Author: darthjedi

Who is to blame anyway?

SocNets has been in the news a lot over the last year, especially when detailing how easy it is to violate an individual’s privacy through the use of published profile information. Take for example the 2008 BlackHat presentation provided by Nathan Hamiel and Shawn Moyer called “Satan is on my Friends List (Hamiel & Moyer, 2008).“ In this presentation Hamiel and Moyer, discuss, among other things, how easy it is to mine, either manually or in an automated fashion, individual’s personal information posted to their profile.

Interestingly, in the news yesterday a lawsuit was announced against SocNet giant FaceBook. The lawsuit accuses Facebook of multiple counts of violations of privacy (Stafford, 2009). While I am left wondering about the ethical and legal nature of what SocNet giants like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn do with people’s personal information; and feel that there needs to be accountability to consumers, there is another side of me altogether that asks if it is not the fault of the users for being so trusting and foolish with their own private information.

As an example: Daily on Facebook I am flooded by hundreds of imbecilic “apps” that want me to guess this or try this or do that. Each and every one of these apps, when run, is granted access to the personal information that you have within your social networking account. And yet, people continue to run these ridiculous foolish apps, over and over, day in and day out, without a single thought as to what these applications are actually doing with their data.

In examining this issue, I would say that I certainly think that SocNets need to be held accountable for using the data provided to them in appropriate ways; however, I think users must become more informed, and aware of what these organizations are doing with their data. I find it ironic that it is often the same users that are bemoaning the loss of privacy that are providing a minute by minute play of what they are doing in the privacy of their own home.

References

Hamiel, N., & Moyer, S. (2008, April). BlackHat-Japan-08-Moyer-Hamiel-Satan-Friends-List.pdf. Retrieved August 19, 2009, from BlackHat: http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-jp-08/bh-jp-08-Moyer-Hamiel/BlackHat-Japan-08-Moyer-Hamiel-Satan-Friends-List.pdf
Stafford, P. (2009, August 19). Facebook sued over privacy violations. Retrieved August 19, 2009, from SmartCompany: http://www.smartcompany.com.au/web-20/20090819-facebook-sued-over-privacy-violations.html

Why do we really care about Privacy?

Why do we desire privacy? I’ve never really thought of that question honestly. The idea of privacy has always been a rote noun tumbling from my lips as an information security professional. I say: “We must protect people’s privacy” or “We must ensure privacy”, all said in an Orwellian sheepish sort of way.

And to top it off, because I have worked so long in the field of information security, I have almost all but given up on the idea that any of my personal information is private, and take the approach that if I am to tell something to someone other than my spouse and a few close personal friends, that information has now become the sphere of public domain.

And yet, there is still something about my life, and my home, and my family that I want to remain private, and personal… but why? In the article Privacy and the Computer written by Lucas D. Introna, Introna brings up a very interesting reason to the question of “Why Privacy (Introna, 2000)”.

To answer the question of why we need privacy as human beings, Introna states that living without privacy is like living in a world where everything is transparent. He continues by stating that in a transparent world, there can be no such thing as the statement an ownership of ideas, or personal relationships, or even the idea of personhood or intimate relationships.

Introna’s idea is that privacy is the means in which we as humans make distinctions between ourselves and others; the facilitator of levels of relationships from friends to intimacy. As someone once said: “Man is a social creature”, and to Introna’s point, if you take away our ability to relate to people in a social context, you take away what it is that makes us human.

The idea of the importance of retaining individuality in a transparent world, reminds me a lot of a writer that I am very fond of: C.S. Lewis.

In his masterpiece, The Great Divorce, Lewis writes of the divorce between Heaven and Hell; an analogical view of Heaven and Hell where people choose their place of existence.

In Hell, phantoms, at their own will, can hop on a bus and ride it to Heaven. Here, they are confronted with their own nakedness and exposure standing alone in their existence. They find that their ghost like appearance offers very little substance compared to things as mundane as grass and sunlight and rain in the context of a society of “solid people”.

One scene particular reminds me of Introna’s writings. Lewis describes a scene in which a well-dressed woman, suffering from the ghostly visage of those who have recently come from Hell, tries to run and hide among bushes to get out of view of the solid people who have since, or who are in the process of, transitioning into Heaven. Lewis writes the following (Lewis, 2009):

    ‘Go away!’ squealed the Ghost. ‘Go away! Can’t you see I want to be alone?’

