Solution Manual For Ethics for the Information Age, 9th Edition by Michael J. Quinn

INSTRUCTOR’S GUIDE

E THICS FOR THE I NFORMATION A GE TH 9 E DITION

Michael J. Quinn Seattle University

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Contents Preface

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Teaching Computer Ethics

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1 Catalysts for Change

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2 Introduction to Ethics

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3 Networked Communications

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4 Intellectual Property

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5 Information Privacy

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6 Privacy and the Government

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7 Computer and Network Security

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8 Computer Reliability

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9 Professional Ethics

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10 Automation and Globalization

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Preface This booklet is a supplement for instructors using the ninth edition of Ethics for the Information Age. It gives practical suggestions for running a successful class, points out other resources available via the Web, and contains answers to all of the review questions in the book. If you identify any errors in this booklet, or if you have any ideas for additional exercises, I would appreciate hearing from you.

Michael J. Quinn College of Science and Engineering Seattle University 901 12th Avenue Seattle, WA 98122 quinnm@seattleu.edu

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Teaching Computer Ethics Introduction Teaching a computers, ethics, and society course for the first time can be intimidating! Unlike the typical computer science class, which focuses on technical content, a computers and society class focuses on people and the decisions they make. Determining the right thing to do is not like finding the maximum element on a list. The moral problems discussed in this book are complicated, and there are no algorithms that enable you to “solve” a moral problem as neatly as you can construct a binary search tree. If you have little or no formal training in ethics, you probably feel uncomfortable being responsible for teaching an ethics class.

Fortunately, your job is not to preach to the students or tell them how they ought to behave (outside of class, anyway!). Rather, your role is to raise questions and give students the opportunity to express and justify their views. If you are successful, your students will complete the course with a greater understanding of contemporary ethical issues related to information technology, an improved ability to think critically and defend their decisions logically, a greater appreciation for alternate perspectives, and the experience of changing their position on an issue based on what they have read and heard.

As C. Dianne Martin and Hilary J. Holz put it: Our belief is that ethics cannot be taught; rather what can be taught is a framework for evaluating ethical dilemmas and making decisions. In accepting the premise that technology is value-laden, we stress the need to teach a methodology of explicit ethical analysis in all decision-making related to technology... The role of ethics education should be to provide students with at least a minimal theoretical background essential for their understanding of the role that values and ethics play in all decision-making, whether it be technical, economic, political, social, or personal.1 How can you achieve this goal? The consensus among experienced instructors is that the best computer ethics classes are discussion-oriented. Discussions force students to organize their thoughts. In addition, students are more receptive to hearing ideas from peers than from you. They will come to realize that every complicated issue can be looked at from multiple points of view. They should also learn that some arguments are better than others, and that 1

“Non-Apologetic Computer Ethics Education: A Strategy for Integrating Social Impact and Ethics into the Computer Science Curriculum,” C. Dianne Martin and Hillary J. Holz, in Teaching Computer Ethics, Southern Connecticut State University, January 1992.

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TEACHING COMPUTER ETHICS

the best arguments are those that use logic to reach conclusions from facts and commonly held values.

From time to time, I’ve gotten feedback from readers noting that some of the arguments I present in the book seem flimsy compared to others. They wonder why I’ve included them.

I do this because I want to help students develop the critical thinking skills enabling them to weigh arguments and determine which are better than others. When they demonstrate they have acquired these skills by identifying the weaker arguments in the text, that’s a good sign!

Please encourage your students to read the arguments in the book critically.

Discussions Finding topics to discuss should not be a problem for you. The book raises far more issues than you will have time to discuss in one term, and late-breaking news stories provide even more discussion material. It’s hard not to find a question related to ethics and information technology in the day’s news! You will have to pick and choose the topics you deem most important. If you don’t see an appropriate topic in a recent new story, take advantage of the discussion questions and in-class exercises found at the end of each chapter. They can lead to interesting class debates and require no preparation beyond reading the chapter.

One of your important responsibilities as the teacher is to get every student engaged in discussions of ethical issues. I recommend you oversee many small-group discussions instead of one large discussion. When it is time for a discussion or debate, break the class up into small groups of four or five students and ask each group to discuss or debate the question at hand. This approach dramatically increases the number of students who are speaking, from one person in the entire class to one person in each group, and it makes it much more likely that every student will speak. After the small groups have had a reasonable amount of time to discuss the issue, you can then ask one person from each small group to report out to the entire class, giving the entire class the opportunity to benefit from the insights generated in each group.

Another one of your responsibilities is to ensure that the students justify their point of view. If a student should say, “I think such-and-such is wrong” without further elaboration, you should ask the student to explain why the action is wrong. Sometimes you need to drill down several levels before you get to the moral value or principle upon which the conclusion rests. I encourage my students to couch their arguments in one or more of these words: benefit, harm, right, obligation, duty, or character. A utilitarian analysis relies upon an evaluation of benefits and harms. A social contract theory analysis focuses on rights. A Kantian analysis considers duties or obligations. An analysis from the perspective of virtue theory determines whether the action is consistent with someone having good moral character. Asking for these words can have two benefits. It makes the analysis more rigorous, and it helps the class understand which ethical theory is being invoked.

Take advantage of the introduction to logical argumentation appearing in Appendix B. If you and your students are familiar with the structure of valid arguments, the most common fallacies, and unfair debating gambits, it will be easier for all of you to identify when someone’s argument is flawed and name the problem with it.

Many of the issues discussed in this class are highly controversial. Students often have

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ix difficulty coming up with a logical argument defending a point of view to which they are emotionally attached. One way to solve this problem is to poll the class and find out which students support an issue and which are opposed to it. If the class is reasonably well divided between the two points of view, ask the students to argue the point of view opposite to their own personal beliefs. Without an emotional attachment to a particular point of view, students can often be more analytical.

You can add value to a discussion and keep it moving along through the use of metacomments. For example: “Maria has just given a utilitarian argument why the proposed action is wrong. Can someone analyze this issue from a Kantian point of view?”

It is important that students understand there are multiple ways to look at nearly every issue. Through the use of leading questions, you can help ensure that both sides of an issue are expressed. If you cannot find anyone to express a contrarian view, you may need to bring that view out yourself. Be prepared to promote either side of every issue!

Role-Playing Exercises You should occasionally set aside time for role-playing exercises. Role-playing activities guarantee that many students will participate, and students particularly enjoy them. The textbook contains many of these exercises.

For a typical activity, the class is divided into small groups that give presentations representing a particular point of view. You will need to give the groups time to discuss the issue and devise the arguments they will make to the rest of the class. The amount of time depends on the exercise, but it is often 10–20 minutes. Next, each group makes its case. Again, the amount of time depends on the exercise, but it is often 20–30 minutes. Finally, it is good to have a concluding discussion in which the students have the opportunity to discuss the relative strengths of each group’s case.

Writing Assignments I believe in the adage that “You don’t know what you know until you write it down.” To that end, writing assignments provide an important opportunity for students to practice constructing ethical evaluations. The media are filled with stories raising moral problems related to information technology. It is easy for students to find current news stories related to the topic of a chapter. In a typical 600-word essay I ask students to describe a moral problem, take a clear stand on whether a particular action or decision is right or wrong, and then defend their position through the use of one or more of the practical ethical theories described in the book (Kantianism, act utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism, social contract theory, or virtue ethics).

If you’re looking for a model, I’ve included a sample essay in Appendix B. I highly recommend that you use a rubric to grade your essays. A rubric allows you to inform a student exactly why their essay earned them a particular score, and it reduces student haggling over grades. You can find rubrics for grading written essays on the Web.

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Web Resources A variety of Web sites contain information valuable to instructors of computer ethics courses.

My personal Web site has a page of links to interesting material that can be incorporated into lectures or classroom activities. There are materials for every chapter in Ethics for the Information Age. The URL of the page is: www.michaeljquinn.net/ethics-for-the-information-age.html Robert Greene, a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Eu Claire, has created another Web page organized according to the chapters of Ethics for the Information Age. The site has links to hundreds of articles from Wikipedia, the New York Times, and other news sources. The home page for his site is people.uwec.edu/GREENER/phil308/index.htm.

