AUTHOR
Frances Grodzinsky

ABSTRACT

Globalization is an umbrella term for a complex series of economic, social, technological and political changes that have been identified since the 1980s. These changes and processes are seen as increasing interdependence and interaction between people and companies in disparate locations “(Wikopedia, 2006). Originally referred to as an economic phenomena, the term globalization has grown in scope as technology and more specifically, the Internet, has made access to the world at large faster and for the most part unproblematic. Along with the positive aspects of globalization, Internet crime has also grown and is a true reflection of the complexity of globalization.

The advent of the Internet has redefined the scope of crime. What was once the province of local authorities within a local physical sphere has now become a phenomenon that crosses international borders. The global network has facilitated the growth of global computer crime as crackers, spammers, and child pornographers, invade cyberspace. It is often motivated by economics, and it has become a social problem for those who use the Internet regularly. The interactions made possible on this shared media create the possibilities of fraud, theft, and exploitation, that law enforcement worldwide has trouble containing.

This paper will examine globalization from the perspective of cyber crime and will investigate the jurisdictional issues associated with networks of criminals who work on a global scale. It will focus on three main areas: cracking, spamming and child pornography examining fraud, theft, and exploitation as well as the economic motivation behind these crimes. The paper will also address the problem of responsibility, and the effect of global crime on the Internet as an open and shared media.

A computer programmer knows that global variables, those seen by everything else in the program cause problems. If the programmer is careless, the variables can inadvertently be modified and the output of the program corrupted. Finding these programming errors is difficult because when a variable is visible to the entire program, the traceability of errors becomes long and tedious. That is why programming students are taught to embrace local variables that are declared within the scope of a module and visible locally. Modifications to that variable can only be made within the location of the module. How does this pertain to the topic at hand? The Internet is a totally global space where the defacto rule is global visibility. Only stand-alone computers that are unconnected enjoy the privilege of security (unless someone steals the computer), reserved for the “local variable”. Computer users with Internet access have had to implement firewalls, security systems and anti-virus software to attempt to restrict visibility to what is on their machines and networks. Restricting visibility is an attempt to ensure privacy of data, autonomy and control over private information and programs.

If we analyze social trends in the six years, we can see that there has been a rise of computer crime related to the globalization of the Internet. Crimes such as cracking, spamming, and child pornography have become international in scope crossing invisible national borders that do not exist over the Internet. Like errors with global variables, these crimes are difficult to trace. Even if the criminals are apprehended, the jurisdiction of punishment is often problematic and the laws are different from country to country. Two ethical questions that present themselves are, first, “How can users, ISP’s and governments respond adequately to the issue of global crime”? And secondly, “What is the effect of globalized crime on the Internet as a shared, open media?” Part One of this paper will examine globalization, Part Two will address three of the most prevalent crimes: cracking, spamming and child pornography in light of the complexity of globalization and Part Three will examine local solutions to these global problems.

This is an outline of the proposed paper with a brief introduction to the sections:

2. 1 Global Internet crime: Cracking, Spamming, and Child Pornography

Each subsection will examine specific instances of the crime, the economic implications and motivations

.

2.1.1 Cracking

Cracking is a name given to a malicious or criminal hacker. Richard Stallman, who attempted to distinguish crackers from the hackers that populated the Free Software movement, first coined this usage. Cracking has gone global and in the best sense of project management, teams of crackers have been created with each member contributing his or her strengths to commit the crime. This is what Piore (2005) refers to as “perhaps the fastest growing criminal enterprise of the 21st century”.

2. 1.2 Spamming

Spamming is the use of email systems to send messages to recipients that are both unsolicited and unwanted. The prevalence of unsolicited spam has grown to monstrous proportions within the last few years, bypassing filtering programs and security set up to prevent its arrival. Spambots crawl through the web, collecting Internet email addresses for mailing lists. In the first half of 2005, the number of bot infected systems in China grew 140% (Yeo, 2005). Seoul, Beijing and Taipei were listed among the 10 top cities with infected systems (Yeo, 2005).

