broaches is whether it is possible to make use of the new theory of Information Ethics as a macroethic and through it to gain different insights into the ethical problems associated with electronic surveillance in the workplace as currently identified in the literature of computer ethics.