Hw6case

The facts of the case

FERPA is the family educational rights and privacy act which protects the privacy of student education records. It applies to all schools that receive funds from the US Department of Education. It gives parents rights with respect to their children’s education. These rights transfer to the “eligible student” when they become 18 or reach college. Parents or eligible students can inspect and review the student’s education records maintained by the school. Parents or eligible students also have the right to request that a school correct records which they believe to be incorrect. If a school refuses to fix the incorrect records then the parent/student has a right to a formal hearing about said records.

My conclusions

I think this is a great act to have around. I think that this is a great way to protect not only the grades of students, but also personal information about students. It can really make sure that student’s records aren’t tampered with or seen by people who have no right to access the documents.

Future Environment

In the future when computers are more powerful and hackers get more tricks up their sleeves, I could see all types of personal records being targets. Acts like this are important for at least lessening the ability to easily get information. Acts like this should also mean that their is a stronger protection of the records.

Future scenario

Say Billy gets into a fight at school and the other kids’ parents are angry. If the other child’s parents wanted to get back at Billy, they could choose the immoral route and try to alter his school records. An act such as this puts the proper protection in place to help ensure the records are safe.

Hw6proj

If you do have a Facebook account, or use a similar service, did you read the terms of service they have before you hit the “Sign up” button? That’s what I figured, me neither. As a result, you, me, your friends, or possibly even one of your parents, could have been included in an unwanted social experiment that Facebook and their scientists/engineers decided to conduct on 700,000 of its users during 2012. This was conducted without users even knowing that it was happening. No emails were sent, no notifications appeared on the site, it was just turned on (and later off) like a switch in the backend of Facebook. Facebook decided to experiment on its users and manipulated their news feeds in order to study “emotional contagion through social networks”. This basically means that Facebook used its popularity and massive user base to experiment on how people feel and seeing if it would be possible to change a user’s mindset.

It also brings to the mind a bit of a more morbid thought. Since Facebook decided to show some people a sadder version of their newsfeed, did someone who was possibly depressed at the time see all of these negative posts and then commit suicide. We may never actually know the answer to this, and one would hope that the answer is none, but the fact is that if you experiment on unwilling people you may not know the dramatic results that it may have on a person.

In the paper which was published, the only mention of “informed consent” is, “The research “was consistent with Facebook’s Data Use Policy, to which all users agree prior to creating an account on Facebook, constituting informed consent for this research.” According to slate.com, “Here is the relevant section of Facebook’s data use policy: “For example, in addition to helping people see and find things that you do and share, we may use the information we receive about you … for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement.”

Coming to the defense of Facebook after the eruption of its user base was Mike Schroepfer, the Chief Technology Officer of Facebook. On October 2, 2014, Mr. Schroepfer posted a blog post on Facebook’s newsroom that went into detail about the research and the changes that Facebook was going to make in regards to experiments.  In it he says, “We’re committed to doing research to make Facebook better, but we want to do it in the most responsible way.” He also says that “Facebook does research in a variety of fields, from systems infrastructure to user experience to artificial intelligence to social science. We do this work to understand what we should build and how we should build it, with the goal of improving the products and services we make available each day.”

I can completely understand how Facebook wants to use all of the information it can get its hands on in order to make the service the best that it can be, but there are ethical limits that should be a given in regards to this type of experimentation. Clearly Facebook was not ready for the backlash it saw after publishing the paper as Mr. Schroepfer states “Although this subject matter was important to research, we were unprepared for the reaction the paper received when it was published and have taken to heart the comments and criticism.”

I believe Facebook now knows how bad it messed up as he also says “It is clear now that there are things we should have done differently. For example, we should have considered other non-experimental ways to do this research. The research would also have benefited from more extensive review by a wider and more senior group on people.”

Hw4 case

The facts of the case:

After publishing a paper in Nature announcing he had produced a transistor on the molecular scale, Jan Hendrik Schon, a physicist at Bell Labs. was accused of scientific fraud
He was known as a star physicist
Members of the physics community found anomalies in his data
When a committee appointed by Bell requested copies of his raw data, what they found was surprising
It was found that he kept no lab notebook and all the related files were deleted from his computer
He was fired from Bell and his papers were withdrawn Later, misconduct was found in at-least 17 different papers

My conclusions:

I agree with the company’s decision to fire Mr. Schon under these circumstances. Trying to defend someone who has been found to have conducted misconduct on that many papers does not deserve to work at an organization, not matter how good of a physicist he was. I don’t believe that Bell or the committee should have done anything different. It does raise the question of whether or not researchers need to be controlled more than they currently are. I believe that they should be to stop instances like this from happening. If they are required to take notes and have them reviewed at intervals it may cut down of the amount of fraud.

Future environment:

As scientists and researchers continue to delve deeper into how our world and bodies work, and experiment in new ways, it will be more important than ever to take proper notes and always tell the truth about the work and research that is being done. When you are talking about topics that can directly influence the life of many people, researchers do not have the right to create and spread false information. If more instances like this continue to happen I believe that society as a whole could choose to protest researchers, which would not be good for any of us as well.

