Solution Manual for Ethics for the Information Age, 8th Edition

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’s Guide toEthics for the Information AgeEighth EditionMichael J. QuinnDecember 8, 2018

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ContentsPrefacevTeaching Computer Ethicsvii1Catalysts for Change12Introduction to Ethics53Networked Communications114Intellectual Property135Information Privacy176Privacy and the Government197Computer and Network Security258Computer Reliability279Professional Ethics2910 Work and Wealth31iii

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Teaching Computer EthicsIntroductionTeaching a computers, ethics, and society course for the first time can be intimidating! Unlikethe typical computer science class, which focuses on technical content, a computers and societyclass focuses on people and the decisions they make. Determining the right thing to do is notlike finding the maximum element on a list. The moral problems discussed in this book arecomplicated, and there are no algorithms that enable you to “solve” a moral problem as neatlyas you can construct a binary search tree. If you have little or no formal training in ethics,you probably feel uncomfortable being responsible for teaching an ethics class.Fortunately, your job isnotto preach to the students or tell them how they ought tobehave (outside of class, anyway!).Rather, your role as the teacher is to raise questions,give students the opportunity to formulate answers, and then gently but firmly insist that thestudents justify their answers by explaining their reasoning. If you are successful, the studentswill complete the course with a greater understanding of contemporary ethical issues relatedto information technology, an improved ability to think critically and defend their decisionslogically, and a greater appreciation for alternate points of view.As C. Dianne Martin and Hilary J. Holz put it:Our belief is that ethics cannot be taught; rather what can be taught is aframework for evaluating ethical dilemmas and making decisions. In accepting thepremise that technology is value-laden, we stress the need to teach a methodologyof explicit ethical analysis in all decision-making related to technology... The role ofethics education should be to provide students with at least a minimal theoreticalbackground essential for their understanding of the role that values and ethicsplay in all decision-making, whether it be technical, economic, political, social, orpersonal.1What is the best way to achieve this goal? The consensus among experienced instructorsis that the best computer ethics classes are discussion-oriented. Discussions force students toorganize their thoughts. In addition, students are more receptive to hearing ideas from peersthan from you. They will come to realize that every complicated issue can be looked at frommultiple points of view. They will also learn that some arguments are better than others, and1“Non-Apologetic Computer Ethics Education: A Strategy for Integrating Social Impact and Ethics intothe Computer Science Curriculum,” C. Dianne Martin and Hillary J. Holz, The Research Center on Computing& Society (web site), www.southernct.edu/organizations/rccs.vii

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viiiTEACHING COMPUTER ETHICSthat the best arguments are those that use logic to reach conclusions from facts and commonlyheld values.From time to time, I’ve gotten feedback from readers noting that some of the argumentsI present in the book seem flimsy compared to others. They wonder why I’ve included them.The point is that I want students to develop the critical thinking skills that will enable themto weigh arguments and determine which are better than others.When they demonstratethey have acquired these skills by identifying the weaker arguments in the text, that’s a goodsign!DiscussionsFinding topics to discuss should not be a problem for you. The book raises far more issuesthan you will have time to discuss, and late-breaking news stories provide even more discussionmaterial. It’s hardnotto find a question related to ethics and information technology in theday’s news!You will have to pick and choose the topics you deem most important.Takeadvantage of the discussion questions and in-class exercises found at the end of each chapter.They can lead to interesting class debates and require no preparation beyond reading thechapter.The end-of-chapter interviews provide another source of discussion topics. Your studentsmay be highly critical of some of the opinions expressed by the interviewees—so much thebetter!One of your important responsibilities as the teacher is to get every student engaged indiscussions of ethical issues. I recommend you oversee many small-group discussions insteadof one large discussion. When it is time for a discussion, break the class up into small groupsof four or five students and ask each group to discuss the question at hand. This approachdramatically increases the number of students who are speaking, from one person in the entireclass to one person in each group, and it makes it much more likely that every student willspeak. After the small groups have had a reasonable amount of time to discuss the issue, youcan then ask one person from each small group to report out to the entire class, giving theentire class the opportunity to benefit from the insights generated in each group.Another one of your responsibilities is to ensure that the students justify their point ofview. If a student should say, “I think such-and-such is wrong” without further elaboration,you should ask the student to explainwhythe action is wrong. Sometimes you need to drilldown several levels before you get to the moral value or principle upon which the conclusionrests. I encourage my students to couch their arguments in one or more of these words: benefit,harm, right, obligation, duty, or character. A utilitarian analysis relies upon an evaluation ofbenefits and harms. A social contract theory analysis focuses on rights. A Kantian analysisconsiders duties or obligations. An analysis from the perspective of virtue theory determineswhether the action is consistent with someone having good moral character. Asking for thesewords can have two benefits.It makes the analysis more rigorous, and it helps the classunderstand the ethical theory being invoked.Take advantage of the introduction to logical argumentation appearing in Appendix B. Ifyou and your students are familiar with the structure of valid arguments, the most commonfallacies, and unfair debating gambits, it will be easier for all of you to identify when someone’s