2.1.3 Child Pornography

Child pornography is the exploitation of children for sexual purposes. It is also known colloquially as “kiddie porn. As far back as 1999, meetings between the European Union and the United States have been devoted to the issue of curtailing international child pornography rings on the Internet (Akdeniz, 2003). In addition web sites such as www.antichildporn.org provide information and help in the global fight against child pornography. How has child pornography globalized? The rest of this section addresses this issue.

3. Global Problems Local Responsibility

The global nature of these three computer crimes has necessitated some creative solutions from authorities around the world. Although cooperative law enforcement groups around the globe may execute oversight and virtual identification of criminals on the Internet, the responsibility of apprehension and shutting down the sites usually falls to local authorities.

4. Conclusion

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AUTHOR
Takuya FUKAZAWA

ABSTRACT

In recent years, many retailers of America, West Europe and Japan have increasingly operated internationally. And retail internationalization has gained much prominence in managerial practice and academic discussion. For example, Wal-Mart (America), Tesco (United Kingdom), Carrefour (France) and so on, which operate GMS (general merchandise store) format stores, moreover Ikea (Sweden) and Laura Ashley (United Kingdom) and so on, which operate specialty format stores, have extended internationally. Ultimately, we are having much opportunity to see and use these foreign stores. During initial phases in 1990s, these retail companies have mainly extended in emerging markets, but in recent years they were also introduced in developed markets, which has led new competition phase.

Considering this internalization trend, this paper focuses on Japanese convenience store companies and their internalization strategy. The selection of Japanese convenience store companies for this study was related to their notoriety among Japanese retail industry and their proactive international extension mainly in the Asian regions.

At present, four Japanese convenient companies, Seven Eleven, FamilyMart, Lawson, and MiniStop has entered international markets and operated proactively. Primarily, convenient store offer “the convenience” regarding to times, proximity of stores to home and selection of goods. As the elements enabling to offer these conveniences to customer, earlier studies have pointed two elements of the strength of Japanese convenient stores. The first one is the development of information technology (IT), which fosters the communication between the franchisor and the franchisee. The second element is the development of the system of the distribution of goods enabled by the collaboration between the wholesaler and manufacturer.

In fact, the development of IT enables the constant stream of sales and inventory date to flow between each store (franchisee) and headquarters (franchisor). For example, Seven Eleven has reformed the IT system five times between 1978 and 1997. POS (point of sales), interactive POS, and EOB (electric order book) has been constructed, and this has enabled the efficient merchandise development in headquarters and helped each store to receive the detail data of sales trend. In addition, the development of the system of the distribution of goods has enhanced the accuracy of orders’ information. However, the collaboration between the wholesaler and manufacturer is a requisite element, which was successfully constructed by Japanese convenience store companies. In fact, they have been trying to develop these systems for business expansion in the international markets.

However, as retailing industry is not classified as global industry but as multi-domestic industry, retailing companies is closely related to local retail trade area, local society, local economic and local culture. In addition, considering that retailing industry is a basic industry, which means the basic function of each country’s economy, unless foreign retailing companies must, thus, carefully consider not only local consumer’s benefit but also the effect of local traditional retailing stores, development of employment environment. This paper has made an attempt to explore the way of retailing company’s (especially Japanese convenience store companies) operation in foreign markets by considering business corporate ethics. And the necessity and importance of business corporate ethics for international retailing companies was examined.

REFERENCES

Alexander,N.(1997),International Retailing,Blackwell, London.

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Kawabe Nobuo(2003), Seven Eleven no Keieisi, Yuuhikaku.

Porter, M. E. ed., (1986),Competition in Global Industries. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Yahagi Toshiyuki(1994), Convienience Stores System no Kakusinsei, Nihonkeizai Shinbunsya.