The ComputingCases.org Web site provides detailed case studies that you can use in class. Some of them overlap with cases described in Ethics for the Information Age; others are different. The site introduces a methodology called “Social Impact Analysis” for exploring the social and ethical issues related to a computing system. It gives practical advice on how to lead an ethics case discussion, and it provides a worksheet that students can use when weighing the pros and cons of alternative actions. The home page for the site is ComputingCases.org.

Initiatives related to computer ethics have sprung up a dozens of universities—too many to list here. A little Web sleuthing can yield great topics for classroom discussions.

Summary One of your roles as a teacher of computer ethics is to raise questions and ensure that many points of view are expressed. You are also serving as a role model, demonstrating to students the importance of thinking about the right thing to do—and then doing it. Thinking about ethics is not just for people with a Ph.D. in philosophy. Ethics is for all of us, and all of us have more to learn. It’s perfectly acceptable to respond to a question with, “I don’t know. I’ll read up on that and get back to you.” I’ve certainly done that! By letting the students know that you are a student of ethics, too, you can give them confidence that they can start—right now—to think about the moral qualities of their professional decisions.

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Chapter 1 Catalysts for Change 1. Even though information technology has existed for millennia, the invention of computers and high-speed communication networks have made information far easier to collect, store, manipulate, and distribute, legitimizing the use of the term Information Age to describe the present era.

2. Mathematical tables constructed manually invariably contained errors, stimulating the invention of automated devices to do the computations and typeset the results.

3. A similarity between the growth of the mechanical calculator market in the second half of the nineteenth century and the growth of the personal computer market in the second half of the twentieth century is that in both cases inventors and entrepreneurs were able to capitalize on relatively recent developments in technology. Advances in machine tools and mass-production methods made mechanical calculators possible. The invention of microprocessors made personal computers possible.

A difference between the growth of the mechanical calculator market and the growth of the personal computer market is that the demand for mechanical calculators came from large corporations with middle managers who needed access to information in order to make decisions, whereas the demand for personal computers came in large part from antiwar and anti-establishment activists who were interested in providing individuals with a powerful tool out of the control of large corporations and the government.

4. Both the Burroughs Adding Machine Company in the 1890s and IBM in the 1960s had strong sales and marketing operations that helped them achieve dominant positions in their respective markets.

5. Three advances in computing stimulated by the development of radar are electrostatic memory (exemplified by the Williams Tube), semiconductor memory (exemplified by the transistor), and graphical user interfaces (exemplified by Doug Engelbart’s oNLine System).

6. The Minuteman II ballistic missile program was the largest customer of integrated circuits in the United States between 1962 and 1965. During this time companies learned

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CHAPTER 1. CATALYSTS FOR CHANGE how to make much more powerful integrated circuits, paving the way for the invention of the microprocessor, which is at the heart of every personal computer. In this way the Cold War helped bring about the personal computer.

7. The semaphore telegraph was adopted more rapidly on the continent of Europe than in the British Isles because the system only works when atmospheric conditions allow good visibility between stations. Since fog and rain are more common in the British Isles, the semaphore telegraph was not as practical.

8. Cellular networks are an important category of wireless network. Cellular networks have provided telephone service to billions of people who never had access to traditional wired telephone networks. The telephone created the first online communities. Today, online communities thrive with many having access through WiFi or other wireless Internet technologies. Morse’s telegraph put the Pony Express out of business. Text messaging available through wireless networks made telegrams obsolete. The telephone blurred the traditional boundaries between private life and public life. Today’s smart phones continue to test our boundaries regarding when it is appropriate to consult a digital device.

9. Tim Berners-Lee chose to construct his hypertext system, the World Wide Web, on top of the TCP/IP protocol, rather than one vendor’s proprietary network protocol.

This decision helped ensure the success of the Web, because it enabled the Web to span computers made by different manufacturers running different operating systems.

10. Examples of how a social condition influenced the development of a new information technology: The need for large amounts of timely information by corporate managers in the late nineteenth century fueled the growth of the manual calculator market.

The need to store and manipulate large amounts of data prompted the invention of punched-card tabulation and data-processing systems.

A demand for less expensive access to computers stimulated the development of time sharing.

BASIC became popular because there was a demand for an easy-to-learn programming language.

An interest in accessing and sharing information led to the rapid adoption of the World Wide Web created by Tim Berners-Lee. (Other examples are possible.)

11. Examples of a social change caused or accelerated by the adoption of a new information technology: The transcontinental telegraph system put the Pony Express out of business.

The adoption of the telephone erased traditional boundaries between work and home.

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3 The telephone also make possible the first on-line communities, through party lines.

Manual calculators led to the “de-skilling” and “feminization” of bookkeeping.

Time-sharing systems gave many more people access to computers, which they used for both educational and entertainment purposes.

Television broadcasts may have influenced the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election of 2000.

(Other examples are possible.)

12. Both instrumentalism and pragmatism view technology as expanding human capabilities by solving practical problems. However, instrumentalists see technology as value neutral, whereas pragmatists believe the value of a technology depends on the social context in which it is used. Instrumentalists and pragmatists view technological change as being driven by humans, whereas technological determinists view technology itself as the driver, as reflected in the phrase, “You can’t stop progress.” According to technological determinists, technological progress drives social, economic, and cultural changes.

Those who subscribe to the cultural approach to technology believe that technological progress is not inevitable and that societies have some control over the development of technologies. Once adopted, however, technologies can result in social changes. Decolonial technical design is focused more on how new technologies are developed. According to this view, a pluralistic design process that engages the views and expertise of formerly colonized people can overcome coloniality.

The cultural approach to technology most closely fits the author’s presentation of the history of computing, networking, and information storage and retrieval.

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Chapter 2 Introduction to Ethics 1. The “ethical point of view” means respecting not only your own goals and aspirations, but taking into consideration the goals and aspirations of other people as well.

2. Ethical relativism is the view that “the good” exists inside the human mind; i.e., it is a human invention. Since “the good” is invented, its definition is malleable. Ethical objectivism is the view that “the good” exists outside the human mind. Our role as humans is to find or discover “the good.” Since “the good” exists independently of our intellectual activity, its definition never changes.

3. Person B has not made a strong ethical argument because they have not brought up any facts or values that would undermine or contradict the explanation of Person A. 4. When we say an ethical theory is rational, we mean that it relies upon logical reasoning from facts or commonly held values.

5. The many/any fallacy is to conclude that any option is acceptable after observing that many options are acceptable. For example, you may observe me take several different routes between home and work, and all of them are good in the sense that they allow me to reach my destination safely and in a reasonable amount of time. That does not imply that all possible routes between home and work are good ones.

6. Sometimes I leave home a little late, but I’d still like to get to work on time. I want to be able to drive through red lights on those days when I am running late. The proposed moral rule is: I may ignore traffic laws when I am pressed for time. If we universalized this rule and everyone else who was running late also ignored traffic laws, then the streets would be chaotic, and I wouldn’t be able to get to work more quickly as I desired. Hence my proposed moral rule is logically self-defeating. It is wrong for me to drive through red lights on those days when I am running late.

Here is another way to analyze the situation. I want to be able to drive through red lights on those days when I am running late. It is also my will that everyone except me obey the traffic lights so that I can predict their actions and speed past them. I am privileging my desires over those of others. That means what I am thinking of doing is wrong.

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CHAPTER 2. INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS 7. Plagiarism is the use of someone else’s words or ideas without giving that person credit.

Appendix A actually gives five ways of committing plagiarism: copying another’s words without putting the words in quotation marks and citing the source; paraphrasing another’s words without citing the source; incorporating someone else’s figures or drawings without citing the source; referencing facts that are not common knowledge without citing the source; and using another person’s ideas without giving that person credit.

