Moral Responsibility

Tavani, H. T., & Grodzinsky, F. S. (2002). Cyberstalking, personal privacy, and moral responsibility. Ethics and information technology [4], 123–132. (PDF ), Retrieved from http://www.springerlink.com/content/klk45j454m882r75/fulltext.pdf

In this excerpt Tavani and Grodzinsky discuss the problems that arise when information is freely available (or available for a nominal fee) to the public when these are mixed with cases of harassment and stalking. The authors present several cases that involve internet driven harassment, the primary one which they use to fuel their excerpt concentrates on a stalking case that ultimately ended in the victim’s brutal death. The victim in this case posted no information about herself, her address, place of work, picture, etc. that inevitably ended up on the stalker’s website dedicated to outlining her death, all the information ended up on the internet without her knowledge or permission.

Their primary focus is outlining and discussing current law legislation (which views any information available publicly as not needing protection), current practices that view most types of information gathered for governmental regulation as public (such as records like vehicle registration, home address, current place of work, etc.), and discussing in-depth the moral aspect of who could/should/is responsible in various circumstances (such as the information sellers, those who viewed potentially harmful websites without reporting, the ISP hosters, etc.). The authors ultimately present an article aimed at opening the minds of those who read it and call for a level of moral responsibility on the part of any who see or part take in questionable activities, arguing that without any moral responsibility on the internet it has the potential to become increasingly a more dangerous place to be.

Tavani and Grodzinsky are a professor of Philosophy at Rivier College and a professor of Computer Science and Information Technology at Sacred Heart University respectively. The article is well sited with footnote throughout, and provides multiple sources for support and discontent of their argument for each example. Overall, the article is well thought out and while it isn’t neutral, it does allow for the possibility of disagreement of their argument. All arguments made are logically laid out and easy to follow. While the language of the article does expect a certain amount of vocabulary to understand, it isn’t a very dense article, written with a view to be easily accessible to people of the general public as well as philosophers and scholars.

Data Mining

Tavani, H T. (1999). Informational privacy, data mining, and the internet. Ethics and information technology, 1(2), 137. Retrieved from http://condor.library.colostate.edu/sfx_local?sid=google&auinit=HT&aulast=Tavani&atitle=Informational%20privacy%2C%20data%20mining%2C%20and%20the%20Internet&title=Ethics%20and%20information%20technology&volume=1&issue=2&date=1999&spage=137&issn=1388-1957

Tavani uses this article to outline various concerns of “data mining,” a practice wherein one party (usually a company) requests information form an individual and uses this information to gain a better understanding of a situation. Typically, that’s where it ends, but with the advantages provided by the internet, information can be collected at whim via search engines, websites, etc. and used without the express knowledge or consent of the user to form more complex pictures in addition to other information collected by the same system, that forms patterns that neither party could have predicted beforehand. Tavani goes through to explain and discuss the current privacy acts and laws as well as the intricacies of data mining, and the ethics of the current usage. Tavani’s overall argument is that current regulations in place for privacy are ill-equipped to deal with current practices of data mining on the internet and reform is needed in order to better define what exactly is going on.

Tavani is a professor of Philosophy at Rivier College and President of the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology. He has written several published books on the subject of information technology, and indeed his article is does concentrate on the philosophical side of data mining. After outlining the basic information he is working with, he then concentrates on the what ethical boundaries the practice deals with. For the most part Tavani presents a neutral argument, providing both sides of the discussion as to why data mining may provide privacy concerns and why it still works more or less within the boundaries of the current guidelines. Tavani’s central argument is that current definitions of regulation are too vague, and out dated to deal with how data mining is currently being used on the internet. Although he does seem to lean more towards the philosophy that data mining (in its current use) is not in the right, he never comes right out and says it.

Are all the cookies crumbling?

