Part I. Two Opening Vignettes
1.) WhatsApp, an instant messaging app for smartphones, allows users to send textmessages, documents, images, videos, user location data, and other data over the internet to other WhatsAppusers, using standard cellular mobile numbers.
In the past, WhatsApp has been a strong defender of its users' privacy, employing end-to-end encryption for all messages sent through its service and regularlyresisting requests from authoritiesfordata access. As a result, WhatsApp has been the instant messaging app of choice for users who wish to keep their conversations private, including individuals working to expose corruption within organizations and those reporting on the activities of totalitarian governments.
Facebook purchased WhatsAppfor $22 billion in 2014. After the sale to Facebook was announced, WhatsApp CEO and cofounder Jan Koumdeclared that nothing would change with the company's privacypractices. Indeed, Koum posted that ‘If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn'thave done it.' This statement has come back to haunt him.
In the fall of 2016, WhatsApp announced atht it would begin providing user data-including phone numbers, usage data, and information on devices and operating systems being used---to Facebook and the ‘Facebook family of companies.'
According to the company, thisinformation allows Facebook to make better friendsuggestions and display more relevant ads to users while also allowing businesses to send messages to users, including appointment reminders, delivery and shipping notifications, and marketing pitches.
The policy shift is intended to help WhatsApp generate more revenue and makes economic sense; however, the change has raised concerns over the privacy of users' conversations and identities and has upset users drawn to the app by the company's previousstrong stance on privacy.
Is this policy shift by WhatsApp morally justified? Answer yes or no and explain your answer:
2.) Airlines use a variety of information systems to support dailyoperations such as flight dispatching, flight-path planning (whichmust take into account multiple facets, including aircraft weight and performance data, en route winds, weather and turbulence forecasts, airspace restrictions, and airport conditions), crew scheduling, passengercheck-in, and preflight passenger and baggage weight balancing.
Complex software systems also support the airlines' ground-to-cockpit communications, ticket sales, and frequent-flier program administration. As crucial as all of thesesystems are to the daily operations of the airlines, however the underlyingsoftware is often surprisingly buggy and subject to failure.
In the six-month time period from August 2016 to February 2017, American, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest Airlines, United Continental, and Virgin America, in total, experienced a dozen system failures, resulting in tens of thousands of flight delays and cancellations, stranded and upset passengers, and hundreds of millions dollars in lost revenue. These incidents have reinforced the fear among many frequent flyers that such system disruptions are now the norm in the airline industry.
Airlines are typically reluctant to provide details about these operational problems or to communicate the root causes---other than to issue a statement when such a system breakdown occurs, indicating there had been some sort of software failure. However, the frequency and seriousness of these meltdowns demonstrate the vulnerability of the airline computersystem and raise some fundamental underlying questions:
- Over the course of a decade or more, the trend in the U.S. airline industry has been toward consolidation. Large-scale mergers of U.S. airlines----includingthemergers of Delta and Northwest (2008-2010), United and Continental (2010-2012), Southwest Airlines and AirTran (2011), and American Airlines and US Airways (2013-2015)---have resultedin an industry in which fourlargecarriers now handle 85 percent of domestic capacity.
- Many airline systems are decades-old----dating back to the 1990s, or in some cases, even earlier. Although these systems have been updated, patched, and modified to keep up with the many changesinthe way the airlines conduct their business, many of them have become increasingly unstable and unreliable.
- The airlines have implemented a complex infrastructure of interconnected hardware and software. If a glitch occurs in one component of the system, the problem often progresses in a domino effect that can wipe out multiple, importantfacets of system functionality.
Name two major changes, from an IT-perspective, that the airlines should make to improve this situation:
Part II. 2 cases
1. Google AdWords is an advertising service for companies who want their ads presented on the pool of over 2 million websites that constitute the Google Display Network. Google ads are bought and placed online using an automatedsystem called programmatic advertising that findsappropriate websites on which to place each ad. Placementdepends on suchfactors as keywords used in the ads and the interests and demographics of the target audiences.
YouTube was bought by Google for $1.7 billion in November 2006. Today, YouTube has over a billion active users and everyday people spendhundreds of millions of hours watching video on YouTube. Such massive viewership has made it a key member of the Google DisplayNetwork.