8. Plagiarism refers to deliberately concealing the fact that you have used someone else’s words or ideas. If the action is not intentional, it should be called misuse of sources.

9. A consequentialist theory determines whether an action is right or wrong by evaluating its consequences. Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory. A non-consequentialist theory determines whether an action is right or wrong by considering the underlying rule or principle motivating the action. Kantianism and social contract theory are nonconsequentialist theories.

10. Three situations in which my action would be primarily motivated by a sense of duty or obligation: (a) I promised someone if he could get two tickets to a rock concert, I would purchase a ticket and go with him. He got the tickets and expects me to pay for mine. I keep my promise, even though I just lost my job and I really can’t afford to go. (b) I pay my income taxes, even though I think the government has some wasteful programs. (c) Everybody in my fraternity is going to give blood. I donate blood, too, even though just thinking about it makes me queasy.

Three situations in which my action is primarily motivated by its expected consequences: (a) I give money to a particular charity because it has the lowest administrative overhead of any international relief organization. I figure more of my money will actually reach those who need it. (b) I work extra hard in a particular class, even though I am not interested in the material, because I hope the professor will write me a good letter of recommendation. (c) I slightly exaggerate my experience in order to get a good job as a server in a nice restaurant, figuring that the probability of someone discovering my exaggeration is very low.

11. Vicki is driving her car through the city. Her cell phone rings, and she looks down to see who is calling. As a result, she does not see that she is approaching a crosswalk. She drives through the crosswalk without slowing down. Her car strikes and kills a child.

Two minutes earlier, another driver, Helen, had been distracted by the ringing of her cell phone, had looked down to see who was calling, and had driven through the same crosswalk without slowing down. Nobody was in the crosswalk, and Helen caused no harm. Vicki and Helen did exactly the same thing, but Vicki’s action had far worse consequences than Helen’s action.

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7 12. Businesses and governments often use utilitarian thinking to determine the proper course of action because it allows all of the relevant consequences of each alternative to be expressed quantitatively, often in monetary units.

13. The US federal tax code allows individuals who own homes to deduct the amount of mortgage interest paid on the home loans. The Tax Foundation and other groups argue that this deduction is of the greatest benefit to the wealthy, which means it violates the difference principle.

14. Social contract theory as first presented is a non-consequentialist theory. Social contract theory as articulated in Rawls’s two principles of justice is a non-consequentialist theory.

15. Here are some moral virtues not mentioned in Section 2.10: altruism, ambition, charity, compassion, conscientiousness, continence, courteousness, courtesy, discretion, empathy, generosity, hospitality, humility, industry, integrity, kindness, patience, perseverance, persistence, prudence, sincerity, temperance, tranquility, and trustworthiness.

16. Subjective relativism and ethical egoism are similar in the sense that both theories allow people to put themselves first in determining the right action to take in a particular situation. However, there is a crucial difference between the two theories. Subjective relativism, like all relativistic theories, holds that everyone decides what is right for themselves. Two people in the same circumstances could choose completely different actions, and both could be right. Ethical egoism, on the other hand, is an objective theory. It holds that the right action for a person to take in a particular situation is the action that will be to the greatest long-term benefit of that person. A rational, objective process is used to determine the greatest long-term benefit, meaning anyone in the same situation should reach the same conclusion.

17. Both divine command theory and Kantianism are objective, holding that right and wrong can be expressed in rules that are true for all people at all times in history.

Divine command theory identifies the good with the will of God, and holds that the will of God is communicated through holy books. Kantianism, on the other hand, holds that we can use our reason to determine what is good.

18. Both subjective relativism and act utilitarianism would allow an individual to evaluate a situation to determine whether a particular action is right or wrong. However, subjective relativism allows a person to use any means to decide the right thing to do. According to act utilitarianism, the consequences of the possible actions must evaluated. The correct action is the one that leads to the greatest increase in total happiness among the affected parties.

19. Both Kantianism and rule utilitarianism are based on ethical objectivism. According to both theories, right actions are those that are in line with universal moral rules.

However, the two theories derive the rules in different ways. Kantianism determines whether a proposed moral rule is acceptable by evaluating it according to the Categorical Imperative. Utilitarianism determines whether a proposed moral rule is acceptable by

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CHAPTER 2. INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS considering the long-term, overall total change in happiness that would result if everyone always followed the rule.

20. Both act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism are consequentialist theories. However, act utilitarianism considers the consequences that would result from an action taken in one particular situation. Rule utilitarianism considers the consequences that would result if everyone always took a certain course of action in all similar situations.

21. Both theories focus on the notion of society, but they are quite different. For one thing, cultural relativism is an example of ethical relativism, while social contract theory is an example of ethical objectivism. Cultural relativism says each society determines what people ought to do in various situations. Different societies may come up with different moral codes. These rules may be based heavily on tradition and not on reason.

Social contract theory says morality consists in those rules that rational people ought to recognize are in everyone’s best benefit if they are universally obeyed.

22. Both Kantianism and social contract theory are objective, rule-based theories. In Kantianism, proposed rules are derived by seeing if they can meet the requirements of the Categorical Imperative. In social contract theory, proposed rules are derived by seeing if their universal adoption would be to everyone’s mutual benefit.

23. According to virtue ethics, there is a set of character traits that human beings need to possess in order to be truly happy. Some of these character traits may depend on the culture. In this respect virtue ethics is similar to cultural relativism. However, the differences between virtue ethics and cultural relativism are more significant than the similarities. Virtue ethics is an example of ethical objectivism, while cultural relativism is an an example of ethical relativism. Although some of the character traits prized by virtue ethics may be culture dependent, others appear to be universal: honesty, justice, and loyalty, for example.

24. Alexis did wrong when she made use of a student’s login and password to gain access to the library’s computers and printers. Alexis treated that student as a means to her end of getting access to the private college’s computers.

The anti-spam organization is treating the innocent computer users in the other country as means to its end of reducing spam. That is wrong.

The analysis depends upon the expectation of privacy people should have. The existence of the cameras is public knowledge. If nobody is being “used,” the action appears to be morally acceptable.

Releasing the software without informing the potential users of the possible bugs would be wrong. However, if the hospital staff were fully notified that the product was in beta test, a decision to release the product could be justified.

25. The benefits to Alexis were large. The harms to others were small. Her action was morally acceptable.

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9 Millions of people are getting much less spam. The benefit to each of these persons is small, but meaningful. Tens of thousands of citizens of the other country cannot send email to the United States. The harm to each of these persons is significant. Concluding whether the action is right or wrong depends upon the weight you give to each person’s benefit or harm.

In this case the benefits seem to outweigh the harms. The actions of the East Dakota State Police are morally acceptable.

To do the analysis, we must examine the various courses of action and weigh, for each one, the potential benefits and harms to the patients, nurses, hospital, and members of the start-up company.

26. A rule utilitarian is likely to subscribe to the rule “Gaining access to another person’s private information is wrong,” since a great deal of harm can result if people were unable to protect confidential information such as credit card numbers. For this reason, Alexis did wrong when she used someone else’s login and password to access the library’s computers and printers.

The challenge with this scenario is to determine whether any moral rules have been broken. In general, utilitarianism is comfortable with the notion that maximizing the overall good may mean that the majority gains a benefit while the minority suffers a harm.

The East Dakota State Police is using technology to increase the safety of the community.

Its actions appear to be morally acceptable.

As long as the company fully discloses the status of the product, it appears to be on safe ground.

27. Alexis violated the property rights of the private college when she used its computers without permission. Her action was wrong.

The residents of the other country had a reasonable expectation that their email would be delivered. By blacklisting the country’s ISPs, the anti-spam organization encouraged American ISPs to refuse to forward email. This seems wrong.

How much privacy should a person have while operating a motor vehicle on a freeway? If a person has given up all privacy, then there seems to be nothing wrong with this action.

If a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy, then the East Dakota State Police may have done something wrong if it secretly gave the FBI access to the information.

