TC 6 (team) -- Ethics presentations
Worth: 10 points
Assigned: 23 March 2015
Due: 6 April 2015
Little Toy Blue
1 Varsity Drive
Suite 1973
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48108
To: |
All Educational Toy Division engineers |
From: |
Nikola Tesla, Vice President for Innovation |
Subject: |
Ethics presentations |
Date: |
23 March 2015 |
As part of our ongoing effort to attain excellence in all aspects of
engineering, the human resources department of Little Toy Blue is
sponsoring a forum on 6 April 2015 to discuss ethics in engineering. At
that forum, each team will present to the class an ethical issue relating
to computer technology.
Each presentation should:
- describe the technology
- describe an ethical issue or societal implication related to that
technology
- describe the categories of people affected by that issue (stakeholders)
and how the issue affects each person
- describe a range of policies or positions one could take on that
issue
- recommend a particular policy or position, and give support for that
recommendation
Your team will have 3 minutes to make its presentation, plus another 3
minutes for class discussion. Because this is such a small amount of time,
we recommend that one student from the team make the entire presentation.
However, all students on the team should contribute to the development of
the ideas. Presentations will be made without a projector (i.e., no
PowerPoint slides).
Your team may choose one of the following topics. Your team may
also choose a topic that is not on the list, as long as the topic
is related to computer technology and is approved beforehand by an
instructor.
- Bitcoins can be used to facilitate money laundering and other illegal activity.
- Censorship and surveillance in China is enabled in part by cooperation
by major search engines. Google decided to take down its site in China
rather than continue participating in this censorship.
- E-mail providers reserve the right to read e-mails under some
circumstances. For example, in 2014, Microsoft read the HotMail account of
a blogger while pursuing an investigation into a leak of confidential software.
- Human-rights advocates and political protesters disseminate
information via social media sites. These sites must formulate policies
about what is acceptable speech and content.
- The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill was intended to reduce
copyright infringement by restricting access to Internet sites that
contain pirated material.
- Data mining techniques can be used to discover sensitive information
(e.g., medical records) about individuals, even from databases that
have been scrubbed of explicit identifiers.
- Personalized news feeds can prevent people from being exposed to viewpoints
different than their own.
- Apple restricts which software can run on iPhones, but it is possible to
"unlock" the device so it can run unsupported software.
- Some mobile device applications help people avoid law enforcement activities,
such as drunk-driving checkpoints.
- There is a market for buying and selling discoveries of security
vulnerabilities in popular software.
- Some computer games are addictive or encourage violent behavior.
- It is common for software manufacturers to ship software with
serious, known bugs.
- Loud volumes on iPods can hurt people's hearing.
- Many people don't apply security updates, and their computers are
often compromised and used for criminal activity.
- Facial recognition was used at Super Bowl XXXV to look for criminals.
- Web sites collect and share data about consumer behavior to deliver
customized ads.
- Computer security researchers have discovered ways to break into
electronic voting machines and change the outcome of elections.
- Peer-to-peer file sharing networks are used primarily to pirate
copyrighted material.
- Peer-to-peer file sharing networks make it difficult to censor
objectionable material.
- People surf the web via unsecured wireless networks (wardriving).
- Encryption algorithms may be required to have a "backdoor" that
enables the government to decrypt data.
- Trusted Platform Module (TPM) can be used for digital rights
management (DRM) to identify and restrict which software you run on your
computer.
- Legal restrictions (e.g., Child Online Protection Act) and
filtering technologies are alternative solutions for protecting minors
from harmful material on the Internet.