    ‘But you need help,’ said the Solid One.

‘If you have the least trace of decent feeling left,’ said the Ghost, ‘you’ll keep away. I don’t want help. I want to be left alone. Do go away. You know I can’t walk fast enough on those horrible spikes [grass] to get away from you. It’s abominable of you to take advantage.’

‘Oh, that!’ said the Spirit, ‘That’ll soon come right. But you’re going in the wrong direction. It’s back there – to the mountains – you need to go. You can lean on me all the way. I can’t absolutely carry you, but you need have almost no weight on your own feet: and it will hurt less at every step.’

    ‘I’m not afraid of being hurt. You know that.’

    ‘Then what is the matter?’

‘Can’t you understand anything? Do you really suppose I’m going out there among all those people, like this?’

    ‘But why not?’

    ‘I’d never have come at all if I’d known you were all going to be dressed like that.’

    ‘Friend, you see I’m not dressed at all.’

    ‘I didn’t mean that. Do go away.’

    ‘But can’t you even tell me?’

‘If you can’t understand, there’d be no good trying to explain it. How can I go out like this among a lot of people with real solid bodies? It’s far worse than going out with nothing on would have been on Earth. Have everyone staring through me.’

‘Oh, I see. But we were all a bit ghostly when we first arrived, you know. That’ll wear off. Just come out and try.’

    ‘But they’ll see me.’

    ‘What does it matter if they do?’

    ‘I’d rather die. (p. 607)’

And I would echo, that to live in a world where I am an open book to be read, with no personal ideas, no personal values, no intimacy between me and others, and no social concept of relationships would, I too, would also rather die.

References

Introna, L. (2000). Privacy and the Computer. In R. Baird, R. Ramsower, & S. Rosenbaum, Cyberethics (pp. 188-199). Amherst: Prometheus.

Lewis, C. (2009). The Great Divorce (Kindle Edition). New York: HarperCollins-eBooks.

 

Is bribery unethical? Well that Depends…

We were presented with the following circumstances in our Ethics & IT Course this week; strangely, so far, I am on the only one who felt that the company would not be wrong to offer this ‘bribe’.  Does this mean that my moral compass has been destroyed by years of working in the dark-side of information security; or does it mean that I have a more critical higher level of thinking than all my other classmates.

Here is the situation:

Company wants to expand into China; The area the company is moving into is controlled by local officials.  Research suggests that providing a ‘payoff’ to the official will all but guarantee the approval for permits, the lack of a ‘payoff’ all but guarantees that the company will be denied necessary permits.  Research shows that all other companies are proceeding by hiring a consultant to “get the job done in anyway possible”; so as to be able to sign disclosure stating they didn’t provide any ‘bribes’; the CEO of the company is concerned that this is unethical, and is concerned they will violate their company principle of integrity and honesty.

 

Here are my thoughts:

 

According to WikiPedia, Bribery, is an act implying money or gift given that alters the behavior of the recipient (WikiPedia, 2009). And while I am sure that much greater minds have wrestled with this thought; and an answer much more deserving of applaud has been provided; I will take a humble approach at explaining my views on this question of the morality of bribery.

This evening, I took my wife out to a restaurant we frequent a lot; I tipped the waitress well; as I know tipping well and being friendly affords some future luxury when it comes to making reservations and getting seats that we like. I do the same thing when I get a haircut; I give out Christmas bonuses to my Mail-person and to the sanitary workers that collect my trash. All because I know it’s a good feeling to be appreciated, and this small act of kindness will go a long way. In fact, my company does the same thing for me; they give me bonuses when I do good, and they shower benefits (like paid vacation, time off, retirement plans, 401k matches, etc) to encourage me to stay at the company and to work harder.

After a second trip to a third world country, I learned that the customs officers know and trust certain people that work in the airport; I’ve made friends with one of the guys and I tip him well; as a result; he helps move me right through customs without having to wait in a long line or have my stuff dug through. I have also had a friend who once experienced sitting in an Ethiopian airport for almost a week waiting to be released; because she was with a group of people whose leader refused to pay the official to let them go (apparently this unofficial payment was an expectation).

I know in some countries where I have done business it is standard procedures for officials to take payments for their services, above and beyond what the official payments are to the governmental office in which they work.