Future scenario:

In the future, I believe that it could be easier and faster to validify the data that researchers publish. As the internet continues to grow and more data in put onto it, it could become easier for anyone to find research overlaps and validify the information that is being published. It could also make it easier for other scientists and researchers to speak up when they find other researchers who publish false information.

Hw4 proj

Do you use Facebook? More often than not, people are going to say yes. It is one of the most popular services in the world that requires that users make accounts. When you have more than one billion users, you have a great pool of users that you can effect. Did you ever read the terms of service of Facebook before you hit the “Sign up” button? Me neither. As a result, you, me, your friends, or even one of your parents, could have been included in an unwanted social experiment that Facebook and their scientists/engineers decided to conduct. This was conducted without users even knowing that it was happening. No emails were sent, no notifications appeared on the site, it was just turned on (and later off) like a switch. Facebook decided to experiment on its users and manipulated their news feeds in order to study “emotional contagion through social networks”. This basically means that Facebook used it’s popularity and massive user base to experiment on how people feel.

Facebook tweaked peoples news feeds by either showing mostly positive messages or negative messages, and then looked to see if this change in their news feeds effected the items that they posted onto the service. Facebook picked out words in things that people posted, such as showing more negative messages, and looked to see if, in turn, people began to post negative messages themselves. This also worked in the positive direction as well. If people were shown positive things, did they themselves post more positive things.

Facebook created a system that read in the content that people posted and then chose to feed people either content that was between neutral and happy, or content that between neutral and sad. Next, they used the same system to look at the users’ posts after this change was made to see if their posts matched the information they were fed.

The argument could be made that this was simply a harmless social experiment. And sometimes experiments are very good things. They allow us to learn more about not only us, but how the world and culture around us works. It can be very interesting, but ethically, people should be able to know if they are the ones being experimented on, which is where a company like Facebook came under fire. By choosing to manipulate hundreds of thousands of peoples’ news feeds, they intentionally made these people either happy or sad. That can be very dangerous territory.

Some people are raising the question of whether or not experiments like this are bending the standards that have been set for research too far. James Grimmelmann, a professor of technology and law at the University of Maryland said “If you are exposing people to something that causes changes in psychological status, that’s experimentation. This is the kind of thing that would require informed consent.”

Hw3 Proj

1) Have you ever fully read the terms of service of a product or service you have used? I would guess that you haven’t. Instead, you probably just click, agree, yes, or next. I know that’s what I always do. But, it might be wise to sit down one day and read a Terms of Service or license agreement of something you use daily. Particularly those in the form of software that can easily be changed and are outside of your control. Most of them include the normal lawyer speak which is there to simply protect the company which has created this product, with things such as “we reserve the right to terminate the service at any time without warning” or “we reserve the right to make changes to this product at any time we see fit”. Some include funny, interesting bits that make you wonder, why is that in there, such as the somewhat famous Apple iTunes bit which says “You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes […] including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.” Some further include scarier sentiments such as “we reserve the right to give or sell you information to third parties and our sole discretion” which basically means that you are relinquishing ownership of anything you create or place onto that service. Say what you will, but in my personal opinion, that is not a very ethical thing to do. As a company they are basically stealing what you have spent your time creating and giving you no monetary piece as a result. Yet still, some companies but even worse things in their terms of service that gives them the right to do even more things that you may not even know are being done.

2) To continue on the project, I just need to continue to research what companies have put into their terms of services and end user license agreements and then see how companies have chosen to exploit them in various ways, both ethical and non ethical in nature and continue to write the paper.

Hw3 Case

The facts of the case

Mozilla, the people behind the popular Firefox browser came under fire because of the recent promotion of Brendan Eich to CEO and his support of California’s “Proposition 8” anti-gay legislation. Mr. Eich donated $1000 in support of it in 2008. Mozilla promotes “keeping the web open” and human equality and people saw Mr. Eich as someone against Mozilla’s ideas. Many people called for his resignation. He responded in a blog post that he would continue Mozilla’s “commitment to equality in everything we do.” Critics were not satisfied by this and wanted either “a retraction and apology” or his resignation. At the same time all of this was happening, 3 of the 6 Mozilla board members resigned “citing their desire to hire an outsider with more expertise in mobile.”

Conclusions

As a group, we concluded that this was not the most ethical way of handling this case. If all the facts were presently properly and it was said that what he did was on behalf of himself and not the company, the outcome may have been different. It could have been handled quite differently by both Mozilla as well as Mr. Eich himself.

(1) While Mr. Eich’s contribution was most likely done as a utilitarian idea, the outcome was more deontological as people saw it as being against Mozilla’s code, and that was that. He shouldn’t be CEO because he made that contribution 5 years before.

(2) There was not any legal aspect to this case as no laws were broken, only the rules/ideas of the Mozilla corporation.

(3) If the entire issue was explained properly there is a chance that Mr. Eich could have left his contribution as well as stay CEO of Mozilla if he would also have been able to uphold Mozilla’s ideas when dealing with the company.