AUTHOR
William Fleischman

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the elements of an eight-year collaboration between Villanova University and the Julia de Burgos Bilingual Magnet Middle School (now, Julia de Burgos Bilingual Elementary School) designed to redress some of the obstacles to learning new technologies that affect young children from low income neighborhoods. The collaboration has its origins in the program in ethical issues in computing required of all computing sciences and information sciences majors – specifically, in the course module devoted to societal inequities involving access to computers and their use. In turn, the collaboration has become an important source of materials and insights for the computer ethics course.

At the inception of the Villanova – Julia de Burgos collaboration, the school was, as noted, a bilingual middle school in an economically disadvantaged, drug-ridden, and dangerous neighborhood of North Philadelphia. The school population was almost exclusively Hispanic (68%) and African American (31%) with more than three-quarters of the children eligible for free lunch, a widely accepted marker of community poverty. Julia de Burgos owed its magnet designation in part to its status as a bilingual school, but more importantly, to its organization into small, thematically-based, quasi-independent learning communities. One of these had already begun to achieve a level of success in preparing students to enter the newly established Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts. Nevertheless, the school ranked among the lowest in the city with respect to student scores on standardized tests of reading and mathematics proficiency.

The collaboration began in September 1998 when a Villanova graduate and alumnus of the computer ethics course who, among all candidates, had earned the highest score among all candidates on the City of Philadelphia teacher placement examination, accepted a position as a sixth grade teacher at Julia de Burgos. His discovery of deficiencies in technology at the school led directly to the first collaborative project – the design, implementation, and installation of a network ready computer laboratory utilizing equipment donated as part of outreach activities under the 1996 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Undergraduate Biological Sciences Initiative grant to Villanova University. The new laboratory had an immediate tonic effect on teachers, students, and parents at Julia de Burgos. We discuss some of the first applications and activities to which it gave rise.

In this paper, we describe and evaluate subsequent milestones of the collaboration including an ongoing series of reciprocal visits, additional gifts of equipment, Villanova participation in an innovative project to improve student reading proficiency (in which thirty families of children reading significantly below grade level were given personal computers for home use and provided subscriptions to Kidbiz 3000, an electronic service that delivers content from sources such as the New York Times, automatically rendered in English at the grade level appropriate to the individual student), and this year’s project in which all eighth grade students completed interdisciplinary exit projects exploring connections between various risk factors (disease, violence, drug abuse) and life expectancy under the guidance of a team of five Villanova undergraduates. These projects were particularly suited to cultivating global perspectives among Julia de Burgos students – for example, linking their concerns about HIV/AIDS in the local community with crises in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia.

We present a more detailed account of the background of the Villanova – Julia de Burgos collaboration with attention to the physical condition of the school and its surroundings, the curriculum, the role of parents, the conditions under which teachers and students work, and how these have changed over the course of eight years. Apart from the intrinsic interest of these points, they are significant because they constitute the boundary conditions that constrain the nature and scope of the collaborative projects we undertake and they form the reality confronting those Villanova computing and information science students who participate actively in the collaboration.

We discuss some of the results of the collaboration and particularly the complex web of reciprocal effects it has produced among students and faculty on both sides of the effort. Villanova student participants have produced video and digital photographic archives of their involvement with Julia de Burgos students and teachers. They have also kept diaries recording activities and impressions from their work, from which several Villanova students have produced remarkably sensitive and nuanced accounts of the life of an urban elementary school. All these materials have been incorporated into the module of the computing ethics course devoted to inequities in access to computers and allied technologies. They are especially valuable in that they constitute first-hand accounts of the conditions in an urban school – an environment with which few, if any, Villanova students are familiar – by contemporaries who are available for further discussion and clarification. In this way, these materials form an important supplement to the standard literature on issues of access and preparation for contemporary life in a world in which education and technological proficiency are increasingly critical.

