Information and Communication Technology Ethics and Professional Practice - Essay Example

ICT and Professional Practices Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code: Date of Submission: Ethical technique in ICT Despite the numerous benefits that are associated with the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), over the past view years, it is emerging that the users of these devices are worried of the ethical techniques as applied in communication and technology. It is argued that it is virtually very possible to get virtually all information that one may desire as long as he can access supporting devices such computers and iPhones. Many people are questioning on the motives behind the designs made available by different service providing companies. A part from creating a world where people can freely interact, there are emerging issues and more especially related to technicalities involved in using different communication devices (Finn and Jakobsson 2011). Google has been in the forefront for over 14 years now in helping to organize the world’s information in such away that it can be universally acceptable and meaningful. The company was founded in 1998 and has millions of users of globally. However, the company has not gone without featuring in the media for issues not less than ethical techniques. David Barksdale a 27 year young man working at Google as a reliability engineer at Kirkland was found to be accessing the information made available to him to harass children. David got to access these children through the technology group Seattle. This issue has caused a lot of concerns with relation to privacy of the people who use Google. Despite providing a very important service, Google has also the capacity to keep any information concerning the user. According to Google, any person using their service must have his information kept by the company. All emails and any other information passed through Google server is saved even though it might not be on the actual time (Seattle News 2011). With the availability of this technology therefore, a person can have his information saved in Google’s servers without the owner’s consent. It is the information that was available in these servers that Barksdale used to access data about other people and more especially children and used it to harass them. Google’s case is just one illustration of how ethical technique has become of big issues in communication and how different devices are designed to either ensure personal privacy or expose it. Even though the information is kept with the good intentions of helping the user access it next time, always there is a possibility that the service provider or the company may be accessing his personal data (Jakobsson et al 2008). Privacy and intellectual property are two emerging issues in this case and that can be found in any circumstances where information can be saved by the service provider or the company for future retrieval by the user. Looking at a situation where the employee of service providing company can access any information when he desires is becoming a worrying to the users of ICT devices. Ethically, the question being posed here is, how can someone can access personal information without any kind of restriction? Good ethics demand that individual privacy be respected and honored. However, more and more as new devices are being developed including the iPhones and PCs the users’ information is being collected and stored with the knowledge of the user. These devices therefore impact greatly on personal privacy. On the other hand, a property can termed as what an individual owns and can be either physical or intangible. In this case personal information can be considered a property for someone and cannot be used in anyway by another whatsoever, without the consent of the originator. While information was used in this case to harass children and other people, then it means that personal information might have been reached and tampered with without the knowledge of the user (Kenneally and Claffy 2010). Barksdale’s case covers three majors issues related to ethics in ICT use which include deontology, consequentialism and Immanuel KANT. The concept of deontology talks about individual rights and the responsibility of each to defend them. The three human rights covered by the deontology concept are right to own something, the right to have personal privacy and the right to know of something. In this case each and every person has a right to uphold these rights as professional, personal, ethical or confidential. With the case of Google even though people have the right to know, that one is not possible. Further, they do have the right to own the information. These two situations give negative approaches to right to privacy and intellectual property. This is because their personal information can be accessed by a different person at any time. Consequentalism on the other hand, defines the circumstances under which an action can be termed as wrong or right. This concept puts more emphasis on how the user and the service providing company benefits from a given action and the action be related to either cost or harm the harm that it causes to an individual to determine whether it’s a wrongful doing or not. The concept can be categorized into three major groups namely utilitarianism which represents a situation where the action benefits all parties; altruism where one party benefits from an action that harms another party and egoism where one tries to maximize the benefits without giving due consideration to the other party. In the case of Google, the intention of saving customer data is to help the user access his information at any given time even though this responsibility is being abused by the staff. In actual sense, the case of Google is illustration of the Utilitarianism form of consequentialism. Finally, the other concept developed as a principle of ethics in ICT use is Immanuel KANT is considered an imperative approach used in making decisions related to ethics and it include three major theories which include universality, self respect and respect for others. Despite the fact that the Google concept is applied internationally, use of personal information without the concept of the owners is show of lack of respect for the user (Jakobsson, et al 2008). Pros and cons Google applications provide a very important platform for facilitating communication among its users world over. The important of the Google apps is that communication is easier irrespective of the distance or geographical location. Information can also be saved and retrieved at any given time. With Google emails and other information can be delivered within a fraction of a second. On the other hand, given the approach being used by different communication services providing firms to collect and save data for later use by the customers, privacy and intellectual property are becoming major issues. This is actually the negative side of ICT as it exposes personal information to wrong persons who can use it for selfish actions. Comparative discussion The issue of using the internet is all about ethics. However, ethics varies with prevailing differences in different cultures. This is because what may be considered ethical in one country may be considered unethical is some other parts of the world. The country culture therefore, has been found to be one of the factors that influence the use of the internet, protection and access of information through the internet (Jakobsson et al 2008). For example, in the United States, the centric view has continued to dominate in many of its activities. This is because majority of the people of America the interests of their country a head of everything. What this therefore means is that it will always not be easy to decide on the issue of global importance without the having the support from the United States. Privacy protection The purpose of ensuring privacy protection in the use of the ICT, is to ensure that information owned by a person or organization and that is restricted to a particular audience, is not any accessed by wrong person irrespective of the means used to access it. This requirement perhaps can get more boosts with the enactment of appropriate privacy policies in the use of the ICT. The primary objective of having privacy policy is to protect restricted data from access by unintended parties (Kenneally and Claffy 2010). Extent of privacy protection Because of the robust of ideas and different opinions including those of cultural views and political concerns that have come to be major determinants in the process of enacting privacy policies with regard to internet use, seeking to enact privacy policies, an equilibrium position between freedoms to accessing information and protecting personal information must be reached (Kenneally and Claffy 2010). Conclusion In conclusion, this assessment was particularly aimed at exploring the idea of ICT use as a matter of ethical issues in society. This assessment has managed to establish that in ICT, all kinds of data and information can be made available and without proper policy can be used for wrongful doings. On the other hand, privacy in internet use is becoming a major issue and therefore calling the need for privacy protection policy. In general, ICT use can be either challenging or positive depending on the user. References Finn, P., and Jakobsson M. (2011). Designing ethical phishing experiments. Technology and Society Magazine, IEEE, spring, 26(1), p. 46–58. Jagatic, T., and Johnson, M. (2007). Social phishing: Communications of the ACM, 50(10), p. 94–100. Jakobsson, M., Johnson, N., and Finn, P. (2008). Why and how to perform fraud experiments. IEEE Security and Privacy, 6(2), p. 66–68. Kenneally, E., and Claffy K. (2010). Dialing Privacy and Utility: A Proposed Data-Sharing Framework to Advance Internet Research. IEEE Security and Privacy, 8, p. 31–39. Seattle News. (2011). Privacy breach worries Google users, 28th March 2011, available at: http://mynorthwest.com/category/local_news_articles/20100915/Privacy-breach-worries- Google-users/ Read More