Apart from all of these anecdotal views of the question of bribery; we were also asked to comment on another organizations way of dealing with this same type of situation. Whenever the idea of bribery comes up, the first organization I think of is the United States Government. I always find it a bit ironic that while our country of the United States makes bribery illegal, our entire governmental legal process is built on bribery – except; it is given a more politically correct name: lobbying. And by changing the name, we can continue to condemn the act in other governments and other parts of the world that we so readily take part in ourselves. Strange, isn’t it?

So what really is a bribe? What are the moral restraints of bribery? When is bribery acceptable and when is it not. What makes a ‘bribe’ immoral or unethical?
I would offer the following simple guideline to determine when bribes (payments) are immoral or unethical:

  • Are the bribes being used to facilitate an action that is itself morally questionable or illegal
    • For example; bribing someone to look the other way while a law is broken

In the case presented in our course room for discussion; given the little bit of information provided; that is, this organization will be approved for their expansion if they lobby the zoning official, and they will likely be denied if they do not; the question of morality comes from, not the act of lobbying itself; but what is the purpose and reason for lobbying (I guess you could say it’s a teleological argument).

Does the organization have to lobby because the law states that they can’t expand for the protection of the people (pollution, environmental, etc), or is the lobbying merely an expedient way to get someone who is on good terms with the government to put in a good word for them to all but guarantee their approval.
From what I have read about this situation, this “payoff” as described sounds nothing more than a zoning fee exacted by local officials on top of any government fees already being subscribed to. There is nothing in the reading that provides a reasonable belief that the act of this “payoff” will lead to a violation of a moral or ethical principle; additionally, there is nothing in the values of the organization that stands against the question of paying fees to government officials to get work done in a fast and efficient manner.

<Some part of conversation omitted>

References
WikiPedia. (2009, August 06). Bribery. Retrieved August 13, 2009, from WikiPedia, the free Encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bribe

I’ve been a bit sad…

Ok: I’m not much of a sappy tell the world about my problems kind of blogger… but hey, every once in a while might not be that bad…

Sadness crept in unexpected and somewhat overwhelming when I realized yesterday that this coming week is the family visit as H.I.S. Home for Children.

 

So far this year, we have gone on every visit (Feb. and May) – but it just wasn’t financially feasible to make the international trip again in August.  I’m going to have to go back down sometime soon for paperwork; the plane trip is usually only about 400-500$ a person; but then there is the cost of staying in a hotel for a week and a half – and eating out for a week and a half… overall our trips have been averaging about $3500.

You’d think that hotels and food in a third world country would be cheaper – but they aren’t… that’s wicked sad when you think about it – because the average income for the small percentage of people (and we’re talking like %50) that actually have jobs is like $5 a day, and for us to eat in Haiti at it’s cheapest was probably $25 dollars a day per person, of course, we were eating like American’s not like Haitians.

The sadness comes from the realization of how long it’s been since we have held our children; and the sadness is mixed with loving jealousy of the other families that are going to get to spend a week and a half with their children.

So far this year; the time has flown by so fast; it’s hard to believe that it’s been over 8 months since we’ve started our adoption process; but it’s been over three months since we have gotten to see our children in person; and it’s heartbreaking.

 

🙁

Plagiarize this!

Plagiarism is bad.

Do you know how many people I just plagiarized, by writing “Plagiarism is bad”?

I understand the idea behind plagiarism, and I agree that the intentional misrepresentation of the authorship of work is disreputable; however, I have to ask, in a day and age of digital communications, when has my exact thoughts not been thought of before, when have my exact words not been used?

As a poet, I think it may be easier (perhaps?) to pen a unique vision of the sublimity for any particular subject given the flourishing ability within language to use it in new and unique ways; however, when discussing in academia a common subject from a pragmatic perspective such as “breathing”, or “sailing”, or “bicycles”; it is hard to envision that after almost 6,000 years of spoken and written language, someone, somewhere hasn’t thought the same thing in the same way. So where do we stop?

In saying this, I can’t help but think that the increased use of tools such as online plagiarism scanners will cower creativity creating individuals scared to say single lines of prose without cross-referencing, annotating and indexing every single word.

Could you imagine the illegibility and annoyance of reading a paragraph such as this:

Stones are round (author, 1756). Stones can be used for shaping tools (another author, 1845). Stones can come in many different colors (third_author, 1935). Purple stones are often a type of stone called amethyst (scientist, 1878). Some stones are made up of compressed earth (again_another_author, 1967).