The purchaser of a product has a right to expect the manufacturer stands behind the quality of the product. In this case it would be wrong for the company to sell the product as if it were completely debugged and 100 percent reliable. On the other hand, the hospital might be willing to beta test the device if it could get a discounted price or if that would help the company certify its reliability. The company could begin shipping the device to hospitals that understood the current state of the software.

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28. Virtues associated with students are honesty, justice, and industriousness. Alexis demonstrated industriousness by working a part-time job, finding a way to get access to PCs and printers, and completing the extra research projects. Alexis did not demonstrate honesty when she sneakily found a valid login/password combination, and she did not act in a just way when she used the resources of the private college without paying for them. Taken as a whole, Alexis’s actions do not appear to be characteristic of a virtuous student.

Virtue ethics is not an appropriate theory to use when evaluating the action of a government or business, so we skip Scenarios 2 and 3.

Two virtues associated with a good employee are honesty, industriousness, and loyalty.

Out of loyalty to the company, you want to find a way for your company to stay in business in the short run and prosper in the long run. However, honesty compels you to inform the customer regarding the true state of the software. Rather than cover up the problem, you should find a way to work with the customer to ensure the customer sticks with your company’s product. As an industrious employee, you should volunteer to put in some extra time if that will help reduce the delay in getting the product to market.

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Chapter 3 Networked Communications 1. Spam is incredibly inexpensive to send, so even though the vast majority of messages are blocked by spam filters, the cost per message that actually reaches its destination is still very low compared to other kinds of advertising.

2. Spam’s share of email traffic has been in decline since 2009 because law enforcement agencies and Internet service providers have shut down the command centers for many botnets.

3. Many commercial enterprises support both Web sites and mobile apps because people are increasingly using mobile devices to access the Internet, and using Web browsers on mobile devices can be awkward.

4. Texting and instant messaging are both ways to send short messages over wireless networks. Text messages are transmitted over cellular networks, while instant messaging uses the Internet.

5. Social media have affected the news people are exposed to because more people are getting their news through social media, and social media sites are designed to deliver content that users like so that they will stay on the sites longer. As a result, people are being exposed to more news presented from a perspective that they agree with.

6. The Internet has undermined traditional print newspapers by depriving newspapers of advertising income. Craigslist, which is free, has replaced paid classified advertising in newspapers. Companies are spending more on advertising through social media and less on traditional newspaper advertisements.

7. Censorship is when one person or organization prevents another person or organization from expressing themselves.

8. Censorship is difficult on the Internet because: The Internet supports many-to-many communication. The Internet has far more information outlets than television or radio.

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CHAPTER 3. NETWORKED COMMUNICATIONS The Internet is dynamic. Millions of computers are being added to the Internet every year.

The Web is huge, containing billions of pages. Nobody can keep track of everything published on the Web. The Internet is global. Laws passed in one nation may have no effect outside that nation’s borders.

It is hard to distinguish between children and adults on the Internet.

9. Broadcasters have more limited First Amendment rights than book publishers because they have a pervasive presence. Broadcasters beam signals into the privacy of the home.

Since people can turn radios and televisions on and off, they may turn a device on in the middle of a show. That means that warnings at the start of a show are less effective than a warning at the front of a newspaper or magazine article. Also, broadcasting is accessible to children, even those too young to read. Restricting the access of children to radio or television is more difficult than restricting access to adult magazines or books.

10. Sexting by teens has created new legal challenges because now minors are breaking laws meant to deter adults from harming children.

11. The leading form of identity theft is the fraudulent use of a credit card or bank account.

12. There are several reasons why college students are particularly vulnerable to identity theft. They tend to own a lot of digital devices and often do not secure them with strong passwords. College students tend to post a lot of personal information on social media sites. They are also vulnerable to low-tech methods of identity theft because a high percentage of them live in close proximity to others and many do not secure physical records well.

13. Two examples of high-tech methods of identity theft are phishing and spyware. Two examples of low-tech methods of identity theft are dumpster diving and shoulder surfing.

14. Cyberbullying refers to bullying via the Internet or the phone system.

15. Studies with monkeys suggest that when our desire for information from a digital device is satisfied, our brains release dopamine, which produces a desire for more information.

This feedback loop makes it difficult for us to detach from our digital devices. (See page 3.)

16. The Enlightenment view of addiction is that people are responsible for the decisions they make about what they put into their bodies. Therefore, the responsibility becoming addicted rests with the addicts themselves.

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Chapter 4 Intellectual Property 1. Intellectual property is more difficult to protect than physical property because compared to physical property it is much easier to copy and transmit.

2. Two paradoxes arise when we attempt to extend a natural right to property into the realm of intellectual property. (1) If more than two people create the identical intellectual property, there is only one instance of that property, not two, meaning both people cannot claim full rights to that property. (2) Copying an intellectual property is different from stealing a physical property. Perfect copies can be made of objects embodying an intellectual property. When this happens, the original owner has lost exclusive control over use of the property, even though they still have the original article. Put another way, since perfect copies can be made of objects embodying an intellectual property, multiple people can make use of the intellectual property at the same time.

3. An individual or firm in the United States may protect intellectual property through trade secrets, trademarks, service marks, patents, and copyrights.

4. The advantage of a trade secret is that it does not expire. The disadvantage of a trade secret is that a company cannot prevent another company from attempting to reverse engineer the formula or process.

The advantage of a patent is that the government gives the patent owner the exclusive right to the intellectual property. The disadvantage of a patent is that this right expires after 20 years.

5. Here are the consequences for Option 3. If Rajiv does not intervene, the implemented system will be able to support only 5,000 concurrent users, limiting the number of subscriptions to 25,000. Lost revenue to the company over a period of five years will equal 25,000 customers times $10/month times 60 months = $15,000,000.

There is no risk of litigation. Hence the litigation risk term is $0.

There is a good chance that Rajiv will be fired for overseeing a project that did not meet its key objective of supporting 10,000 concurrent users. Let’s assume there is a 90% probability Rajiv will lose his job. Therefore, the lost income to Rajiv is at least

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CHAPTER 4. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY $150,000 per year times 5 years times 90%, or $675,000. Summing these terms, the expected consequence of option 3 is ($15,675,000); i.e., a loss of nearly $16 million, far worse than either Option 1 or Option 2.

Here are the consequences for Option 4. By working directly with the software team and providing the team with technical solutions to improve the performance of the database system, Rajiv can ensure the system meets the performance target with a minimal delay in the release of the product, which he estimates will be only one month. The total loss to the company related to the delay in the product release will be 50,000 customers times $10/month per customer times 1 month, or $500,000.

The probability of a lawsuit is higher than in the second option. Rajiv is definitely divulging confidential information. The only question is whether Felicity discovers what he has done and the legal department at Felicity chooses to litigate against a small company that is not a direct competitor. We assume the first of these probabilities to be higher than in Option 2 because Rajiv is working directly with the team and explicitly providing the team with optimizations. Let’s assume that probability is 50%.

The second of these probabilities is the same as in Option 2: 50%. The probability that both events happen is 50% × 50%, or 25%. Assuming Felicity would seek $5 million in damages from Unrelated.com, the expected loss to Unrelated.com from legal action is $5,000,000 times 25%, or $1,250,000.

Next Rajiv calculates the consequences of the fourth option on his expected earnings.

He has already determined that the probability of a legal action is 25%. If there is a legal action, he can reasonable expect to be fired. The expected loss to his income is the probability of being fired (25%) times $150,000/year times 5 years, or $187,500.

It is more likely (75% probability) that there will be no litigation. In that event, by demonstrating his technical skills and helping the team deliver a quality database system with only a one-month slip in the schedule, Rajiv’s raise should be even larger than in option 2. We assume a 20% raise, or $30,000. Over a five-year period, the additional salary would be $150,000. Summing both terms, the expected consequence of Option 4 for Rajiv is equal to 75% × $150,000 − 25% × $750,000 = ($75,000); i.e., a loss of $75,000.

