The Ethical Issues of Information Systems

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The Ethical Issues of Information Systems: Examine the ethical considerations associated with information systems. Discuss data privacy, security, and intellectual property issues.
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1. Introduction
If executives and their corporate culture have a strong propensity to act unethically, no device or code of conduct will stop them. Even the most comprehensively conceived legislation or code can do no more than prohibit or make mandatory certain behaviors, and it is always possible to circumvent them. However, this work is aimed at at least making organizations more aware of the ethical import of their actions, and more committed to public scrutiny and debate about whether their behaviors are defensible. The assumption is that managers will generally wish to do what is right, and will be willing to expend some effort to analyze the effects of their decisions on stakeholders. The problem is that this may be a will o’ the wisp; still, it is the condition under which any ethical analysis would have some hope of affecting decisions. The specific context for our work is the affected decisions in information systems development and operation. Here again, it is unrealistic to hope that these decisions will be guided by explicit ethical analysis. Usually, they are taken under tight budget constraints and time pressures, and the only rule is expediency. This is a recipe for decisions made in a fog of half truths, misinformation, and hidden agendas—decisions that are simultaneously the most ethically fraught, because of their great potential impact, and the least likely to be subjected to ethical scrutiny. However, it is precisely the potential of information technology for altering what we are able to do, and the relativity of these alterations to old modes of behavior that makes assessment of the impacts the decisions most urgent. And while we have no illusions about altering the prevailing mode of decision making, at a minimum we hope to sensitize trainees to the ethical import of their decisions.
1.1 Importance of Ethical Considerations
It divides the technology into three categories and investigates what information technology adds to the ethical analysis of these categories. The analysis of the first category, the internally neutral technology, leads to the conclusion that IT adds a new phase to the prevailing mode of moral reasoning. This new phase is characterized by a displacement of the subject of an action. In using conventional methods of moral reasoning to determine how to shift information from one place to another, people have simply been comparing the probable results of alternative actions upon themselves, or a client, or someone else on whose behalf they were acting. Now, with the automation of information processing, the persons who program the machines and the persons who benefit or suffer from the resulting action can be different from those who had been the original participants in conventional action. A new moral question then becomes, whether an action to secure a certain result at a long distance through a computer is the same as the earlier familiar action that achieved the result more directly. The likely answer is that there has been a change in rules permissibility with respect to that result, but to determine this and its implications will require a whole new study in casuistry. Concerning the second category to which Categorical Imperative admits only hypothetical imperatives, IT brings to light many actions which were not seen as attempts to achieve some result, but are now seen as data transmissions to change a record, and which the persons involved would not have carried out had they known that the action can be more easily and securely done at a later time. IT thus creates a new precariousness and self-referential time consumingness some actions. The analysis of the third category, morally loaded action, shows that IT places a great deal of power into the hands of those who can access specific data and programmes enabling them to make a certain action. Whether access will be in a world networked databases or by a more direct lateral entry, it will become apparent that this information access is a kind of power, i.e. ability to secure a desired result and will lead to considering an information act as a means to an end. The possibility of doing a cost efficient simulation of various acts and their probable results will bring Utilitarian calculation, while some trying to prevent the act will take the simulated results as predictions and given to last to changing said probability, there will be a whole new mode of moral reasoning for the foregoing years inaugurated by these acts and simulation. All in all, the above analysis shows that IT is a great blooming for ethicists and would be moral men who are now and will be able to study great deeds and misdeeds information age and teach conduct which before now, as mentioned above, has simply been displaced. For at this time there is no society or corporation which cannot act as a hypothetical entity, and time when IT has finished automating both public and private record, there shall be no data acts which are not as if real.
1.2 Scope of the Work
IS has been used to automate many of the routine transactions in various businesses. These transactions have to be executed repeatedly, and every time exactly the same way, or the results will be regarded as a failure. The better a job is suited to automation, the more rapidly it is likely to be automated. This has been the case in areas with high volume repetitive transaction processing such as banking and insurance. The method is to special-purpose a software and a database of the relevant information to the transactions and then incrementally refine the system and incrementally automate aspects of more complex decision making. Japan and the United States are the leading nations in IS automation. High wage nations may find it difficult to retain and outsource or automate business processes that have become commoditized. This may have long-term implications for the competitiveness of these nations. Automation is a double-sided sword. While on one hand, it will free human workers from having to do certain tasks, on the other hand, it will make their work less skilled and more vulnerable to being phased out. This is particularly true in the case of certain management decision making that can be partly automated by Artificial Intelligence and Expert systems. It has been alleged that in some industries, technology has been adopted that particularly is aimed at small-scale automation for the purpose of putting people out of work and replacing them with machines. This point is known as Technology Harms Workers and is one of the seven key topics in assessing the social and ethical impact of automation.
2. Data Privacy Issues
2.1 Collection and Use of Personal Data
2.2 Consent and Opt-Out Options
2.3 Data Breaches and Security Measures
3. Security Concerns
3.1 Cybersecurity Threats
3.2 Protecting Sensitive Information
3.3 Authentication and Access Controls
3.4 Encryption and Data Protection
4. Intellectual Property Challenges
4.1 Copyright Infringement
4.2 Plagiarism and Attribution
4.3 Fair Use and Creative Commons
5. Ethical Decision-Making in Information Systems
5.1 Ethical Theories and Frameworks
5.2 Balancing Stakeholder Interests
5.3 Ethical Leadership and Corporate Responsibility
6. Legal and Regulatory Compliance
6.1 Laws and Regulations Related to Information Systems
6.2 Compliance Challenges and Strategies
6.3 Impact of International Laws on Information Systems
7. Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
7.1 Bias and Discrimination in AI Systems
7.2 Transparency and Explainability in AI Algorithms
7.3 Accountability and Responsibility in AI Development
8. Ethical Issues in Big Data Analytics
8.1 Privacy Implications of Big Data Collection
8.2 Ethical Use of Predictive Analytics
8.3 Social and Ethical Consequences of Data Analysis
9. Ethical Considerations in Social Media and Online Platforms
9.1 Privacy Settings and User Control
9.2 Online Harassment and Cyberbullying
9.3 Manipulation of User Data and Behavioral Advertising
10. Ethical Challenges in Cloud Computing
10.1 Data Security and Protection in the Cloud
10.2 Vendor Lock-In and Data Ownership
10.3 Ethical Use of Cloud Resources