Finally, we discuss some of the satisfactions and frustrations of this effort as well as some of the lessons learned about building a collaboration linking the university and elementary school environments. We indicate, particularly, the ways in which working on different time scales, different and often conflicting calendars, and different rhythms complicate the collaboration. We recognize the fragility of undertakings that depend critically on individuals rather than institutions, while affirming, paradoxically, the importance of persevering in such efforts. We note, also, evidence that a collaboration of this nature provides a valuable counterweight to the well-documented narrowing of the public school curriculum entailed by the high-stakes testing regime associated with current national educational initiatives in the United States.

AUTHOR
Dag Elgesem

ABSTRACT

Search engines are becoming increasingly important as mechanisms for getting access to information on the web. They have thus acquired considerable power and some authors have even suggested that Google and the other big players in the search engine market function as the new gate-keepers to the web. Several authors, including Introna and Nissenbaum in an important, recent paper, have argued that for this reason the details of the algorithms of the search engines should be made public knowledge. The problem, crudely put, is that we do not know whether the search engines are biased or not. Because we all use and trust these programs the details of the algorithm have to be revealed, it is argued. In the paper, using ideas from Kant about freedom of information as a precondition for the use of all other rights and freedoms, arguments for a strong policy of openness on this issue will be construed.

There are serious problems with such a position, however. One problem is that if all the details of the algorithms of the search engines were revealed this would open up for massive attempts to manipulate the results by webmasters all over the world. The consequence would be that the search engines would be even more biased. The dilemma, then, is that a right to information could actually make people worse off in terms of information.

In order to find a way out of this ethical dilemma, a model for the estimation of the credibility of information is invoked. It is suggested that the sophisticated Bayesian analysis of the credibility of testimonies, developed by the legal theoretician Richard D. Friedman, can be used also in the analysis of the credibility of search results. In the paper I will argue that the model developed by Friedman can be used as the basis for the ethical evaluation of search engines.

It is possible here only to briefly indicate the approach. The question asked with respect to a testimony in court is: How likely is it that the event X in fact happened, given the testimony by witness w that X happened? Friedman develops a way to practically apply a Bayesian calculation of the probability of the truth of the testimony, given knowledge of the probability of various sources of error in the testimony. The user’s question has a similar structure to the one concerning credibility of testimonies: How likely is it that the a set X of web pages is the most relevant answer to my search term, given that the search engine comes up with this set X? In the paper it is argued that the same kind of analysis as the one suggested by Friedman, in terms of conditional probabilities, can be applied to the search engine case.

To illustrate, consider the model below (adapted from Friedman, p. 713):

Most relevant set of hits.

Indexed as most relevant.

Ranked as most relevant.

Set presented as most relevant.

Search space.

Not the most relevant set

Not the best ranking.

Not the most relevant hits.

Error in indexing

Bias in ranking

Paid hits.

Start by considering the box to the upper right in the figure above, which will be presented in detail in the paper. This represents the result of the search as it is presented to the user. The user is interested in knowing along which path this result was produced. The claim made by the search engine is that this is the most relevant set of pages given the search term entered by the user. If this claim is true the result was produced along the uppermost path. Whether this claim is true or not is important for the user’s evaluation of the credibility of the information included in the set (the first 10 hits, say). But the claim is not necessarily true. It is possible for example that the indexing of the pages gives raise to a biased classification. Another possibility is that there are problems with the ranking algorithm and that less relevant pages are ranked as more relevant. Another source of error would be that the ranking is manipulated in the presentation of the results, for example that it is possible to pay for a high ranking among the hits. In these cases the result is produced along one of the other paths indicated in the diagram. The higher the probability that the result is produced along one of the lower paths, the less credible is the information, given the user’s informational needs.

In the paper it will be argued that this model gives a better basis for the ethical evaluation of search engine policies from the standpoint of the user. The user is interested in a search engine where the there is as little bias as possible. It is of course impossible to eradicate the bias completely. For example, Google’s page rank algorithm is to some extent affected by the power law of the structure of the linking on the web (even though this is contested). But we can all agree that we want to reduce bias and strive to increase the probability that claim that the result set is the most relevant, is correct. The question, then, is whether a strong policy of openness concerning the details of the algorithm contributes to this. It will be argued that it probably does not. And, on the other hand, a publication of the details of the algorithm will not better enable the average user to determine the probability that the result set is optimally relevant.