Summing the three terms, the expected consequence of Option 4 is ($500,000) + ($1,250,000) + ($75,000) = ($1,825,000); i.e., a loss of $1,825,000, which is slightly worse than the expected consequence of Option 2.

6. Fair use refers to those circumstances under which it is legal to reproduce a copyrighted work without permission.

7. As information technology has advanced, companies have begun using digital media (such as CDs and DVDs) to store copyrighted songs, movies, and computer programs.

The widespread availability of personal computers and CD/DVD burners has made it much easier for consumers to make copies of CDs and DVDs. 8. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act curtails fair use of copyrighted material by consumers by making it illegal to burn personal copies of copyrighted DVDs.

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15 9. BitTorrent achieves an order-of-magnitude increase in downloading speed, compared with earlier peer-to-peer networks, by allowing a user to download different pieces of a file from many different sources simultaneously.

10. Sony did not actively encourage its customers to record or disseminate copyrighted material, and the Supreme Court ruled that time-shifting was not an infringement of copyright. In contrast, Grokster and StreamCast encouraged the availability of copyrighted files on their networks and helped consumers download these files, because these actions increased the popularity of their services and heightened their advertising revenues.

11. The most significant change in the recorded music business in the United States in the past 15 years has been the rise of music streaming services. Streaming now accounts for two-thirds of the revenue of the recorded music industry.

12. Company A can develop a program that duplicates the functionality of a program made by company B without violating company B’s copyright through the process of “clean room” software development. Two independent teams work on the project. The first team is responsible for determining how Company B’s program works, perhaps by examining the object code, and produces a technical specification. The second team relies solely on the technical specification to develop the software. Because the code developers are isolated from Company B’s product, Company A can ensure no code get copied, even unconsciously.

13. In an open platform, the design and implementation details are based on open standards and are make publicly available. In a closed platform, the design and implementation details are kept private. The advantage of an open platform is that it allow multiple companies to develop products for the platform. Competition keeps prices lower, and customers don’t have to worry about being “locked in” to a single company’s product.

They can build their system with components from multiple vendors. The advantage of a closed platform is that the company can ensure customers have a consistent user experience across all applications. By keeping its platform closed, a company can more easily ensure that the applications running on its platform meet security and reliability standards.

14. Open source refers to software in which the source code is distributed along with the executable program.

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Chapter 5 Information Privacy 1. The idea of privacy has to do with how much control an individual has over access to their person or information about themselves. If a person is alone, then no one else has physical access to their person, and in that sense everyone who is alone has some privacy. However, a person who is alone may not have control over who has the ability to observe them. For example, a solitary person may be observed by someone at a distance using binoculars or a surveillance camera. Information about a person is separate from the person, and for that reason having information privacy, or control over access to information about that person, has nothing to do with whether or not that person is alone.

2. Society can be harmed when individuals are granted too much privacy. For example, a concern for individual privacy is one reason why European governments do not share a lot of information about terrorist suspects with one another. However, that has enabled people monitored by police in one European country to cross a national border, move about freely in another European country, and commit an act of terror in the new locale.

People expect to be able to keep their financial information private. If you are unable to prevent others from accessing your financial information, you can be the victim of identity theft, a definite harm.

Victims of revenge porn lose privacy when they lose control over explicit images of themselves. This is another example of how a lack of privacy can result in harm.

3. When we say privacy is a prudential right, we mean that granting people this right provides a net benefit to society. Hence it is prudent for a society to choose to give its members some privacy.

4. Privacy is a negative right because all I have to do to give you privacy is leave you alone.

5. In order to reduce conflict, it is important that some information be available through public records. For example, in order to avoid property disputes, records about land ownership should be open to the public. As another example, transcripts of court proceedings and the verdicts of juries and judges should also be public records to build confidence and trust in the legal system.

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CHAPTER 5. INFORMATION PRIVACY 6. Here are a couple of possible answers. In order to get a job, many people are required to take a drug test; i.e., submit a urine sample. People routinely submit urine and blood samples and hand over medical records in order to get a life insurance policy.

7. By keeping track of a consumer’s purchases using a loyalty card, a retailer can predict which other products that consumer may be interested in purchasing and generate coupons for those products to stimulate a sale.

8. Consolidating a patient’s medical records into a single database can make it easier for multiple health care professionals to provide quality service to that patient. For example, having all of a person’s prescriptions in a single database makes it easier to identify potentially dangerous drug interactions. The risk of consolidation is that if someone should gain access to the database without authorization, that person would get access to all of that patient’s medical information.

9. Cookies created by a Web server can affect your privacy because if someone else should steal the your cookie, that person can impersonate you. (This issue will be discussed in Chapter 7.)

10. Data mining means searching through many records from one or more databases, with the goal of finding patterns or relationships in the data. Often the purpose of data mining is to construct an accurate profile of an individual.

Collaborative filtering is a way of helping an individual wade through a large amount of choices and focus in on the best ones. It uses information about the preferences of a large number of people to predict those items an individual is more likely to prefer. On-line retailers and movie-rental sites use collaborative filtering to make recommendations.

11. An opt-in policy requires a consumer to explicitly give permission before an organization can share information it has collected about the individual. An opt-out policy allows an organization to share information it has collected about a consumer unless the individual explicitly forbids it. Privacy advocates favor opt-in policies.

12. Several organizations have released large datasets after trying to preserve people’s anonymity by replacing personal identifiers with integers, only to discover that it was still possible in some cases to determine the individuals connected with some of the records. The lesson is that there is often personally identifying information in more than the obvious fields: name, address, telephone number, etc. For example, a large set of Web search queries may well contain enough information to identify the person making the queries with a high degree of confidence.

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Chapter 6 Privacy and the Government 1. Privacy is the right to be left alone (Warren and Brandeis). This definition of privacy corresponds to the invasion category of Solove’s taxonomy.

Privacy is control over who knows what about us (Rachels). This definition of privacy includes the information collection, information processing, and information dissemination categories of Solove’s taxonomy.

Privacy is the appropriate flow of personal information (Nissenbaum). This definition of privacy corresponds to the information processing and information dissemination categories of Solove’s taxonomy.

2. Over time, the position of the US Supreme Court toward wiretapping became more protective of personal privacy. In Olmstead v. United States, the Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment’s provision against warrantless search and seizure only protected tangible assets and did not apply to wiretapping. After Congress passed the Federal Communications Act, which included a prohibition of wiretapping, the Court ruled in Nardone v. United States that evidence obtained from warrantless wiretaps was inadmissible in court. In Weiss v. United States, the Court ruled that the prohibition on warrantless wiretapping included instrastate as well as interstate telephone calls. In Katz v. United States, the Court ruled that “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places,” and that the US Constitution protects what a person “seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public.” In the case of Charles Katz, that area was a public telephone booth.

3. The question asks for three examples of legislation passed by the US Congress designed to protect the privacy of US residents. Here are all of the examples mentioned in the chapter: Employee Polygraph Protection Act Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act Privacy Act of 1974

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CHAPTER 6. PRIVACY AND THE GOVERNMENT Fair Credit Reporting Act Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act Financial Services Modernization Act Family Education Rights and Privacy Act Video Privacy Protection Act Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act

4. The question asks for three examples of US government agencies successfully achieving their ends using data legally obtained from US residents. Here are all of the examples mentioned in the chapter: The US government is able to determine a great deal of valuable information about the state of the nation through the census conducted every ten years.

The Internal Revenue Service collects a great deal of financial information from Americans in order to ensure they are paying their fair share of income taxes.

The National Crime Information Center consolidates information from police agencies around the country. Providing all police agencies with access to this information helps them solve crimes, even when the criminals move from one jurisdiction to another. The National Crime Information Center helped the FBI link James Earl Ray to the rifle used to assassinate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the NCIC facilitated the arrest of Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

The National Data Exchange allows thousands of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to share information. Access to this information helps state and local police locate criminals, even when they move from one jurisdiction to another.

