Transcript Online Privacy Issues Overview

Some of these slides are derived from Sherry Clark, A Gift of Fire; Prof. John Nestor, Lafayette College; Russell Gayle,
UNC; H. Scott Matthews, Carnegie Mellon University, Michael J. Quinn, Ethics for the Information Age
Ethics – “philosophical study of morality”
Philosophy -- Investigation of the nature,
causes, or principles of reality, knowledge,
or values, based on logical reasoning rather
than empirical methods.
Ethics – “philosophical study of morality”
Morality – rules of conduct describing what
people in a society should and should not do
Association of people organized under a system of
rules designed to advance the good of its
members over time
Rawls, A Theory of Justice
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Apparent conflict between moral imperatives
New technologies can open up new social
problems and new ethical dilemmas
◦ Examples?
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Can new technologies change morality?
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Oz’s cycle of change:
◦ Technological change => Ethical pronouncements
=> Discussion => Laws => (back to Tech. Change)
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Two Different Approaches
◦ Descriptive ethics: what people believe to be right
and wrong
◦ Normative ethics: what people should believe is
right and wrong
Relationship between normative and
philosophical ethics?
Examples where descriptive and normative
ethics differ?
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You are the senior software engineer at startup developing software for handheld
computers to help nurses keep track of
patients
Sales force has promised product by next week
Product still contains many minor bugs
No major bugs have been found, but QA
recommends another month of testing
A competitor plans to release a similar product
in a few weeks
If your product is not first to market your startup will probably go out of business
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Should you recommend release of the
product next week?
Who will benefit if the company follows your
recommendation?
Who will be harmed if the company follows
your recommendation?
Do you have an obligation to any group of
people that may be affected by your decision?
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Relativism in General
◦ No universal norms of right and wrong
◦ One person can say “X is right,” another can say “X
is wrong,” and both can be right
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Subjective relativism
◦ Each person decides right and wrong for himself or
herself
◦ “What’s right for you may not be right for me”
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Spammers say spam is good
◦ Spam brings advertisements to the attention of
some people who want to buy their products
◦ Spammers make money
◦ Purchasers are happy to buy their products
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Most spam recipients and ISPs say spam is
bad
◦ Spam wastes time and computer resources,
congests networks, slows processing of non-spam
email
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Pros
◦ Well-meaning and intelligent people disagree on
moral issues
◦ Ethical debates are disagreeable and pointless
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Cons
◦ Blurs distinction between doing what you think is
right and doing what you want to do
◦ Makes no moral distinction between the actions of
different people
◦ SR and tolerance are two different things
◦ Decisions may not be based on reason
◦ Not a workable ethical theory
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What is “right” and “wrong” depends upon a
society’s actual moral guidelines
These guidelines vary from place to place and
from time to time
A particular action may be right in one society
at one time and wrong in other society or at
another time
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Different social contexts demand different
moral guidelines
It is arrogant for one society to judge another
Morality is reflected in actual behavior
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Because two societies do have different
moral views doesn’t mean they ought to
have different views
Doesn’t explain how moral guidelines are
determined
Doesn’t explain how guidelines evolve
Provides no way out for cultures in conflict
Societies do, in fact, share certain core
values
Only indirectly based on reason
Not a workable ethical theory
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Good will: the desire to do the right thing
Immanuel Kant: Only thing in the world good
without qualification is good will.
Reason should cultivate desire to do right
thing.
Act only from moral rules that you can at the
same time will to be universal moral laws.
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Question: Can a person in dire straits make a
promise with the intention of breaking it
later?
Proposed rule: “I may make promises with the
intention of later breaking them.”
The person in trouble wants his promise to
be believed so he can get what he needs.
Universalize rule: Everyone may make & break
promises
Everyone breaking promises would make
promises unbelievable, contradicting desire
to have promise believed
The rule is flawed. The answer is “No.”
Act so that you treat both yourself
and other people as ends in themselves
and never only as a means to an end.
This is usually an easier formulation to work
with than the first formulation of the
Categorical Imperative.
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Proposed rule:
◦ I can send advertisements to as many email addresses as I
want
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Spammers want people to read their email and buy their
products
Universalize rule:
◦ Everyone can send advertisements to as many email addresses
as they want
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Consequence
◦ If everyone sent advertisements to as many email addresses as
they wanted to, email would be so clogged with spam that it
would no longer be useful and people would stop using it
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The rule is flawed -> spamming is not ethical
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Spammers send ads for a product to many
people, knowing only small number will be
interested
Most message recipients will waste time
and money
Spammers do not respect recipients’ time
or money, and are only interested in using
spam recipients to make a profit
Thus spammers treat recipients as means to
an end
Conclusion: Spamming is wrong
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Rational
Produces universal moral guidelines
Treats all persons as moral equals
Workable ethical theory
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Sometimes no rule adequately characterizes
an action.
There is no way to resolve a conflict between
rules.
Kantianism allows no exceptions to moral
laws.