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ixargument is flawed and name the problem with it.Many of the issues discussed in this class are highly controversial.Students often havedifficulty coming up with a logical argument defending a point of view to which they areemotionally attached. One way to solve this problem is to poll the class and find out whichstudents support an issue and which are opposed to it. If the class is reasonably well dividedbetween the two points of view, ask the students to argue the point of view opposite to theirown personal beliefs. Without an emotional attachment to a particular point of view, studentscan be more analytical.You can add value to a discussion and keep it moving along through the use of meta-comments.For example:“Maria has just given a utilitarian argument why the proposedaction is wrong. Can someone analyze this issue from a Kantian point of view?”It is important that students understand there are multiple ways to look at nearly everyissue. Through the use of leading questions, you can help ensure that both sides of an issueare expressed. If you cannot find anyone to express a contrarian view, you may need to bringthat view out yourself. Be prepared to promote either side of every issue!Role-Playing ExercisesYou should occasionally set aside time for role-playing exercises. Role-playing activities guar-antee that many students will participate, and students particularly enjoy them. The textbookcontains many of these exercises.For a typical activity, the class is divided into small groups that give presentations repre-senting a particular point of view. You will need to give the groups time to discuss the issueand devise the arguments they will make to the rest of the class. The amount of time dependson the exercise, but it is often 10–20 minutes. Next, each group makes its case. Again, theamount of time depends on the exercise, but it is often 20–30 minutes.Finally, it is goodto have a concluding discussion in which the students have the opportunity to discuss therelative strengths of each group’s case.Writing AssignmentsI believe in the adage that “You don’t know what you know until you write it down.” To thatend, writing assignments provide an important opportunity for students to practice construct-ing ethical evaluations.The media are filled with stories raising moral problems related toinformation technology. It is easy for students to find current news stories related to the topicof a chapter. In a typical 600-word essay I ask students to describe a moral problem, take aclear stand on whether a particular action or decision is right or wrong, and then defend theirposition through the use of one or more of the practical ethical theories described in the book(Kantianism, act utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism, social contract theory, or virtue ethics).You can find rubrics for grading written essays on the Web (see the next section).Web ResourcesA variety of Web sites contain information valuable to instructors of computer ethics courses.