And yet, universities and academia have spread so much fear of reprisals around charges of plagiarism, that we, as students are almost afraid to open our mouths and speak, knowing that the very breath we expulse will exude, even unwittingly, plagiaristic tendencies.

Apart from all these concerns around the stifling of creativity and the fear of unknown and unexpected plagiarism accusations when the entirety of the world-wide-web becomes the standard in which plagiarism is judged; there is also the concern of privacy. Id Est: just what are these sites doing with my papers that I’m submitting? Are they keeping them, are they indexing them, are they annotating them, giving me credit for my combination of sentences that have never yet been seen? And if not, who is protecting my original cerebral outpouring from being plagiarized?

It was once said that “great minds assimilate” (and no, I couldn’t find any Google references to someone actually saying this, so please note, that this idea is mine now, make sure you reference me when using it in the future!). So in this future of watchers, great minds – I urge you to keep a notepad and pen handy and anytime and anywhere you hear an idea that sounds striking to you, do not hastily absorb it into your own thinking, for in fact, if at some point in the future, you find that you cannot remember where this novel idea came from in your own mind, to present it to anyone as an idea of your own will damn you to the hells of literary purgatory.

As for the idea of bettering the approach of checking all written documents against all world-wide-digital-media for any iota of a hint of possible plagiarism; my response is: “All hope abandon, ye who enter here (Alighieri, 1892).”

References

Alighieri, D. (1892). The Vision of Hell. London: Cassell & Company.

No standard for morals?

Should you argue about morality with someone that doesn’t believe in Morality?

if you ever meet up with someone who holds to the philosophical idea that we don’t really exist except in our mind (like the ideas of George Berkeley) – what point is there in even arguing (except for sophistry which is indeed fun).

In the same vein, if you find someone that doesn’t believe in a standard of morality they have nothing to offer in any discussions on morality, for all they can offer is the idea that there is no such thing as a standard for morality; which is indeed a statement of a standard for morality, and therefore it is self-defeating.

It’s like saying out loud "There is no such thing as sound"…

Can there be a universal morality

In my course of Ethics and Technology; and in my previous blog; i note that many ethical frameworks are coming to the conclusion that ethics in Information Technology are based on individualistic morals (due to the nature of technology), and that in order to have a governing ethical framework in technology, there must be universals (not unlike in real life). 

The question was asked “How does one find the standards for the universal” – I can’t answer that question in a 250-500 word essay; therefore – I provided only hints to my answer, without giving my answer.

C.S. Lewis writes in book one of Mere Christianity:

“Everyone has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant… They say things like this: ‘How’d you like it if anyone did the same to you?’ – ‘Come on you promised.’ People say things like that every day, educated … as well as uneducated… children… [and] grown-ups.”

“Now what interests me… is that the man who makes [these statements] is not merely saying that the other man’s behavior does not … please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard… and the other man seldom replies: ‘To hell with your standard.’” (Lewis, 2009, p. 257)

Lewis later states:

“Now this Law or Rule about Right and Wrong used to be called the Law of Nature… because people thought that everyone knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it… I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature … is unsound… but the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later… if you try breaking [a promise] to him, he will be complaining ‘It’s not fair’ (Lewis, 2009, p. 285).”

On the idea of whether or not there are universal laws, Lewis concludes:

“It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong (Lewis, 2009, p. 300).”

For me, I agree with Lewis, as he continues further on in book one: that in order to come to a conclusion of a universal set of right and wrong; one must find a standard to measure against. This standard must also exist necessarily outside of oneself in order to be appealed to universally. Therefore, I believe one of the most important decisions that can be made to help move towards a global view of Right and Wrong must first start with a common standard.

This of course, is where the difficulty begins; as all discussions of morality begin in trying to lay a foundation of moral framework (i.e. what is the standard to be considered right or wrong). Some more common frameworks are deontological, utilitarian and existential, all of which have their supporters and their oppositions.

As this topic is very complex; and cannot be addressed by anything short than a doctoral thesis; I will briefly say that I would have to state that a good starting point is the “Golden Rule”: Treat others as you want to be treated. This, I believe, at least points us in the right direction.

References

Lewis, C. S. (2009). Mere Christianity. HarperCollins e-books (Kindle Edition).