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Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill
An action is good if it benefits someone
An action is bad if it harms someone
Utility: tendency of an object to produce
happiness or prevent unhappiness for an
individual or a community
An action is right (or wrong) to the extent
that it increases (or decreases) the
total happiness of the affected parties.
“Greatest Happiness Principle”
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Utilitarianism in General
◦ Morality of an action has nothing to do with intent
◦ Focuses on the consequences
◦ A consequentialist theory
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Act utilitarianism
◦ Add up change in happiness of all affected beings
◦ Sum > 0, action is good
◦ Sum < 0, action is bad
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Spam sent to 100 million people
1 in 10,000 buy product
90% of people who buy product are happy with it,
other 10% feel ripped off
People who don’t buy product waste time and
money, get annoyed, etc. - unhappy
Spammer makes lots of money and is VERY happy
9001 happy people, 99,990,000 unhappy people
Conclusion: 99.991% of people are unhappy, so
spam is wrong
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Focuses on happiness
Down-to-earth (practical)
Comprehensive
Workable ethical theory
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Unclear whom to include in calculations
Too much work
Ignores our innate sense of duty
Susceptible to the problem of moral luck
Sometimes actions have unintended
consequences – Moral worth of action
is dependent on consequences that
may not be under control of moral agent
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We ought to adopt moral rules which, if
followed by everyone, will lead to the greatest
increase in total happiness
◦ Act utilitarianism applies Principle of Utility to
individual actions
◦ Rule utilitarianism applies Principle of Utility to
moral rules
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August 2003: Blaster worm infected
thousands of Windows computers
Soon after, Nachi worm appeared
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Took control of vulnerable computer
Located and destroyed copies of Blaster
Downloaded software patch to fix security problem
Used computer as launching pad to try to “infect”
other vulnerable PCs
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Proposed rule: If I can write a helpful worm that
removes a harmful worm from infected
computers and shields them from future
attacks, I should do so
Who would benefit
◦ People who do not keep their systems updated
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Who would be harmed
◦ People who use networks
◦ People who’s computers are invaded by buggy antiworms
◦ System administrators
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Conclusion: Harm outweighs benefits. Releasing
anti-worm is wrong.
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Compared to act utilitarianism, it is easier to
perform the utilitarian calculus.
Moral rules survive exceptional situations
Avoids the problem of moral luck
Workable ethical theory
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All consequences must be measured on a
single scale.
Utilitarianism ignores the problem of an
unjust distribution of good consequences.
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MAPS is a not-for-profit organization
Contacts marketers who violate MAPS
standards for bulk email
Puts marketers who violate standards on
a Realtime Blackhole List (RBL)
Some mail relays refer to RBL list
◦ Looks up email host name on RBL list
◦ If name on list, the email gets bounced back
All email from blacklisted hosts gets
bounced, even email from nonspammers
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Utilitarian evaluation:
◦ ISP using RBL benefits by getting better network
performance, fewer angry users
◦ But their users are unable to receive email from innocent
users of blacklisted ISPs, reducing their utility
◦ Innocent users of blacklisted ISPs unable to communicate
with ISPs that user RBL
◦ Conclusion depends on magnitude of benefit and ratio of
blacklisted innocent users to total email users
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Kantian evaluation:
◦ MAPS puts ISPs on RBL with goal of getting innocent users
to complain and pressure ISP to drop spammers
◦ Innocent users are treated as means to an end
◦ This violates Categorical imperative -> RBL is unethical
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The Therac-25 was a software-controlled
radiation-therapy machine used to treat
people with cancer.
◦ Overdoses of radiation
 Normal dosage is 100–200 rads.
 It is estimated that 13,000 and 25,000 rads were
given to six people.
 Three of the six people died.
Problem: Therac-25
Problem: Therac-25
Problem: Therac-25
Problem: Therac-25
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Therac-25 Radiation Overdose
◦ Multiple Causes:
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Poor safety design.
Insufficient testing and debugging.
Software errors.
Lack of safety interlocks.
Overconfidence.
Inadequate reporting and investigation of accidents.
Q: What can be learned from this case?
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In 1996 Ariane 5 Flight 501 exploded after
launch.
Estimated cost of accident: $500 million
Video
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The cause was traced to the Inertial
reference system (SRI).
Both the main and backup SRI failed.
Both units failed due to an out-of-range
conversion
◦ Input: double precision floating point
◦ Output: 16-bit integer for “horizontal bias” (BH)
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Careful analysis during software design had
indicated that BH would “fit” in 16 bits
So, why didn’t it fit?
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Careful analysis during software design had
indicated that BH would “fit” in 16 bits
BUT, all analysis had been done for the Ariane
4, the predecessor of Ariane 5 - software was
reused
Since Ariane 5 was a larger rocket, the values
for BH were higher than anticipated
AND, there was no handler to deal with the
exception!
http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/ariane.html
Q: What can be learned from this case?
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http://www.acm.org/about/se-code
◦ See “short version” at top of page for general ideas
◦ See “long version” below for more detail