National Colloquium for
Information System Security Education

Computer Ethics Education

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The study of ethics involves questions of “right and proper conduct” – what is good, what is bad, what is right, what is wrong – in our behavior toward one another. In the world of computing, it is tempting to oversimplify ethical problems by reducing them to issues of computer crime and data security. In reality, the moral concerns and dilemmas confronting computing professionals are far more broad. As the Association for Computing Machinery states in its Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, computing professionals are obligated to heed a common set of moral imperatives that reflect duties to (among others) foster human well-being, avoid harm to others, be honest and trustworthy, respect privacy, and give proper credit for intellectual property.

The ACM’s ethical principles suggest that “computing ethics” captures the full spectrum of the social impacts of information technology. Indeed, governmental policies, scholarly critiques, and public attitudes all indicate that computers and computing are raising ethical dilemmas well outside of the bounds of computer crime. Privacy, justice and equity, censorship, system reliability, and quality of work life are all examples of current issues involving computer ethics.

There are no hard and fast rules about what is ethical and what isn’t because moral theories themselves vary. For example, are we expected only to maximize social welfare and minimize harm to others, as Utilitarians would argue? Or are we strictly accountable for every interaction we have with another human being, as Kantians would argue? Philosophical explorations of various moral theories are not presented in this web site, but a good site for such discussions and related resources is Ethics Update.

What is contained here are discussions and instructional materials related to applied ethics in computing. What are the common ethical problems, how can they be resolved, and who is dealing with them? What are the emerging ethical issues, what ethical insights can be applied, and what institutions are anticipating them? In general, such topics computing ethics will involve three broad categories of issues:

1. The use of computing machinery, software, and the Internet to willfully commit unethical acts. (Examples include computer theft, fraud, sabotage, intellectual property violations, records manipulation, and so on.)
2. Applications of computing machinery, software, and the Internet that may have unethical consequences. (Examples include children gaining access to sexually explicit materials on the Internet, employee monitoring in the workplace, and inaccurate financial data and records.)
3. Ethical concerns that are epiphenomenal to the diffusion of computing technology. (Examples include the lack of equitable access to computers, erosions of privacy and individual control over personal information, the growing centralization of power and authority by information-intense institutions.)

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Updated: 05/19/2003