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xTEACHING COMPUTER ETHICSThis section describes a few good sites.Robert Greene, a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Eu Claire, has createda Web site organized according to the chapters ofEthics for the Information Age. The site haslinks to hundreds of articles from Wikipedia,The New York Times, and other news sources.The home page for his site ispeople.uwec.edu/GREENER/phil308/index.htm.TheComputingCases.orgWeb site provides detailed case studies that you can use inclass.Some of them overlap with cases described inEthics for the Information Age, whileothers are different. The site introduces a methodology called “Social Impact Analysis” forexploring the social and ethical issues related to a computing system. It gives practical adviceon how to lead an ethics case discussion, and it provides a worksheet that students canuse when weighing the pros and cons of alternative actions.The home page for the site isComputingCases.org.DOLCEis an acronym for Developing On/Off-Line Computer Ethics. The DOLCE Website contains several classroom activities, including quizzes and role-playing exercises, thatyou can use early in the term to help motivate the study of ethics.The site also containsseveral rubrics (evaluation sheets) that can help you grade written essays. The URL of theDOLCE home page isedocs.uis.edu/kmill2/www/dolce.Edward F. Gehringerat North Carolina State University has created an attractivevisual map that provides links to Web sites, news articles, and case studies related to computerethics. The URL for theEthics in Computingsite map isethics.csc.ncsu.edu.RCCS(Research Center on Computing & Society) is a particularly valuable site ifyouareintegratingcomputerethicsinanexistingcomputersciencecourse.Itpro-videscasestudiesrelevanttoawidevarietyofcoursesinthetypicalundergraduatecomputersciencecurriculum.Youcouldalsotakeadvantageofthesecasestudiesifyou are teaching a stand-alone computer ethics course.The home page for this site iswww.southernct.edu/academics/schools/arts/departments/philosophy/computingandsociety.html.CERIASis an acronym for the Center for Education and Research in Information As-surance and Security. The CERIAS Web site is a good place to check if you are integratingcomputer ethics into another computer science course. Its materials suggest how discussionsof ethical issues can be introduced into various undergraduate courses in computer science.The URL for this site iswww.cerias.purdue.edu.SummaryOne of your roles as a teacher of computer ethics is to raise questions and ensure that a widevariety of points of view are expressed. You are also serving as a role model, demonstrating tostudents the importance of thinking about the right thing to do—and then doing it. Thinkingabout ethics is not just for people with a Ph.D. in philosophy. Ethics is for all of us, and allof us have more to learn.It’s perfectly acceptable to respond to a question with, “I don’tknow.I’ll read up on that and get back to you.”I’ve certainly done that!By letting thestudents know that you are a student of ethics, too, you can give them confidence that theycan start—right now—to think about the moral qualities of their professional decisions.

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Chapter 1Catalysts for Change1. Even though information technology has existed for millennia, the invention of comput-ers and high-speed communication networks have made information far easier to collect,store, manipulate, and distribute, legitimizing the use of the term Information Age todescribe the present era.2. Mathematical tables constructed manually invariably contained errors, stimulating theinvention of automated devices to do the computations and typeset the results.3. A similarity between the growth of the mechanical calculator market in the second halfof the nineteenth century and the growth of the personal computer market in the secondhalf of the twentieth century is that in both cases inventors and entrepreneurs were ableto capitalize on relatively recent developments in technology. Advances in machine toolsand mass-production methods made mechanical calculators possible. The invention ofmicroprocessors made personal computers possible.A difference between the growth of the mechanical calculator market and the growth ofthe personal computer market is that the demand for mechanical calculators came fromlarge corporations with middle managers who needed access to information in order tomake decisions, whereas the demand for personal computers came in large part fromantiwar and anti-establishment activists who were interested in providing individualswith a powerful tool out of the control of large corporations and the government.4. Both the Burroughs Adding Machine Company in the 1890s and IBM in the 1960s hadstrong sales and marketing operations that helped them achieve dominant positions intheir respective markets.5. Three advances in computing stimulated by the development of radar are electrostaticmemory (exemplified by the Williams Tube), semiconductor memory (exemplified bythe transistor), and graphical user interfaces (exemplified by Doug Engelbart’s oNLineSystem).6. The Minuteman II ballistic missile program was the largest customer of integrated cir-cuits in the United States between 1962 and 1965. During this time companies learned1