Police agencies use surveillance cameras in an effort to deter crime and catch criminals. Surveillance cameras played an important role in identifying and apprehending the Boston Marathon bombing suspects.

Police agencies use license plate scanners to identify stolen vehicles and solve criminal cases.

Some police agencies are using drones to search for missing persons, control illegal immigration, pursue fugitive criminals, and perform surveillance at public events.

Federal agents collected enough information about Washington bootlegger Ray Olmstead to allow a successful court conviction, back when the US Supreme Court allowed warrantless wiretapping.

The Stored Communications Act allows law enforcement agencies to collect from Internet service providers emails that are more than 180 days old, without a search warrant.

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21 Syndromic surveilland systems allow government agencies to combine information from a wide variety of sources, such as 911 calls, emergency room visits, and Internet searches, to identify patterns that might indicate an epidemic, environmental problem, or bioterrorism.

Some police departments are using data mining to deploy officers to areas where crimes are more likely to occur.

5. The question asks for three examples of US government agencies illegally collecting or disseminating information about US residents in order to achieve their ends. Here are all of the examples mentioned in the chapter: During World War I, the military’s search for draft resisters was aided by information on the names and addresses of young men provided by the Census Bureau.

During World War II, the Census Bureau provided the Justice Department with information about the general location of Japanese Americans, aiding the Army’s effort to relocate Japanese Americans to internment camps.

After World War II, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI collected evidence obtained through illegal wiretaps and ensured that this evidence was not released to the courts. The FBI also routinely engaged in political surveillance, placing wiretaps on the telephones of senators, congressional representatives, and even Supreme Court justices. Hoover used information gathered from these wiretaps to discredit members of Congress who were trying to limit the power of the FBI. In Operation Shamrock, the National Security Agency screened all telegram traffic entering, leaving, or transiting the United States, searching for key words or phrases. During the Kennedy administration, organized crime figures and the names of Americans doing business with Cuba were added to the NSA watch list.

During the Vietnam War, names of war protesters were put on the watch list. The NSA also became involved in the war on drugs in the late 1960s.

The FBI used the Carnivore system to monitor Internet traffic without a search warrant.

After 9/11, President Bush authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on international telephone calls and international emails initiated by people living in the United States, without a search warrant.

After 9/11, with authorization from Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court routinely ordered telephone companies to provide bulk telephone metadata to the National Security Agency.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center argued that the first advanced imaging technology scanners installed at airports were “unlawful, invasive, and ineffective,” and violated the Privacy Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution.

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CHAPTER 6. PRIVACY AND THE GOVERNMENT 6. Telephony metadata are data about a telephone call, as opposed to the actual contents of the call itself. Telephony metadata include the number of the phone making the call, the date and time of the call, the location of the call, and the duration of the conversation. In 2011, two US senators spoke out against domestic spying without giving any information about the program. In 2013, Edward Snowden leaking information about the program to the British newspaper The Guardian, which made public the fact that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has ordered Verizon to provide the National Security Agency with telephony metadata corresponding to all of its customers’ calls between April 25, 2013 and July 19, 2013. The Obama administration responded to the revelation by noting that the data collection (1) was authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act and (2) had been going on for a number of years. Senator Dianne Feinstein revealed the program had been going on for seven years. In May 2015, a federal court in New York ruled the program illegal. Section 215 of the Patriot Act expired on June 1, 2015.

Congress passed a new law, the USA Freedom Act, requiring government agencies to obtain a court order before gaining access to telephony metadata.

7. These programs have a number of similarities. All of them were conducted without the knowledge of the public. All of them were instituted because of a perceived threat to national security.

The threat being responded to varied from one program to the next. In the case of Operation Shamrock, the threat changed over time. Originally, the focus of the program was to catch spies. Later, the surveillance umbrella also picked up figures from organized crime, people and businesses engaging with Cuba, antiwar protesters, and drug dealers.

The PRISM program, NSA eavesdropping, and the NSA telephone metadata programs all represent responses to the threat of terrorism.

Another key difference in these covert surveillance programs lies in the source of the data being collected. Operation Shamrock analyzed telegrams provided to the NSA by the telegram companies. Carnivore was installed at Internet service providers and captured data packets sent to or received from particular IP addresses. The PRISM program had access to servers at Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and other Internet companies, giving NSA access to stored information and also allowing it to monitor live communications.

In its wiretapping program after 9/11, the NSA eavesdropped on the telephone conversations of up to 500 people inside the United States and thousands living outside the United States. In its bulk telephony metadata program, the NSA relied upon telephone companies to provide it with the records.

8. The Stored Communications Act allows police to read emails more than 180 days old stored by an Internet Service Provider, without a search warrant. This is an important issue because most people allow their email provider to store their email messages.

9. The expansion in the use of National Security Letters has raised privacy concerns for a variety of reasons. The FBI can issue these letters without showing probable cause, and it has been issuing about 12,000 National Security Letters every year. Typically a gag order is associated with a National Security Letter. The gag order prevents the recipient

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23 of the letter (such as a library or educational institution) from disclosing receipt of the letter.

10. The Code of Fair Information Practices has these five tenets: there cannot be any secret databases, people have the right to know what information about them is stored and how it is being used, people should be able to prevent information collected for one purpose to be used for another purpose, people have the right to correct errors in the information about them, and organizations maintaining databases should make sure the data are reliable and secure.

11. The Privacy Act is criticized by Bellair and others because it applies only to government databases, only covers records indexed by a personal identifier, does not assign any federal agency the responsibility of enforcing its provisions, and allows federal agencies to share records.

12. The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act helps consumers verify the accuracy of their credit reports by giving them the right to request a free copy of their credit report once a year from each of the three major credit reporting bureaus.

13. Here are three examples of how information collected by government for one purpose has been used for an entirely different purpose.

During World War I, the Census Bureau provided the names and addresses of young men to the military, which was searching for draft resistors.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Census Bureau provided the Justice Department with information about the general location of Japanese-Americans. The Army used this information to round up Japanese-Americans and send them to internment camps.

Information collected by the E-ZPass network have been used to help obtain civil and criminal convictions in court. For example, E-ZPass records were used as evidence in the murder trial of Melanie McGuire. The records helped the prosecutor reconstruct her movements.

14. Here are three problems associated with using Social Security numbers for identification.

Social Security numbers are not unique.

They are rarely checked, so criminals can get away with supplying fake SSNs. They have no error-detecting capability, so SSNs are prone to data-entry errors.

15. Proponents of a national identification card argue that a modern identification card with biometric data would be harder to forge than a Social Security card or a driver’s license.

A national identification card would reduce illegal immigration by making it impossible for an illegal alien to find work.

Opponents of a national identification card say that corrupt officials inside government agencies would make it possible for people to obtain fake national identification cards.

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CHAPTER 6. PRIVACY AND THE GOVERNMENT A national identification card will simply make it easier for the government to perform data mining on the activities of its citizens.

16. Here are examples of laws passed by the US Congress protecting privacy of each type identified by Daniel Solove: Information collection Employee Polygraph Protection Act Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act

Information processing Privacy Act of 1974 Fair Credit Reporting Act Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act Financial Services Modernization Act

Information dissemination Family Education Rights and Privacy Act Video Privacy Protection Act Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

Invasion Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act

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Chapter 7 Computer and Network Security 1. Today, the word “hacker” is most frequently used to describe someone who gains unauthorized access to computers and computer networks.

2. Three “low-tech” methods that hackers have used to obtain login names and passwords are eavesdropping, dumpster diving, and social engineering.

3. It is dangerous to surf the Web using an open WiFi network because others within range of the wireless access point can sidejack your Web session by capturing a cookie being sent to your computer.

4. A virus is a piece of self-replicating code contained inside another program, called the host. It can propagate within a computer but cannot move from one computer to another without being carried there via an email message, thumb drive, download, etc. In contrast, a worm is a self-contained program that is capable of automatically propagating through a computer network by exploiting security holes.

