Professional Ethics - Ethics for the Information Age - page 443

or surfing the Web for entertainment while they are supposed to be working. The chief
information officer suggests that employees be informed that their emails and Web
surfing will be monitored. In truth, the company does not have the resources to do this
and does not plan to implement any monitoring. The CIO strictly forbids anyone in the
information services team from revealing this fact. Debate the morality of management
making such an announcement.
24. The members of the class are the employees of a small, privately held company that pro-
duces computer games. Everyone shares in the profits of the company. The company has
been making electronic versions of popular board games for established game compa-
nies. Business is steady, but profits have not been large. The marketing team says that
a first-person shooter game based on the war in Afghanistan would generate a huge
amount of publicity for the company and could be highly profitable. Debate the morality
of producing such a game.
25. The Department of Homeland Security is interested in using computers to identify
suspected terrorists operating within the United States. It would like to mine databases
containing information about purchases and travel to detect patterns that may identify
individuals who are engaged in, or at least planning, terrorist activity. It asks a panel
of computer scientists to determine the feasibility of this project. A panel member says
the most difficult problem will be determining what patterns of transactions to look
for. He suggests it might be possible to construct a computer program that uses artificial
intelligence to mimic a terrorist organization. The program would determine the actions
needed to execute a terrorist act. Once these actions were determined, it would be
possible to search database records to find evidence of these actions.
Debate the morality of developing a computer program capable of planning the
steps needed to execute an act of terror.

Further Reading and Viewing

ComputingCases.org (Web site).
Dan Gotterbarn. “Why Bother with Ethics in Computing: Addressing Harmful Paradigms?”
ACM Inroads , p. 9, March 2010.
Rob Haythorne. “Ethics in Computing: Real Ethics and Virtual Reality.” Production Zone ,
May 28, 2011. 14:19. www.youtube.com.
John Markoff. “Collision in the Making between Self-Driving Cars and How the World
Works.” New York Times , January 24, 2012.
C. Dianne Martin. “Building Character.” ACM Inroads , p. 11, March 2010.
Jake Pearson. “Drugstore Cowboy.” Wired , June 2013.
Paul Solman. “How Virtual Reality Games Can Transform Society, Prosperity.” PBS News-
Hour , July 11, 2013. 10:27. video.pbs.org.

References

[1] Edwin Black. IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and

America's Most Powerful Corporation. Dialog Press, Washington, DC, 2011.