AUTHOR
Lucia Tello Diaz, Porfirio Barroso Asenjo, Rishwina Dookhony

ABSTRACT

During the last quarter of the twentieth century Computer Science and Information Technologies have radically transformed the world. The emergence of Computer Science and the wave of technological advancement have made sharing, accessing and transmitting of information easier than ever before. Computer Science and Information Technologies have invaded all aspects of our daily life. All private, public or parastatal institutions have batteries of networked computers and most households are connected to the Internet.

Whereas Computer Science and Information Technologies are bringing a technological revolution in the world with numerous benefits, it is also bringing a host of problems. Not everyone is content with using these technologies for good and beneficial purposes. Many use these technologies, and more particularly the Internet, to spread unhealthy information; some do it for personal or political motives and others for personal financial gains. The revolution of Computer Science and Information Technologies has also brought with it some ethical, political, social and legal dilemmas. From this moment we only focus on the study of the ethical aspects of these Computer Science and Information Technologies.

The governments of the world have recognised the importance of Computer Science as a key ingredient to their countries economic development and have promoted it as one of the pillar of the world economy. However, not everybody, until today, is conscious of the necessity of the ethical aspects of Computer Science. Despite of this, we in our research found the existence of some codes of ethics from many organizations from all over the World who try to fulfil these gaps. As an example of this we present a sample of the codes of ethics provided by the most important Computer Science and Informational Technology societies of some of the most representative countries all over the world.

The field of Computer Science and Information Technologies is an area with no regulations from ethics point of view. This justifies the emergence of organisations codes of ethics in order to auto regulate or auto control their professional activities.

Within this field we find the Internet as one of the most important computer technological advancements that, not only has changed the concept of Computer Science, but has also created a need for a reformulation to deal with the ethical conflicts created by its use.

By studying a sample of the codes of ethics of the most important and representative national societies of Computer Science will help us to glimpse or make out more clearly how these organizations are faced to regulate the surroundings of Computer Science and, in addition, to check how the particular circumstances of each of these codes determine in a way their formulation or application form.

When we study the computer ethics codes we found two different research lines. On one side, the evolution of these through time, where we can observe the changes due to the articulation of the ethical principles or standards found in the codes of ethics. On the other side, the comparative analysis of these principles at the present time, we observe how the distinct national Computer Science societies have taken notice of the changes in the Computer Science and Information field fast arrival or appearance of the phenomenon Internet.

Therefore, we achieve two distinct but complimentary analyses. Firstly, we realise a diachronic analysis of the evolution of the computer ethics codes of the most important national computer societies: Association for Computer Machinery, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, British Computer Society y Data Processing Management Association – from now on ACM, IEEE, BCS y DPMA-, to observe how their theoretical approaches from the formulation of the first code of ethics in 1951 to the updated version of 1997 to elucidate also if the socio-cultural contexts in which they have appeared have influenced in their formulation.

Secondly, we realise an synchronic analysis of the ethical codes of the most prestigious national computer societies: Centro de Informática, Telemática y Medios –CITEMA-, Gesellschaft für Informatik –GI-, Canadian Information Processing Society –CIPS-, Australian Computer Society –ACS-, Japan Information Service Industry Association –JISA-, Finnish Information Processing Association –FIPA-, New Zeeland Computer Society –NZCS-, Internet Society of China -ISC-, Computer Society of India –CSI-, y la Computer Society of Zimbabwe –CSZ-, as well as the most relevant international ethical code draft of the International Federation of Information Processing – IFIP-, in order to compare statements of their codes and observe how the social and cultural circumstances have influenced somehow in their enunciation.

Finally, we study if the distinct computer ethical codes consider within their postulates the technological innovations emerged by the boom and success of the Internet.

