The Socio-Ethical Considerations Surrounding Government Mandated Location-Based Services during Emergencies

The adoption of mobile technologies for emergency management has the capacity to save lives. In Australia in February 2009, the Victorian bushfires claimed 173 lives, the worst peace-time disaster in the nation’s history. The Australian government responded swiftly to the tragedy by going to tender for mobile applications that could be used during emergencies, such as mobile alerts and location services. These applications have the ability to deliver personalized information direct to the citizen during crises, complementing traditional broadcasting mediums like television and radio. Indeed governments have a responsibility to their citizens to safeguard them against both natural and human-made hazards, and today, national security has grown to encapsulate such societal and economic securitization. However, some citizens and lobby groups have emphasized that such breakthrough technologies need to be deployed with caution as they are fraught with ethical considerations, including the potential for breaches in privacy, security, and trust.

The Changing World of ICT and Health

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has undergone rapid change in the last decade and it is now readily accessible within many communities. This change has resulted in a revolution in the healthcare sector as technology has steadily empowered the health consumer. However, the problem of the digital divide remains and may be widening with the growth of technology. This chapter will examine how developing countries have overcome this problem by using varying communication techniques to share health information. The chapter also suggests how mobile phones can provide a more accessible conduit for sharing health information in developing countries as opposed to the Internet alone. These changes need to be embraced in order to provide a framework that will allow ICT to narrow, rather than widen the gap between the information poor and the information rich.

Monitoring Employee Actions in the Workplace

While the use of Internet based technologies empower organisations immensely, the recent surge of pervasive technologies into the workplace environment has created situations whereby employees are becoming increasingly aware of the ways in which management can employ these technologies to monitor their email and computer interactions. Although it is apparent that in some cases management may have legitimate reasons to monitor employees’ actions it is becoming increasingly evident that emerging issues and subsequent privacy concerns resulting from the use of these technologies have the potential to negatively impact organisational productivity and employee morale. This chapter outlines some of the major issues relating to workplace surveillance, identifying the emerging issues and subsequent privacy concerns from the employee’s perspective, as well as the motivation behind managements’ decision to employ monitoring technologies in the workplace.

Copyright and Ethical Issues in Emerging Models for the Digital Media Reporting of Sports News in Australia

The chapter examines the copyright and ethical issues raised by emerging models for the digital media reporting of sports news in Australia. In particular, it explores the use by news organisations of a defence in copyright law that provides protection against an infringement action for the reporting of news and the use by sports organisations of journalist accreditation to limit, by way of contract, the uses made of copyright material generated at sports events. It briefly outlines some proposed responses to these issues, including amending copyright law or establishing an industry code of conduct for the accreditation of news organisations accessing and reporting on sports events in the digital media. These matters were raised in a 2009 Senate inquiry. The inquiry attracted submissions from international news organisations concerned that a more restricted access regime established by sports organisations in Australia might influence the terms negotiated in other countries. The conflicts arising in this industry sector are a small part of a much larger international landscape in which new digital communications technologies are offering greater business opportunities but at the same time challenging existing commercial relationships.

The Ethics of Security of Personal Information upon Facebook

Social networking systems are an ever evolving and developing means of social interaction which is not only being used to disseminate information to family, friends and colleagues, but as a way of meeting and interacting with “strangers” through the advent of a large number of social applications. Social networking systems, as well as being a way for those people who are isolated to interact with other people, can also have a huge social and personal impact on some users, for example, harassment via a social networking site resulting in suicide. This personal information (not just factual data), including the thoughts and feelings of individuals, can be used by others through social applications to cause emotional and psychological distress. The level of security for all this personal information on social networking systems such as Facebook will be examined in the chapter, as well as the possible threats and ethical issues that could impact users. This chapter will discuss a number of examples where personal information has been breached and will put forward a model that evaluates the security and risks and proposes a framework that relates to the use of information within Facebook.

Integration of COBIT, Balanced Scorecard and SSE-CMM as an Organizational & Strategic Information Security Management (ISM) Framework

The purpose of this chapter is to present an integrated framework that addresses the need for organizational information security requirements as well as alignment between business, IT and information security strategies. This is achieved via the integrated use of control objectives for Information Technology (COBIT) and balanced scorecard (BSC) frameworks, in conjunction with Systems Security Engineering Capability Maturity Model (SSE-CMM) as a tool for performance measurement and evaluation, in order to ensure the adoption of a continuous improvement approach for successful sustainability. This integrated framework has been presented at the IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy (2009) and the International Conference on Business/IT Alignment (2009). The goal is to investigate the strengths, implementation techniques, and potential benefits of such an integrated approach. The integrated use of COBIT, BSC, and SSE-CMM can provide a more comprehensive mechanism for strategic information security management–one that is fully aligned with business, IT, and information security strategies.

Policy and Issues in Deploying Automated Plagiarism Detection Systems in Academic Communities

Plagiarism is becoming prevalent through the use of the Internet. Educational institutions are seeking technology to combat plagiarism. This chapter describes policy and issues encountered by an educational institution that deploys an automated plagiarism detection system. Background information of plagiarism and the benefits of using automated plagiarism detection systems are presented as motivation. A detailed account on the benefits of using automated plagiarism detection system in the academic setting is given. Associated policy issues (administrative issues, submission policy issues, disciplinary issues, copyright issues, security and privacy issues, and ethical issues) and resources needed to deploy such a system are discussed in details. VeriGuide, an automated plagiarism detection system designed and implemented at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is presented as a case study on how the technology can be used to alleviate workload for the teachers and also provide a fair academic environment for the students. It is hoped that the case study would be helpful for those who are interested in using such a system to promote academic quality and integrity.

The Protocols of Privileged Information Handling in an E-Health Context

Health authorities need to review the privacy and security of real-life work contexts before pioneering new, privileged information handling protocols as a foundation of a new national e-health scheme.

Understanding Trust in Virtual Communities

With people participating in various virtual communities in everyday life, trust building between participants is significant and indispensable in order to maintain communication in both traditional and virtual communities. In particular, virtual communities provide a platform or network through which members can communicate with faster and more simultaneous interactions in invisible ways. Since the importance of trust in virtual communities has been widely recognized, trust as a complex, multi-faceted, and context-dependent concept has been examined by many researchers in several disciplines. In this chapter, the authors aim to examine the definitions and characteristics of trust in the context of virtual communities and discuss terms relevant to the concept of trust. Different types of trust are investigated. Issues, challenges and future research directions revolving around trust are discussed. In examining the concept of trust, this chapter focuses on social rather than technical aspects of trust and trust building in virtual communities.

Social Networks and Students’ Ethical Behavior

Social networking sites are prevalent among young adults. College students in particular are utilizing these sites to keep in contact with friends and to make new friends. However, with the positives of social networking, there are also negatives. Students can provide too much personal information online, engage in inappropriate conversations, scrutinize other students, ridicule peers, and so forth. Because of the impersonal environment that technology creates, an individual’s normal behavior can change which leads to a change in his/her basic ethical structure. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a discussion of the changing ethical structure of students, as well as an examination of the ways to teach ethics, given those changes. The chapter also includes a discussion of four classical ethical theories that should be considered when discussing or teaching social networking. Future research directions are also given.