YouTube's popularity stems from its massive and diverse library of video spanning very things from amateur video clips of kittens to professionallyproduced TV clips. While this diversity is a huge asset for Google, it has also forced the company defend the placement of ads alongside objectionable content, including videos promoting anti-Semitism, heterosexism, misogyny, racism, and terrorism.
Companies advertising on Youtube are concerned that such placement creates the impression that they support pornography or hate speech. And because YouTube splits advertising revenue with its video creators, advertisersriskdirectly funding creators of this objectionable material. Those who post videos cane earn up to $7.60 for each 1,000 views that an advertisementattracts. Some of the most viewed extremist clips on YouTube receive nearly one million hits.
Major brands such as AT&T, Coca-Cola, Johnson &Johnson, L'Oréal, McDonald's , and Verizon have begun withholding ad dollars saying that they can no longer advertise on YouTube until Google can ensure thatthis won't happen again. The financial hit to Google from the boycott is significant---estimated at as high as $750 million.
With some 400hours of user-generatedcontentuploaded to YouTube every minute, Google has asserted that it simply doesn't to have the resources to police that flood of content in real time.
As a result, inappropriate and offensive content continues to be posted. This has advertisers, who place a high priority on protecting theirbrands, increasingly concerned. Google's efforts to solve the problem include the hiring of ‘significant numbers' of new workers to review YouTube content and flag inappropriate content as well as making an ongoing investment in artificialintelligencethatthe company hopes will help it fine-tune its ad placement service. Google has considerable incentive to resolve the concerns of advertisers as ad system sales brought in more than $79 billion revenue to the company in 2016.
Should Google provide advertisers with guarantees about what type of content their ads will appear next to? Answer yes or no and explain, pointing out the major moral points involved:
2. When some 250 IT workers at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts were laid off in 2015, a condition of their severance pay required some of them to train their replacements----workers from India who were in the United States on H-1B visas. Two of the displacedworkersfiled class action suits claiming that HCL and Cognizant Technology Solutions colluded with Disney to make false statements on certain forms when petitioning for workers to receive H-1B status. Thissuitalleged that those false statements were violationsof the Civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
HCL and Cognizant are consultingfirms that import workers to the United States on H-1B visas and then contract them out to U.S. firms. HCL is an India-based IT services company with 116,000 employees and annual revenue of $7 billion. Cognizant is a U.S.-based professional services company with annual revenue of $13 billion and over 260,000 employees (75 percent of whom are employed in India).
The Immigration and Nationality Act sets forth certainprerequisitesforemployers wishing to employ H-1B workers in the United States. To obtain H-1B status approval, the employer must first file a Labor ConditionApplication (LCA), Form ETA 9035, with the Department of Labor. The employer must state that it will: (1) pay the nonimmigrant workers at least the local prevailing wage or the employers' actual wage, whichever is higher; (2) pay for nonproductive time in certaincircumstances; (3) offer benefits on the same basis as for U.S. workers; and (4) provide working conditions for H-1B workers that will not adversely affect the working conditions of workers similarly employed.
The U.S. District judge presiding over the case concluded that the facts failed to substantiate the RICO claim because declarations that the employment of H-1B workerswould not adversely impact its U.S. workers did not pertain to Disneyemployees but rather employees of HCL. In addition, a certification that H-1B employees world not displace American workers does not apply to so-called exempt H-1B workers who are paid at least $60,000 a year and possess certain education or skill levels.
The judge dismissed the case, stating thatHCL's statementsweren'tfalse, and would only have been false if HCL's own workers were adversely affected by the visa program.
Name two major changes in the processing and proposal of H-1B visas that U.S. domestic workers would likely want to be made:
Part III. 10 What Would You Do? Questions
1.) Your old roommate from the University of Findlay was recently let go from his firm during a wave of employee terminations to reduce costs. You two havekept in touch over the six years since graduation, and he has asked you to do him a solid and help him get a position in the IT organization where you work.
You offered to review his resume and to make sure that it got to the "right person," and even put in a good word for him. However, as you read the resume, it is obvious that your friend has greatly exaggerated his accomplishments at his former place of work and even added some IT-related certifications you are sure he never earned. What Would You Do?