5. Spyware is often installed via a backdoor Trojan that gives the attacker access to the victim’s computer.

6. Spyware programs communicate over an Internet connection without the knowledge or consent of the user. Adware is a particular type of spyware. However, it does make its presence known because it displays pop-up advertising related to the browsing activity of the user.

7. A drive-by download is similar to a Trojan horse in that both can lead to the secret installation of malware on the victim’s computer.

8. It is dangerous for an email program to open attachments automatically, because an attachment may be an executable program containing a virus.

9. Some criminal organizations use the Internet to launch phishing attacks. They sell the credit card numbers and other financial information netted by their phishing schemes.

Other criminal organizations rent botnets to those who wish to send spam, attempt a phishing scheme, or launch a distributed denial-of-service attack.

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CHAPTER 7. COMPUTER AND NETWORK SECURITY

10. A cyber attack is an attack from one computer to another that attempts to disable the target computer or steal information from it. Here are the cyber attacks outside the United States described in the book: In 2007 Estonia suffered a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack after it relocated a statue of a Soviet soldier.

In 2008 the nation of Georgia suffered a DDoS attack before Russian troops entered the Georgia region of South Ossetia.

In 2009, on the first anniversary of the war between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia, Georgia suffered another DDoS attack.

On the Fourth of July weekend in 2009, South Korea and the United States suffered DDoS attacks, perhaps in retaliation for US sanctions against North Korea.

In 2009, the Stuxnet worm infected Iranian computers controlling centrifuges being used to purify uranium, and may have damaged 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges in Iran. The United States and Israel cooperated to launch the attack.

Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army of China is accused to being responsible for at least 141 computer security breaches in more than a dozen countries that stole hundreds of terabytes of data. The same unit is suspected of breaking into computers managed by the US Office of Personnel Management and stealing the personal information of 22 million Americans.

Anonymous, a loosely organized international group of computer hackers, has apparently been responsible for cyber attacks on Web sites of Arab governments and Israel.

Russia launched cyber attacks on Ukraine before and during its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

11. Even though it can lead to security risks from hackers, companies are converting SCADA systems to the Internet Protocol because it saves them money and allows them to do remote maintenance and monitoring.

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Chapter 8 Computer Reliability 1. An embedded system is a computer used as a component of a larger system. A real-time system is a computer that processes data from sensors as events occur.

2. A race condition in software is a situation in which two or more concurrent tasks share a variable, and the order in which they read or write the value of the variable can affect the behavior of a program. Race conditions are difficult to debug, because in order for a failure to occur, the timing of events must be exactly right. Often the probability that an error will occur is very low.

3. Here are the principal errors made by AECL during the life cycle of the Therac-25 linear accelerator.

Developers of the Therac-25 removed some critical hardware safety features that had been part of the Therac-20 system. That action made the new system more vulnerable to a software error.

AECL reused some of the code of the Therac-6 and Therac-20 in the Therac-25 without properly testing it.

Rather than seriously investigating early reports of problems coming from some users of the Therac-25, AECL engineers dismissed them.

AECL did not report accidents reported by one hospital to other hospitals using the Therac-25.

AECL focused on identifying and fixing particular bugs rather than getting at the root of the system design errors. Most importantly, the system was not designed to be fail-safe.

The Therac-25 did not have any software or hardware to detect and report overdoses and shut down the accelerator.

4. The principal reason or reasons why each of these systems failed to operate as specified: Patriot missile: a, c Ariane 5: c

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CHAPTER 8. COMPUTER RELIABILITY AT&T long distance network: d Mars Climate Orbiter: c Mars Polar Lander: g Denver International Airport baggage system: e Tokyo Stock Exchange: e, g Direct recording electronic voting machines: c, g Therac-25: b, e, f Tesla Version 7.0 (Autopilot): g Uber self-driving test vehicle: g, h (problem with false positives) Boeing 737 MAX: b, g

5. A computer system is biased if it unfairly and unreasonably denies goods or assigns harms to an individual or group.

6. Algorithmic bias is a category of computer bias. It refers to bias exhibited by a machinelearning-based AI system.

7. Preexisting bias is bias that exists in social institutions or practices or attitudes before a computer system is developed. Technical bias is bias that emerges due to technical constraints of a computer system. Emergent bias is bias that only arises after a computer system has been used.

8. The two principle causes of preexisting bias in AI decision-making systems are (1) data sets not representative of the general population, and (2) data sets incorporating historical social injustices.

9. A proxy is a data field that is a good substitute for another data field. For example, in the Impact Pro system, health care costs turned out to be a proxy for the race of the patients.

In Detroit and Chicago, the 9-digit ZIP code is a proxy for race. Proxies are problematic because they make it more difficult to develop systems that do not discriminate against members of protected classes. Simply withholding data fields related to protected class membership is not sufficient to ensure that the system will be unbiased.

10. Demographic parity, equality of opportunity, and equalized odds are three definitions of fairness. Demographic parity is satisfied if every the success rate for the protected group is the same as the success rate for other groups. Equality of opportunity is satisfied if the success rate for the qualified members of the protected group is the same as the success rate for the qualified members of the other groups. Equalized odds is satisfied if the success rate for the qualified members of the protected group is the same as the success rate for the qualified members of the other groups, and the failure rate for the unqualified members of the protected group is the same as the failure rate for the unqualified members of the other groups.

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29 11. Several significant obstacles must be overcome to create unbiased AI decision-making systems. First, a good training data set must be found. The data set must be representative of the general population, and it must not include historical biases. Second, the existence of proxies may make it difficult to keep the system from discriminating against members of a porotected class by hiding information about protected class membership. Finally, there may be several reasonable definitions of what a fair, unbiased system should do, and these definitions may be mutually incompatible.

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Chapter 9 Professional Ethics 1. A computer-related profession is similar to a fully developed profession such as medicine in that some programmers hold positions of great responsibility, such that a mistake on their part can cause great harm to members of the public. Programmers working on medical treatment devices such as the Therac-25 would be in this category.

A computer-related career is unlike a fully developed profession in that its standards related to education, certification, licensing, code of ethics, and continuing professional development are immature.

2. Currently, very few software engineers are licensed, and the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying has discontinued the Principles and Practice of Engineering examination for software engineering.

3. Clauses related to privacy: 2.05, 3.12, 5.03, 7.06 4. Clauses related to intellectual property: 2.02, 2.06, 5.09 5. Clauses that reflect a utilitarian viewpoint: 1.03, 1.07, 3.01, 4.06, 5.05 (more could be justified) 6. Clauses that reflect a Kantian viewpoint: 1.01, 1.04, 1.06, 2.01, 2.02, 2.03, 3.02, 4.03, 4.04, 4.05, 4.06, 5.02, 5.06, 5.07, 5.11 (more could be justified) 7. Diversity refers to how well represented various social identity groups are in an organization. The principle of equity recognizes that social systems have disadvantaged certain social identity groups, and in order for members of these groups to reach their full potential, they need additional resources. Inclusion is achieved when members of underrepresented groups are not just present, but are free to share their experiences and perspectives.

8. Experiments conducted by social scientists have yielded several hypotheses why diverse teams can produce higher quality work products than teams lacking diversity. One hypothesis is that when a team has surface-level diversity, there is a greater expectation among team members that their teammates may have unique ideas to share. Another

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CHAPTER 9. PROFESSIONAL ETHICS hypothesis is that when teams contain people with social differences, team members focus more on the work to be done and less on relationship-building.

9. The book mentioned the following practical steps people can take to make their language more inclusive: Refer to people using the pronouns they use to refer to themselves.

Pay attention to the words people use to describe themselves and call them by those words.

Use person-first language rather than identity-first language, unless the group wants to put the descriptor first.

Use gender neutral language (“they/them”) when referring to an unknown person.

Find alternatives to words like “chairman” that reinforce stereotypes.

Avoid the use of idioms, many of which have racist origins.

Avoid derogatory terms like “crazy,” “mad,” and “psycho” related to mental health conditions.

