Professional Ethics - Ethics for the Information Age - page 442

Barb: Look, what are you going to do if your group doesn't get the budget it needs?
You won't be able to staff up for the new projects. That means you and all your current
staff are going to be super stressed all year long trying to meet the deadlines. Spare
yourself a lot of grief and do what all the other managers are doing.
What would you do if you were in Al's position? Why?
18. Connie interviews a candidate for a software engineering position. She feels the person
has several holes in his technical background that could hinder his job performance.
The next day Connie and five other people who have interviewed the candidate meet
with the hiring manager to discuss his strengths and weaknesses. Before Connie speaks,
everyone else voices the opinion that the candidate has great technical skills and should
be hired. It seems clear to her that the hiring manager wants to offer this person a job.
She wonders if she should bother voicing her reservations.
What would you do if you were in Connie's position? Why?
19. Would you characterize as a whistle-blower Edward Snowden, the person who leaked
information about US surveillance programs to the British newspaper the Guardian ?
20. Watch “Ethics in Computing: Real Ethics and Virtual Reality” (details in Further Read-
ing and Viewing on p. 443). Discuss whether Sony should have received permission from
Manchester Cathedral before featuring that site in Resistance: Fall of Man.
In-Class Exercises
21. A college equips its large lecture halls with wireless networks, and it requires all of its
students to purchase a laptop computer when they enroll. A computer science professor
plans to streamline how quizzes are administered in his introductory programming
class. Students will take the quizzes online as they sit in the classroom. A computer
will grade the quizzes instantly, providing the students with immediate feedback. The
computer will also provide the professor with information about how well the students
did on each question, which will enable him to spend more of his lecture time focusing
on those topics that the students are having the hardest time understanding. Discuss the
benefits and risks associated with implementing the proposed system.
22. Company X wants to open a dating service Web site. It hires Company Y to develop
the software. Company Y hires Gina as a private contractor to provide a piece of instant
messaging software for the package. Gina's contract says she is not responsible for the se-
curity of the site. Company Y is supposed to perform that bit of programming. However,
software development runs behind schedule, and Company Y implements a simplistic
security scheme that allows all messages to be sent in plain text, which is clearly insecure.
Gina brings her concerns to the management of Company Y. Company Y thanks
her for her concern, but indicates it still plans to deliver the software without telling
Company X. Company Y reminds Gina that she has signed a confidentiality agreement
that forbids her from talking about the software to anyone, including Company X.
What should Gina do?
23. You are members of the information services team at a large corporation. The president
has asked for a confidential meeting with your group to talk about ways to improve
productivity. The president wants to ensure that people are not sending personal emails