2.) You are in charge of awarding all computer hardware service contracts (valued at over $2 million per year) for your employer. In recente-mails with the company's current servicecontractor, you casually mentioned that you were looking to buy a new car and that you really liked "Beamers" (which he seemed to understood as an out-of-date reference to BMWs), but they were too expensive.
You are surprised when the contactor texted you the name of the sales manager at a local BMW dealer and suggested you give him a call. The contractor says the owner of the dealership is a good friend and he will be able to give you a great deal on a sweet Beamer. What Should You Do?
3.) You are a computer security trainer for your firm's 200 employees and contract workers. What are the key topics you would cover in yourinitial half-hour basic training program on security for non-IT personnel? Name at least five distinct topics:
4.) Your friend is going through a tough time with his current significant other and believes she is cheating on him. He is aware of your technical prowess (but unaware of your having taken a course in ethics and technology, although for this guy, it likely wouldn't much matter) and has asked you to, quote-unquote, "do him a solid," and to "be a real bro" by helping him purchase and install a stalking app on her cell phone. He explains he regularly sneaks her phone of her Justin Bieber knapsack which she leaves in his car when she goes to Planet Fitness. He is always on the lookout for messages from "strange dudes." Would it be morally justified to install this app? Answer yes or no and explain.
5.) You are a recent UF graduate with only a year of experience with your employer. You were recentlypromoted to manage all of e-mail services. You are quite surprised to receive a phone call at home on Saturday during The Ohio State Buckeyes football game against the Michigan Wolverines. It was from the Chief Financial Officer of the firm asking that you immediatelydelete all e-mail from all e-mail servers, including the archive and back-up servers, that is older than six months.
She states that the reason for her request is that there have been an increasing number of complaints about the slowness of e mailservices. In addition, she says she is concerned about the costs of storing so much e mail. She then yells "Go Bucks" and hangs up. Would it be morally justified for you carry out this request? Answer yes or no and explain:
6.) A coworker confides to you that he is going to begin sending e mails to your employer'sinternal corporate blog site, which serves as a suggestion box. He plans to use an anonymous remailer and s sign the messages "Anonymous." Your friend is afraid of retribution from superiors but wants to call attention to instances of racial and gender discrimination observed during is give years as an employee with the firm. Name three important points about becoming a whistle-blower this coworker should first consider before he begins sending the e mails:
7.) You are a programmer for a firm that develops a popular tax-preparation software package designed to help individuals prepare their federal tax returns. In the course of testing some small changes that were made to the software, you detect an error in the software that results in roughly a five percent underestimation of the amount owed----both for those who indicatedthatthey were single and for those who indicated that they were married but filing separate tax returns. It is now late March, and it is likely that well over 100,000 users who submitted theirreturns using your firm's software will be affected by this error. Morally, what should you say to your manager in this situation? Provide your response:
8.) You have been assigned to manage software that controls the shutdown of the new chemical reactors to be installed at a manufacturing plant. Your manger insists the software is not safety crucial. The softwaresensestemperatures and pressures within a 50,000-gallon stainless steel vat and dumps in chemical retardants to slow down the reaction if it gets out of control. In the worst possible scenario, failure to stop a runaway reaction would result in a large explosion that would send fragments of the vat and spray caustic liquid flying forhundreds of yards in all directions.
Your mangerpoints out that thehumanworkers in charge of the reactor will be able to intervene in the case of a software failure to protect the plantemployees and the surrounding neighborhood. Besides, he argues, the plant is already more than a year behind its scheduled start-up date. He cannot afford the additionaltime required to develop the software if it is classified as safety critical. Would you be morally justified in treating this project as not safety critical? Answer yes or no and explain your answer.
9.) You have volunteered to lead a group of local citizens in approaching the board of directors of the nearest hospital (55 miles away) about establishingremote monitoring of 25 or so chronically ill people in your small community in Alaska. Name three facts that would be most important and two services you will most likely need:
10.) You are interviewing for the role of human resources manager for a network hardware design and manufacturing firm. Over the last year, the firm has lost a number of high-level executives who left the firm to go to work for competitors. During the course of your interview, you are asked what three measures you would put in place to reduce the potential loss of trade secrets from executives leaving the firm. Name the three:
Part IV. 1 Anonymous Question
Are actions taken by Anonymous and related groups ever morally justified? Yes/no and explain: