Ethics in Computer Science: An Overview of Professional and Islamic Ethics, Lecture notes of Ethics

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Professional Practice

Lecture 1: Introduction to Course

Outline

• (^) Introduction to
  • (^) Ethics
  • (^) Islamic Ethics
  • (^) Professional Ethic
  • (^) Computer Ethics

Importance of Ethics

• (^) Goodness without knowledge is weak. Knowledge without goodness is dangerous
• (^) Person A finds a briefcase full of important documents and money, he throws the paper and keeps the money.
• (^) The action differs from society to society
• (^) Most people feel no remorse when they are apprehended because their ethical standards differ from those of society as whole
• (^) if a criminal were truly aware of the mental and spiritual consequences of his actions, he would neither commit nor even consider committing them

Ethics in Islam

• (^) Islam emphasizes on all aspects of ethics e.g. ethics in society, ethics in trading, banking
• (^) The ethical standards published for computing field also coincides with Islamic ethics
• Comparative analysis of islamic ethics and ieee/acm ethics will be discussed in later lectures [Hameed, 2009]

Why professional ethics?

• (^) Awareness of professional ethics is gaining importance with time
• (^) decision making process in the work place is a complex phenomena
• (^) the professional ethics provide a way of simplifying that decision making process

Professional Ethics

• (^) „ Professional Ethics must take into accounts:
  • (^) Relations between professionals and clients
  • (^) Relation between profession and society
  • (^) Relations among professionals
  • (^) Relations between employee and employer
  • (^) Specialized technical details of the profession
  • (^) „ A computing professional must understand;
    • (^) Cultural, social, legal, and ethical issues in computing
    • (^) Responsibility and possible consequences of failure

Problems with Professional Ethics

• Can not cover all aspects

• Who determine violations?

• How are the rules interpreted?

• What penalties exist for violations?

Computer Ethics

• (^) Computer ethics defined as the application of classical ethical principles to the use of computer technology
• (^) Ethical problems related to computers are not unique but they tend to occur on a much larger scale and scope
• (^) Avalanche of cyber vandalism
• (^) Aspects of computer ethics:
  • (^) Analysis of the nature of problems related to the social impact of computers
  • (^) Formulation and justification of policies needed to manage computer technology

History of Computer Ethics (contd.)

• (^) 1980: Issues like computer-enabled crime, disasters, invasion of privacy via databases, law suits about software ownership became public.
• (^) Mid 80s: James Moore of Darmouth, Deborah Johnson of Rensselaer, Sherry Turkle of MIT, and Judith Perrole published article and books.

History of Computer Ethics (contd.)

• 1990: Interest in computer ethics as a field of research had spread to Europe and Australia.
• (^) Simon Rogerson of De Montfort University (UK) Terrell Bynum, editor of Metaphilosophy (USA), initiated international conferences.
• Mid 90s: Beginning of a 2nd^ generation of computer ethics with more practical action.

Moral and Ethical Problems

• (^) Hacking, cracking and virus creation
  • (^) Serious crimes that cannot be justified
  • (^) Attempts at justifying such actions
  • (^) Electrons are free- they do not belong to anybody
  • (^) Companies have weak protection
  • (^) Point out flaws and vulnerabilities in information systems
  • (^) Hacking or virus creation is right in a particular country or culture
• (^) Software piracy
  • (^) Unauthorized copying of software is stealing
  • (^) It is morally wrong as it constitutes a violation of someone else’s rights

Ethical Scenarios (contd.)

• (^) A software that can predict the radiation of a nuclear system up to 75% accuracy, is to be developed, the software has acquired 74.6% accuracy. The manager has decided to round it off to meet client’s requirement. Is it ethical?

• (^) discussion topic for next class
  • (^) ethics in computing field vs. other fields Reference
• (^) [Hameed, 2009] Software Engineering Ethical Principles Based on Islamic Values by Shihab A. Hameed JOURNAL OF SOFTWARE, VOL. 4, NO. 6, AUGUST 2009
• (^) [standford, 2001] Computer Ethics: Basic Concepts and Historical Overview, standford encyclopedia of philosphy