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2CHAPTER 1.CATALYSTS FOR CHANGEhow to make much more powerful integrated circuits, paving the way for the inventionof the microprocessor, which is at the heart of every personal computer. In this way theCold War helped bring about the personal computer.7. The semaphore telegraph was adopted more rapidly on the continent of Europe than inthe British Isles because the system only works when atmospheric conditions allow goodvisibility between stations. Since fog and rain are more common in the British Isles, thesemaphore telegraph was not as practical.8. Cellular networks are an important category of wireless network. Cellular networks haveprovided telephone service to billions of people who never had access to traditional wiredtelephone networks. The telephone created the first online communities. Today, onlinecommunities thrive with many having access through WiFi or other wireless Internettechnologies. Morse’s telegraph put the Pony Express out of business. Text messagingavailable through wireless networks made telegrams obsolete.The telephone blurredthe traditional boundaries between private life and public life.Today’s smart phonescontinue to test our boundaries regarding when it is appropriate to consult a digitaldevice.9. Tim Berners-Lee chose to construct his hypertext system, the World Wide Web, ontop of the TCP/IP protocol, rather than one vendor’s proprietary network protocol.This decision helped ensure the success of the Web, because it enabled the Web to spancomputers made by different manufacturers running different operating systems.10. Examples of how a social condition influenced the development of a new informationtechnology:•The need for large amounts of timely information by corporate managers in thelate nineteenth century fueled the growth of the manual calculator market.•The need to store and manipulate large amounts of data prompted the inventionof punched-card tabulation and data-processing systems.•A demand for less expensive access to computers stimulated the development oftime sharing.•BASIC became popular because there was a demand for an easy-to-learn program-ming language.•An interest in accessing and sharing information led to the rapid adoption of theWorld Wide Web created by Tim Berners-Lee.•(Other examples are possible.)11. Examples of a social change brought about by the adoption of a new information tech-nology:•The transcontinental telegraph system put the Pony Express out of business.•The adoption of the telephone erased traditional boundaries between work andhome.

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3•The telephone also make possible the first on-line communities, through party lines.•Manual calculators led to the “de-skilling” and “feminization” of bookkeeping.•Time-sharing systems gave many more people access to computers, which they usedfor both educational and entertainment purposes.•Television broadcasts may have influenced the outcome of the U.S. Presidentialelection of 2000.•(Other examples are possible.)

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4CHAPTER 1.CATALYSTS FOR CHANGE

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Chapter 2Introduction to Ethics1. The “ethical point of view” means respecting not only your own goals and aspirations,but taking into consideration the goals and aspirations of other people as well.2. Ethical relativism is the view that “the good” exists inside the human mind; i.e., it isa human invention.Since “the good” is invented, its definition is malleable.Ethicalobjectivism is the view that “the good” exists outside the human mind.Our role ashumans is to find or discover “the good.” Since “the good” exists independently of ourintellectual activity, its definition never changes.3. Person B has not made a strong ethical argument because she has not brought up anyfacts or values that would undermine or contradict the explanation of Person A.4. When we say an ethical theory is rational, we mean that it relies upon logical reasoningfrom facts or commonly held values.5. The many/any fallacy is to conclude that any option is acceptable after observing thatmany options are acceptable. For example, you may observe me take several differentroutes between home and work, and all of them are good in the sense that they allowme to reach my destination safely and in a reasonable amount of time. That does notimply that all possible routes between home and work are good ones.6. Sometimes I leave home a little late, but I’d still like to get to work on time.I wantto be able to drive through red lights on those days when I am running late.Theproposed moral rule is: I may ignore traffic laws when I am pressed for time. It is alsomy will that the traffic lights keep everyone else driving in an orderly manner.If weuniversalized this rule and everyone else who was running late also ignored traffic laws,then the streets would be chaotic, contradicting my desire that everyone else drive inan orderly manner so that I can accomplish my illegal maneuvers. Hence my proposedmoral rule is logically self-defeating. It is wrong for me to drive through red lights onthose days when I am running late.7. Plagiarism is the use of someone else’s words or ideas without giving that person credit.Appendix A actually gives five ways of committing plagiarism: copying another’s words5

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