The importance of our research is due to the historical approach that will assess how with the passing of time has influenced in the formulation of the computer ethics codes. Thus, it is not a mere content analysis of the texts, but a perspective in more accordance with the objectives we have proposed: to resolve the problems of the evolution of the ethical conception through the ethical codes of the most important Computer Science societies of the world.

To realise this study, we took the list of 40 principles or ethical topics from the book Deontología de Informática. The reason why we have chosen this book and not the books of others such as the one by C. Dianne Martin in her study Comparation of the New ACM Ethics Code with Previous Ethics Codes is because it is not only more complete, but it is the most up to date.

Finally, the importance or relevance of the obtained results is due to the global perspective that is contributed by the historical aspect of our research as we have mentioned. This aspect will show in a new and unique way the Computer Science and Information Technology field has evolved from the 50’s to the present time. In fact, since DPMA published first computer ethics code in 1951, we have observed the changes that have occurred in the formation of the statements of the ethical codes, as evident in the last published computer ethics codes as per example the codes of the Canadian Information Processing Society, CIPS 2005-. Therefore our results could not have been obtained without resorting to the historical methodology that we used in our research.

AUTHOR
Simon Dacey, Catherine Snell-Siddle

ABSTRACT

Technologies that are being developed according to the needs of a particular society depend largely on the level of skills, available materials, economy, requirements and cultural traits of that society. If such technologies are proved to work successfully within a given society, cultural differences may not allow those technologies to operate effectively in other societies. Therefore, when transferring a new technology cross-culturally, several factors must be considered so that it is beneficial to the receiving societies.

The development of any new technology forces people to deal with completely new rights and responsibilities in their use of information and to consider ethical standards of conduct. The good achieved by the technology must outweigh the harm or risk. Those affected by the technology should understand and accept the risks. Those who benefit from the technology should bear their fair share of the risks, and those who do not benefit should not suffer a significant increase in risk.

The authors have been asked to develop a geographical information system (GIS) application to assist Tonga’s Estate Holders (Nobles) in managing the country’s land under their care. Some of the land is under the conventional freehold land tenure system while the rest is under customary land tenure. Customary land tenure is a system of holding rights to land which derives from the operations of the traditions and customs of the people affected. For example all land in Tonga belongs to the Crown and the sale of land by anyone, even the King is prohibited. The new application will store land occupancy information of a sensitive nature that could give the Estate holder power over the land-occupiers that may be misused. Geographical Information Systems have been developed to serve the growing needs of developed societies for complete, current and reliable information in a timely fashion. They are also engaged to evaluate long-term policies on land management combining economic, social and environmental issues.

When developing a GIS application there is a need for balance between effective access and preservation of privacy. The power of information technology to store and retrieve information can have a negative effect on the right to privacy of every individual. There is a need to preserve traditional rights and maintain traditional responsibilities as new technologies create fundamental differences in how information is treated. There are issues such as accessibility – what information should others have access to – with or without the individual’s permission, and what safeguards exist for their protection? What information does a person or an organisation have a right to obtain, under what conditions and with what safeguards? Accuracy is another issue to be considered – who will be responsible for the reliability and accuracy of information and who will be accountable for errors? Ownership of the information is also a factor, eg. who owns information and the channels of distribution, and how should they be regulated?

It is useful to use an established framework to ensure that all factors are considered during the planning of a software development project. The software development impact statement (SoDIS) is an ethics-based process that examines potential software development risk from the perspective of an extended set of stakeholders. A primary goal of this process is to reduce potential software development project failure and prevent unintended harm from occurring to stakeholders. The authors endeavoured to identify all of the potential stakeholders that would be affected by the GIS application. The authors then explored the capability of SoDIS in addressing the risks associated with introducing unfamiliar technology to stakeholders who, in this instance, include indigenous communities.

This paper identifies and addresses the ethical issues that are prevalent in the development of a GIS. It takes into account the socio-economic and cultural realities of traditional societies and applies these to the development of a GIS for Tongan Estate Holders.