10. The book mentioned the following practical steps people can take to make their behavior more inclusive: Acknowledge people when they enter the room.

Learn how to pronounce people’s names correctly.

Practice active listening.

Identify and deal with your emotional triggers.

Understand and appreciate the contribution that each person can make.

Ensure that everyone’s voice is heard.

11. Whistle-blowing occurs when an organization is involved in an activity that is fraudulent or a threat to public safety, and a member of that organization reveals information about this activity to someone outside the organization.

Harms of whistle-blowing: Whistle-blowing usually ruins the career of the whistle-blower and causes turmoil within the organization. The public relations damage caused the organization may harm it for years to come.

Possible benefits of whistle-blowing: Whistle-blowing may keep people from being hurt, or it may prevent the public from being defrauded. Whistle-blowing may discourage other companies from engaging in activities that defraud or harm the public.

12. These clauses of the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice seem to support the legitimacy of whistle-blowing under certain circumstances: 1.02, 1.04, 1.05, 4.01, 6.13 Even if the whistle-blower is telling the truth, the whistle-blower may be violating these clauses of the Code: 2.03, 2.09, 6.05

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Chapter 10 Automation and Globalization 1. Automation has numerous benefits. It reduces the price of goods, increasing the real income of the people who buy those goods. With a higher real income, people can use the extra money to buy other things. Hence automation increases the average standard of living.

Automation also brings about some harms. It puts some people out of work. They must go through a period of unemployment, and perhaps retraining, before getting another job. This can be harmful not just to the unemployed person, but also to their dependents. Because of age discrimination, people of a certain age who have lost their job may be unable to find another job.

2. There is evidence that automation eliminates jobs. The percentage of American workers involved in manufacturing dropped from 35 percent in 1947 to 7 percent in 2023.

Spreadsheets and other software packages are reducing the need for accountants and bookkeepers. A large number of middle-management jobs were eliminated in the 1990s, even as the economy grew.

There is also evidence that automation creates more jobs than it destroys. Automation results in lower production costs, which can reduce the cost of products. When products cost less, more people buy them, which means more products must be manufactured, which probably means more people are employed, even if much of the manufacturing is automated. Also, when the cost of a product drops, people don’t pay as much for it, which means they have more money to spend on other products and services, which can increase employment in those areas. Finally, automation causes new kinds of jobs to be created. For example, the automation of stock exchanges has led securities firms to hire mathematicians and computer scientists to develop automated trading systems.

3. The work week hasn’t gotten shorter, even though productivity has doubled since World War II, because the increase in productivity has been used to improve the average standard of living. Another reason is that people are aware that layoffs have happened and can happen again. This knowledge is a strong incentive for salaried workers to put in long hours so they won’t be part of the next layoff.

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CHAPTER 10. AUTOMATION AND GLOBALIZATION 4. A system displays artificial intelligence if it is able to perform a task that is generally considered to require human intelligence.

5. In the first 40 or 50 years of research into artificial intelligence, the focus was on programming higher-level reasoning skills into computers. That approach never solved the problem of teaching computers how to learn. That is why attention turned back to neural network models, because neural networks can be trained; i.e., they can learn.

6. Artificial intelligence refers to a computer system able to perform a particular task as well as an intelligent human. Artificial general intelligence refers to a computer system that is capable of understanding, learning, and applying knowledge across many different tasks.

7. A digital watermark is a nearly undetectable marker put in a data file. Digital watermarks relate to artificial intelligence in a couple of ways. They can be put in original audio, image, or video data files in such a way that if the file is manipulated by an AI program, the watermark is destroyed. In this way, a deepfake can be identified. Another use of watermarks is to insist that every file produced by an AI program contain a watermark, allowing people to readily identify content generated by a computer.

8. Information technology can lead to changes in the structure of an organization by opening up new communication paths. Access to information can lead to a decentralization of decision-making.

9. Remote work can have a number of benefits. It can provide employees with more flexible working hours. Employees save time by not having to commute. It can save a company money because the company doesn’t have to build as much office space. It can improve the environment by reducing pollution caused by automobiles driven by commuters.

There are a number of disadvantages of remote work. Remote workers have to manage at-home distractions. They find it more difficult to collaborate with colleagues or clients.

They can suffer from isolation and loneliness. They can suffer from a lack of motivation.

Remote workers can find it hard to take enough time away from their work. They may suffer from burnout. Remote workers also worry about how working from home will hurt their career development.

10. Proponents of globalization say it helps workers in less wealthy countries in several ways.

Globalization increases competition and lowers prices, improving the purchasing power of everyone, and raising the global standard of living. Globalization gives people in less wealthy countries access to jobs. When they gain employment, their prosperity increases. Every example in the 20th century of a less wealthy country becoming more prosperous has been the result of that country producing goods for the world market, rather than trying for self-sufficiency. Prosperity reduces the chance of countries going to war.

Opponents of globalization say it hurts workers in less wealthy countries by forcing them to compete with subsidized American agribusinesses. For example, Mexican farmers who

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35 cannot compete with these prices are driven out of business. Most of them cannot find jobs in Mexico and end up immigrating to the United States, according to the opponents.

11. Here are several pieces of evidence demonstrating that access to modern information technology is not uniform.

The percentage of people with Internet access varies widely by region of the world, from about 43 percent in Africa to about 94 percent in North America.

The percentage of people in the United States with Internet access varies significantly based on age group. For example, 99 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds use the Internet, compared to 75 percent of those 65 and older.

The percentage of Americans going online also varies significantly by household income: 99 percent of adults in households having incomes of at least $75,000, compared to 86 percent of adults in households having incomes less than $30,000.

98 percent of college graduates in America use the Internet, while only 86 percent of high school dropouts go online.

However, the gaps between these groups are shrinking.

12. According to Mark Warschauer, the assumption behind the term “digital divide” is that the difference between the “haves” and the “have nots” is simply a question of access.

Warschauer questions that assumption. For example, the underlying social system affects the adoption of information technology. Another problem with the term “digital divide,” according to Warschauer, is that it implies that people either use information technology or they do not, when in reality there is a continuum of engagement with information technology. Third, the term “digital divide” implies that a lack of access will lead to a less advantaged position in society. But there is no simple causality. Each factor affects the other.

13. An example of the “winner-take-all” effect not mentioned in the book is the variance in salaries between major league and minor league baseball players in the United States in 2023.

The minimum annual salary for minor league players in the complex leagues is $19,800.

Low-A players make at least $26,200, high-A players make at least $27,300, double-A players make at least $30,350, and triple-A salaries start at $35,800.

Only about 10% of minor league baseball players make it to the majors. The minimum salary for a major league baseball player is $720,000 a year. The lowest-paid major league baseball players earned 36 times the salary of the lowest-paid minor league baseball players.

The highest-paid player in Major League Baseball in 2023 was Max Scherzer, a pitcher for the New York Mets, who earned $43.33 million. Scherzer’s salary was 2,188 times the salary of the lowest-paid minor league baseball players.

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CHAPTER 10. AUTOMATION AND GLOBALIZATION Source 1: R. J. Anderson. “Minor League Baseball Players Ratify Historic First CBA; Deal Includes Salary Increases, More.” CBS. cbssports.com.

Source 2: Christina Gough. “Minimum Player Salary in Major League Baseball from 2003 to 2023.” Statista, August 6, 2023. www.statista.com.

Source 3: Christina Gough. “Highest Salaries in Major League Baseball 2023.” Statista, June 15, 2023. www.statista.com.

14. Martin Ford’s main thesis is that because advances in information technology keep accelerating, our economy is approaching a tipping point where machines are no longer simply tools used by humans but become capable of working autonomously. When this happens, the value of workers will begin to decrease, and profits will go to the very small number of people owning the companies. It will be very difficult to maintain full employment when even service industry jobs are automated, and that will undermine our consumer economy. The solution is to provide some sort of guaranteed income to all adults so that they can continue to make purchases and keep the economy going.

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