Millennium Editors Laurie Burkhart Jake Friedberg Trevor Martin Kavitha Sharma Morgan Ship Cover Artist

Laurie Burkhart Jake Friedberg Trevor Martin Kavitha Sharma Morgan Ship

Dr. Dirk S Hovorka

Introduction …………………………………………………………. iii A Note from the Editors …………………………………………….. v

Ethics and Government

Government Surveillance …………………………………………… 2 Authors: Laurie Burkhart, Michael Haubert and Damon Thorley

Ethics of Politics in Science …………………………………………. 12 Authors: Nataliia Frazier, Marit Olsen and Jonathan Steuck

Government Censorship of the Internet ……………………………… 25 Authors: Ali Alsayegh, Vang Lee and Matthew Thompson

Ethics and Privacy

Civil Liberties vs. Security in Times of Crisis ………………………. 33 Author: Kinny Bagga

The Ethics of Personal Privacy & Location-Based Services ……….. 43 Authors: Kellie Kuebler, David Palm and Auburn Slavec

Invasion of Privacy Through Internet Monitoring …………………… 50 Authors: Jonathan Rich and Molly Smith

Ethics, Marketing and the Media

Al Jazeera, the Other Source ………………………………………… 58 Authors: Trevor Martin and John Crowley

The Ethics of America’s Youth Viewing Violence on TV ………… 65 Authors: Allison Lurie, Benjamin Fisher and Morgan Ship

The Ethics of Tobacco Marketing……………………………………. 72 Authors: Michael Carlson and Chris Luhrs

The Ethics of Images ………………………………………………… 79 Authors: David Baker, David French and Ryan Parker

Undercover Agency:The Ethics of Stealth Marketing……………….. 92 Authors: Jake Friedberg, Alonna Pfleiger and Alexandria Weisberg

Ethic and Technology

Technology: Protecting Privacy ………………………………………107 Authors: Shannon Doyle and Matthew Streelman

Convenience & Safety vs. Privacy: The Ethics of Radio Frequency ... 115 Identification (RFID)

Authors: Paul Liao, Alexis Smith and Connie Wang

The Power of Information Control ………………………………….. 124

Authors: Daniel Pham, Katharine Singleton and Karl Wonstolen

An Ethical Commentary on Software: Proprietary vs. Open-Source .. 133

Authors: Courtney Andrews, Eric Culp and Chad Shinsato

Ethics and Society

Abolishment of Copyright Laws Promotes Social Justice ………….. 144

Authors: Thomas Brainard, Suihan Deng and Matthew Miller

Newborn Genetic Screening: A Proposal of New Ethical Guidelines. .. 153

Authors: Lana Wildung, Mark Goebel and Kavitha Sharma

Ethics in Current U.S. Immigration Policy ………………………….. 163

Authors: David J. Maco, Ian E. Smith and Jules R. Watson

Introduction

“Americans need to step back from the daily drum of privacy stories and absorb the big picture: the United States is at risk of turning into a full-fledged surveillance society. The fact is, Orwell's vision of "Big Brother" is now, for the first time, technologically possible”¹.

College seniors graduating in 2007 live amidst a vast sea of information almost constantly accessible through increasingly convergent technologies. Students are aware that data mining for marketing, political campaigns, consumer behavior, and terrorist risk assessment is now at levels never before seen. They realize that surveillance is everywhere, from government monitoring of phone calls, emails, and international travel patterns to corporate monitoring of web-site visits, communications, physical location, and computer keystrokes². All these students have a sense of ethics, of what is right and what is wrong. But in our increasingly technology-dependent world, they have had little time or opportunity to examine how information is shaping the ethics of their age.

Much of the technological collection of information is hidden or considered “just part of life,” and the uses of technology to access and analyze information remain largely unexamined. As a consequence, college students are realists about "the way the world is": that employers will read their email, that there is no such thing as privacy of communication, or location or, decisions, all activities in the public sphere (and much of the private sphere) are recorded, analyzed and stored for future data-mining or analysis. Many students accept these activities as necessary to maximize corporate productivity, catch criminals, and prevent terrorism.

The purpose of the class was not to debate these issues (though that did frequently happen!) or to "teach ethics." Rather the class was founded on a framework³ within which moral dilemmas arising from the increasing collection, distribution and analysis of information by companies and governments can be analyzed. This was not a class in which we debated whether the use of specific information for a specific function was "correct" or "incorrect." Rather, the students engaged in examining how valid, sound, and persuasive arguments⁴ for policies or decisions regarding information and its uses can be constructed. Although ethical discussions are often rarified philosophical debates between unitary ethical stances, Whetstone's triparite prescription for servant leadership⁵ provided grounding in practical, policy-oriented perspectives. The class examined different arguments and rhetorical styles (e.g. Mellow's justification for the Iraq War⁶). The dimensions of (mis)communication were illustrated in nature of lying⁷ and truth⁸, and the finer point of manipulating information "short of lying."⁹ Armed with knowledge that different fundamental axioms and assumptions will result in different logical outcomes, the class examined

1 Stanley, J., and Steinhardt, B. "Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society," American Civil Liberties Union New York, 2003.

2 ibid

3 Such as http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/framework.html

5 Whetstone, J.T. "How Virtue Fits Within Business Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics (33) 2001, pp 101-114.

