Ethics

You will select a topic for your term paper from the list of approved topics*:

Computers in the legal/justice system

Cyberwarfare

Cars that drive themselves

Deep packet inspection

Identification and biometrics

Health information on the Web

Personal data privacy regulations in other countries

Privacy for organizations and businesses

Computing and communication technology in law enforcement

Cyberbullying

Safety-critical applications

Identity theft

Political organizing in unfree countries

The Web in schools

Monitoring of employees’ Web use and email

Gender or ethnic issues in technology

Computing and network access in other countries

*Adopted from https://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/giftfire/papertopics.html (Links to an external site.)

Identify the position or side for your selected topic and present potential ethical issues/problems. Your paper must have the topic and position explicitly articulated in your paper’s introduction. You must (1) identify, comprehend, and resolve ethical issues/problems and their ramifications in a thorough and responsible manner, (2) describe the historical and cultural contexts of the issue, (3) determine the legal issues associated with the case study.

A guide to potential ethical issues that could be addressed in a term paper:

#1: Under laws in Germany that protect the privacy of criminals who have served their sentences, a murderer took legal action to force Wikipedia to remove its article about his case. Discuss the conflict between privacy and freedom of speech raised by the case. Which side would you take?

#2: Is the control that large companies such as Google have over Internet search results represent a threat to Freedom of Speech?

#3: It was recently discovered that Facebook employees sat in the offices of one of the Presidential candidates to guide them in crafting political ads to take advantage of Facebook’s software that targets audiences. Discuss whether this is ethical, legal, or morally acceptable. Should the service have been supplied to all candidates?

#4: Should hacking attacks sanctioned by other governments be considered an act of war? How should the Federal Government respond to hacking attacks that affect our military capability?

#5. Someone hacks into your computer and steals a great deal of personal information from you BUT you do not have anti-virus software, the network you have in your home is not password protected and your computer is not locked with a password? Is the person that stole the information breaking law if you do not take steps to preserve your information?

#6. While you are in a classroom at the University, new technology has given the Faculty teaching the class in the classroom the ability to see the content on the screen of your computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone. This was done because faculty have started seeing students distracted during class by electronic devices. Discuss whether this is an invasion of privacy or if a student does not have an expectation of privacy in a classroom.

Format of the document:

Double spaced.
The submitted document must have a .docx, .doc or .pdf extension and an appropriate name.
Your TA or Instructor must be able to open your submission.
The paper must be at least 1000 words. Title pages, Table of Contents, and References count towards the number of words.
A minimum of 3 references should be cited in-text and included in the References section.