Zimmerman, R. (2000). The way the “cookies” crumble: internet privacy and data protection in the twenty-first century. Legislation and Public Policy. Retrieved from http://www.law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv/groups/public/@nyu_law_website__journals__journal_of_legislation_and_public_policy/documents/documents/ecm_pro_060646.pdf

In this article from the Legislation and Public Policy Journal, Rachel Zimmerman, who practices intellectual property law with her emphasis being in litigation, begins with introducing background information on what “cookies” are. She then delves into four main topics regarding privacy with these cookies. This is a controversial topic because, as she states, “privacy law has had difficulty keeping pace with advances in technology.” People are interested in keeping updated with all these advances, however so are the companies and websites that are keeping tabs on us. Throughout this article Rachel discusses the specific threats to privacy that are prevalent today in the world on the Internet. She then argues why the legislature should even be concerned with these threats. After this Zimmerman goes on to evaluate the effectiveness of particular methods that are supposedly protecting our privacy. Zimmerman ends by proposing a solution. This solution proposes revising the “reasonable expectation of privacy test” as well as establishing “fair information practices” that must be regulated by the legislature.

Zimmerman’s piece gives a very good background about what she is going to be arguing about in the article. These “cookies” that she talks about are pieces of information sent by Web sites used to store information on the visitor’s hard drive that can be re-transmitted to the particular Web site if the visitor returns to the site. This is a way for the certain Web site to “keep tabs” on its visitors in order to give them better ads on the side, track what their friends are doing, and to better market to these individuals. Zimmerman believes that these new technology advances “create a certain amount of insecurity regarding the personal data and information of Internet users”. Today, the internet users in the United States face a very serious threat to their personal privacy, which leads to a threat to their safety as well. Zimmerman states that she believes “we are not far from a time when companies will be able to connect a particular person with his or her profile, thus allowing unimaginable abuses of personal privacy”. Zimmerman continues to reinforce the fact that our internet commerce is threatened and that there must be a solution that includes both constitutional and statutory remedies. The constitutional remedy would be to revise the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test while the statutory remedy would be to incorporate “fair information practices” set up by the legislature. The concern for privacy on the internet is a long battle that is fought everyday by millions of internet users.

In my opinion she is right on target. I strongly concur with the idea that there needs to be a solution that is decided by legislature. It is extremely important because every person has a different opinion and bias on every situation. If we had a certain “code of conduct” then everyone could tell when they are violating it. Privacy is a concern for the general public because it can ruin your day in a split second, and possibly even your life. Without privacy there is no safety, and we all know what happens when you can’t count on your safety. As it stands I will need to do more research before I can determine what threats there are affecting me today, and how far they can or will come, however I do know this: my privacy needs to be protected. I have a lot to learn about how dangerous the internet really is these days but Zimmerman helped introduce methods to protect me and explain why they are so important.

Real ID

Tien, L. (2010, July 20). Real id online? new federal online identity plan raises privacy and free speech concerns. Electronic Frontier Foundation, Retrieved from http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/07/real-id-online-new-federal-online-identity-plan

In this article Tien discusses a newly suggested form of controlling anonymity online: the Real ID. This suggested legislation being discussed by the US federal government is in answer to the very real problems of assessing whether or not someone is who they say they are online. The theory the government has is that if we are able to authenticate every person and action online (within our country at least) by assigning them a Real ID locked to their credentials and personal being (medical records, bank records, civil identity, etc) that the current internet security problems we all face and fear will be solved since (theoretically) you would only be able to pose as yourself anywhere online. Tien uses this article to address several holes he feels the legislation ignores, such as the unmentioned infringements to free (and anonymous) speech, that many of the security problems in fact come from the hardware (the computer systems being used) not the people, the issues with consolidating all of one person’s assets to one single ID (which if lost or stolen could be far more detrimental than the loss of one credit card), and that the government itself would be running the program. While this last issue seems more like a natural progress than a problem, Tien points out the many court cases where the government tried to pressure unrelenting outside companies to provide the information they have collected on people for its own use and mentions how much easier it would be for the government to have access to these records when they are in fact the ones running a new program whose purpose is to allow people to be easily tracked online.

Tien’s article provides a well thought out argument, almost a plea for sanity, against a legislation of this sort following through as it is put together now. The article does, however, come based out of a journalism site who’s tagline is “EFF is the leading civil liberties group defending your rights in the digital world.” This understandably gives the article a bias against a legislation that would pin down the authentication of an entire nation online, a place sometime described as “the last wild frontier.” Even so, the article was well researched, providing many supporting bits of information. Due to the fact that it’s an internet based article, most all of the sources quoted were linked back from the article itself, showing a clear map of Tien’s argument. The article presented some very pertinent concerns with the proposal that is currently being discussed.