6 Mellow, D. “Iraq: A Morally Justified War”, Journal of Philosophy, 23(3) 2006 pp 293-310

7 Serban, G. Lying: Man's Second Nature Praeger, Westport, 2001.

8 Frankfurt, H.G. On Truth Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2006.

9 Frankfurt, H.G. On Bullshit Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005.

potential moral problems in the representation of statistical and graphical information¹⁰. Current surveillance technologies and policies as well as the classification and obfuscation of scientific and medical information were discussed. Bandura's theory of moral disengagement¹¹ and the psychology of moral judgment versus actual behavior¹² were examined as a means of explaining how right-minded people can perform unethical actions. Finally, the balance between ethical perspectives based on utility, consequences, and duty and duty, and positions based on fairness, and virtues (e.g. honesty, trust, loyalty, integrity, and courage) became far more real and difficult to determine as they wrestled with the difficult process of taking abstract ethical theories and crafting "real-world" policies and guidelines.

A slight shift in perspective, from the technologies themselves, to the ethics of the information that is being collected, analyzed, used, and distributed changes the discussion in significant ways. Questions such as: Do public/private spheres matter? How should intellectual property be considered in a ubiquitous digital environment? Must there be trade-off between privacy and security? are all complex and often contextual issues. Each of us make daily moral decisions, but rarely are we asked to explain or justify those decisions from an ethical standpoint. The business environment these students are entering is under ever-greater scrutiny from many different stakeholders. These business students will be well-served by an ability to recognize, justify, and discuss persuasively as they react to, and create policies regarding information in their professional and personal lives, and as citizens.

This book was entirely researched, written, edited, and published by seniors in a Leeds School of Business ethics seminar titled "The Ethics of Information: Snooping, Hacking, Surveillance, Lying and other Forms of (mis)Communication." It represents a considerable amount of thought and work by all the students in the class. Students explored current news and academic literature to identify domains in which information, or the lack thereof, raises ethical questions. Each group of authors selected topics to research, selected papers and articles about their topics of interest, and led class discussions. Topics included a gamut of domains including the role of politics in science, RFID chip technology, socio-tropic crises, search engine technology, stealth marketing, and the ethics of images to name just a few. These authors realized the depth, breadth and speed of change of the issues surrounding information in business, government, and society, and the difficulty in developing coherent ethical policies.

These are bright and talented students on the verge of entering a world quite different from the academic environment in which they have lived. These papers required that they challenge some of their own beliefs and take a position on the issues – a difficult task when there is no “right answer” to which they can refer. But this process is a critical component of education – participation in the debate. These students now have a greater awareness of the benefits and risks inherent in the “Age of Information” and have examined the implications of not addressing the ethical considerations of the uses of information. This awareness differentiates them from most seniors in a critical area of business and society – the domain of Information Ethics.

Dr. Dirk S. Hovorka

Scholar in Residence

Leeds School of Business

University of Colorado at Boulder

10 Huff, D. How to Lie with Statistics WW Norton, New York, 1954.

11 Bandura, A. "Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities," International Journal of Psychology (31) 1996, pp 3881-3895.

12 West, T., Ravenscroft, S.P., and Shrader, C.B. "Cheating and Moral Judgment in the College Classroom: A Natural Experiment," Journal of Business Ethics (54

173-183) 2004.

College is life’s dress rehearsal. As students, we are expected to use these few short years to develop the skill set necessary to succeed at the next level. Though we certainly learn an enormous amount from what is taught in the classroom, as students we spend so much time practicing for the real world that we very rarely get the opportunity to actually experience it. This class provided us the unique opportunity to not just write a another paper, but to put together a book, Confronting Information Ethics in the New Millennium. In doing so, we were provided an opportunity to not only expand our own understanding of the world but also contribute to our society’s understanding of itself.

It should be noted that this book is an exercise in critical thinking. In a world where money and morals are sometimes considered to be mutually exclusive, it is imperative for business schools to spend as much time teaching ethics as they do on how to build a balance sheet. This book was written with that idea. There is more to business than maximizing share price, pleasing shareholders and filling one’s a bank account.

In that aspect as editors, we believe we have succeeded. We have selected eighteen essays to be included in this volume. Though we may not necessarily agree with each one we recognize that they all look at the world in a meaningful and interesting way. In that same vein, we don’t guarantee the accuracy of the arguments or the citations contained within each essay but we are confident reading them will, at the very least, help you to think critically about the subject matter. If there are grammatical or formatting errors we apologize. We focused on creating something thought provoking and our time constraints provided that there would be inherent, unavoidable errors.

We would like to thank our classmates and fellow authors who worked tirelessly to create a compilation of essays that we can be proud of. We would also like to thank Dr. Dirk Hovorka for his guidance and leadership throughout this process. Without him this book simply would not be possible.

So with the dress rehearsal out of the way, this is our opening night. We hope you have as much fun reading this volume as much as we did putting it together.

Jake
Kavitha
Laurie
Morgan
and
Trevor

Ethics and the Government

The Efect of Government

Surveillance on Social Progress

BY: Laurie Burkhart, Michael Haubert, and Damon Thorley

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of

Intensive surveillance by government agencies can effectively stop (or hinder) the chance of social and political change. The status quo has been set and history has shown near-perfect success of infiltration and destruction of political and social movements by a number of surveillance tactics and programs. United States history demonstrates the

positive social effects that certain radical political groups have caused despite government intrusion. With increasing technology and access to information, the government has and continues to more effectively monitor radical political and social groups while discouraging and halting free political participation of its citizens as a result of the “chilling effect”. Without free political participation social change becomes impossible. In order for a democracy to move forward it needs free ideology and radical movements to challenge the system and force social change.

Not only does extensive government surveillance discourage political participation through the “chilling effect” – it also presents ethical violations. Under the ethical frameworks of duty-based, utilitarian, and rights-based theories, the conduct of government surveillance of the past and present is unethical. From duty and rights-based theories government surveillance practices violate legal and social regulations of American society. Under utilitarian theory, government surveillance takes away the ability to change and progress what the citizens believe to be the greatest good for society.