Future environment

In the future we will not only have cars and planes that are able to drive themselves, but they are able to talk to each other and make sure that they keep in sync to keep the world and its occupants as safe as possible. It will also be even easier to find information because it will be surfaced to you instead of you needing to search and dig for it yourself.

Future scenario

In the future cases like this may become more common, but I am not sure the results would change much. If information is surfaced to you very quickly, then people would know more about people such as Mr. Eich even faster and easier, but their ideas on things may not change in any meaningful way; therefore, the results could be potentially worse.

Hw2 Case

The facts of the case

In August 2000, Armand Tiano, a 26 year veteran of the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s department was charged with child molestation. The molestation was between two female teen-age relatives. Additional charges were filed, he was found guilty, and at one point he was facing life in prison. Prior to his sentencing a judge reduced one of the convictions to a misdemeanor, which in turn, reduced his sentence to a year in county jail. The prosecutors tried to reverse the new verdict but failed. In November 2001, he faced a new charge/trial for failing to register as a sec offender. Throughout the whole ordeal, Mercury news never named the girls, they said their policy was to not name victims of sexual assault, but the girls wanted to tell their story. On March 31, 2002, the girls and their mother told their story (they were 16 & 17 at the time), the paper said “We identified them as Tiano’s stepdaughters but did not name them”.

My conclusions

I felt that the case could have been handled better. It was ethical of the paper to follow their policy and keep the girls anonymous. It could have defiantly been handled better though. My group members also felt the same. I do think that if the girls wanted their story told and this paper refused it because of policy, then they should have found another paper or medium in which to tell their story.

Future environment

Since this case was from the early 2000’s the future as it has played out has changed the was this case could have been handled. Now we have sites such as Facebook and Twitter which would allow the girls to tell their story on their own terms, or go to an online news agency.

Future scenario

This case could have definitely played out differently in 2015 as all it would take is a post on Facebook and it is possible that a major news agency would have caught on and it would have become a major news topic.

HW2Proj

1) As far as the term project goes, I believe that I have narrowed the choice of topic down to two. Either “Can a CEO holding conflicting values with his or her company” or “Should companies admit they’ve been hacked?”. I remember when the Mozilla CEO was in the news about his proposition 8 views. I found it interesting how people were trying to force him out of the company just because of his personal beliefs. They had no regard for his actual skills as CEO. The other project, “Should companies admit they’ve been hacked?” has my interest because of how it relates to the current news. I believe that 2014 has been a huge year as far as hacking is concerned an will be remembered for the companies which were hacked. Also, as a computer science major, the hacking which has been in the news is a bit of a motivator to figure out how to make applications more secure. It has always been a fascinating topic, which now has more attention brought to it. I believe that it is very important for companies to disclose as soon as possible when they have been hacked.

2) Outline 1

The Mozilla CEO, Brendan Eich is promoted to CEO. Eich contributes $1000 to the anti-gay marriage “Proposition 8”. This contribution is against the beliefs of the Mozilla organization. People initiated a huge backlash against Eich for his beliefs and asked for his resignation. Several of Mozilla’s board members also resigned from the board during this time.

Outline 2

Over the past few years, the amount of large scale hacking has been on the rise. In 2014, several huge American retailers were hacked and caused the leak of mountains of personal information and records. Some denied these attacks or put off the announcement of them, while others were forthcoming about the hacks. What should companies do in this situation? Should they protect their customers or the image of the company?

Homework 1 Project

1. For my ethics case final project I have been looking at a few possibilities. I am interested in the ethics related to piracy online so a project over that I think would be interesting. Copy and pasting between websites is fun to catch sometimes as well so finding a ethics case related to that may be good. I definately want to do a case relating in someway to technology. One I found in particular was “Can a CEO Hold Conflicting Values with his or her Company” . This relates to the Mozilla CEO who ended up resigning due to his Prop 8 thoughts. One that would be neat to do relating to some recent items in the news is, “Should companies admit they’ve been hacked?“. With all of the companies who have been hacked recently such as target, home depot, and others, this would be a good topic to look into. The way the governments spy on their citizens is another great topic in which awareness needs to be raised to that would be a great one as well. I am really leaning toward the ethics in government spying the most. An example of this can be found here.

2. I am not really sure yet how I want to go about the project. A report I think would be the most straight forward, but I don’t know if that would be interesting enough. A computer program would be appropriate since I am a computer science major, but I am not sure what kind of program I would create. Again, a website is a possibility but more brainstorming would be needed before I commit to that idea. A skit I think would be an attention getter but I would need to think about how I could write it and if and who I would need to be in it with me. Writing an ethical code is always an alternative to a report but I am going to have to see which one would work better for the topic I end up choosing. Individual vs group project is an interesting debate but I think it depends upon which topic is chosen. If a few people have the same topic then I think it would be wise to team up. If you don’t have similar topics then I think it would be best to do it individual instead of working on a project you are not interested in.

3a. No questions.

3b. No questions.