CHAPTER 8

ETHICS AND TECHNOLOGY

Big Brother Is Watching You

George Orwell, 1984, Part 1, Chapter 1

Too many employers practice a credo of

In God we trust, others we monitor.
Marlene Piturro, Electronic Monitoring

OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Understand the ethical ramifications of recent

technological advances.
2. Explain the employee view of privacy at work.
3. Explain the employer view of privacy at work.
4. Distinguish between thin and thick consent.
5. Understand the concept of vicarious liability.
6. Identify the top categories of litigation related to
Internet communications.

FRONTLINE FOCUS

ETHICS AND TECHNOLOGY

Companies are now able to make vast amounts

of information available to employees and
customers on their Internet, intranet, and
extranet sites.

Extranet: A private piece of companys Internet

network that is made available to customers
and/or vendor partners on the basis of secured
access by unique password.
Intranet: A companys internal Web site,
containing information for employee access
only.

ETHICS AND TECHNOLOGY

However, now that these tools have become

part of our everyday work environment, many
of those wonderful promises have been
overshadowed by concerns over loss of privacy
in two key areas:

1. As a customer, companies now have the

technical capability to shoot your personal data
to any part of the world to take advantage of
lower labor costs.
2. As an employee, your employer now has the
capability of monitoring every e-mail you send
and Web site you visit in order to make sure
that you really are delivering on the promise of
increased worker productivity.

PROGRESS CHECK QUESTIONS

How would you feel if you found out that someone

halfway around the world from your doctors office was
reading your medical tests?
Would your opinion change if you knew those cost
savings were putting American radiologists out of a
job? What if they were being read this way because
there was a shortage of qualified medical personnel
here? Would that change your opinion?
Should your doctor be obligated to tell you where your
tests are being read? Why or why not?
Storing private information in digital format simplifies
the storage and transfer of that information and offers
cost savings to companies that are (hopefully) passed
on to their customers. Does using ID numbers instead
of names meet their obligation to maintain your privacy
in this new digital world?

THE PROMISE OF
INCREASED WORKER PRODUCTIVITY
The Employer Position:

As an employee of the organization, your productivity

during your time at work represents the performance
portion of the pay-for-performance contract you
entered into with the company when you were hired.
Therefore, your actions during that timeyour allotted
shift or normal work periodare at the discretion of the
company. Other than lunch and any scheduled breaks,
all your activity should be work-related, and any
monitoring of that activity should not be regarded as
an infringement of your privacy. If you want to do
something in private, dont do it at work.
The organization has an obligation to its stakeholders
to operate as efficiently as possible, and to do so it
must ensure that company resources are not being
misused or stolen and that company data and
proprietary information are being closely guarded.

THE PROMISE OF
INCREASED WORKER PRODUCTIVITY
The Employee Position:

As an employee of the company, I recognize

that my time at work represents the
productivity for which I receive an agreed
amount of compensationeither an hourly rate
or an annual salary. However, that agreement
should not intrude upon my civil rights as an
individualI am an employee, not a servant. As
such, I should be notified of any electronic
surveillance and the purpose of that
surveillance. The actions of a small number of
employees in breaking company rules should
not be used as a justification to take away
everyones civil rights.

EXAMPLES OF ETHICAL DILEMMAS

CASE 8.1
A Failure to Disclose

THE PROMISE OF
INCREASED WORKER PRODUCTIVITY

Telecommuting: The ability to work

outside of your office (from your home or
anywhere else) and log in to your
company network (usually via a secure
gateway such as a VPN, virtual private
network).

THE PROMISE OF
INCREASED WORKER PRODUCTIVITY

If employee rights were recognized in

this argument, then for those rights to
have any validity, it would follow that
employees should give their consent to
be monitored by all this technology.
However, as Adam Moore points out, the
state of the job market will inevitably
create a distinction between two types of
consent: thin and thick.

THE PROMISE OF
INCREASED WORKER PRODUCTIVITY

Thin consent: If an employee receives formal

notification that the company will be monitoring all email and Web activityeither at the time of hire or
during employmentand it is made clear in that
notification that his or her continued employment with
the company will be dependent on the employees
agreement to abide by that monitoring, then the
employee may be said to have given thin consent.
Thick consent: If employment conditions are at the
other end of the scalethat is, jobs are plentiful and the
employee would have no difficulty in finding another
positionthen the consent given to the monitoring
policy could be classified as thick since the employee
has a realistic alternative if he or she finds the policy to
be unacceptable.

PROGRESS CHECK QUESTIONS

How would you describe the atmosphere

in this call center?
Jamies calls were monitored at all times
by a call center supervisor. Is that ethical?
Why or why not?
What would you say is the worst part of
working in this call center?
When Jamie resigned, he was escorted
from the building by security. Is that
ethical? Why or why not?

VICARIOUS LIABILITY

Vicarious liability: A legal concept that

means that a party may be held
responsible for injury or damage, when
in reality he or she was not actively
involved in the incident.
Cyberliability: As a employer, you could
be held liable for the actions of your
employees in their Internet
communications to the same degree as
if they had written those
communications on company letterhead.

VICARIOUS LIABILITY

The extent of cyberliability can be seen

in the top categories of litigation
recorded by Elron Software:
Discrimination
Harassment
Obscenity and pornography
Defamation and libel
Information leaks
Spam

EXAMPLES OF ETHICAL DILEMMAS

CASE 8.2
Top 20 Blonde Jokes

TEN COMMANDMENTS OF COMPUTER ETHICS

(Created by the Computer Ethics Institute)

1. Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people.

2. Thou shalt not interfere with other peoples computer
work.
3. Thou shalt not snoop around in other peoples computer
files.
4. Thou shalt not use a computer to steal.
5. Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness.
6. Thou shalt not copy or use proprietary software for which
you have not paid.
7. Thou shalt not use other peoples computer resources
without authorization or proper compensation.
8. Thou shalt not appropriate other peoples intellectual
output.
9. Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the
program you are writing or the system you are designing.
10. Thou shalt always use a computer in ways that ensure
consideration and respect for your fellow humans.

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