Privacy and Ethics
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Introduction
Currently, people live in a world where the internet plays a major role in day-to-day lives, commonly referred to as the information age, which can be described as an era where economic activities are mainly based on information. This comes as a result of the development and use of technology. This article discusses the ethical questions related to the right to privacy of an individual that is threatened by the use of the internet. Specifically, it gives the challenges that these ethical problems pose to the information professional and the practical guidelines based on the ethical norms.
The Concept of Privacy and Ethics
Privacy is defined as a condition of life of an individual that is characterized by an exclusion from the public. This concept follows the right to be left all alone (Thierer, 2013). Such a privacy perception sets the course for passing the laws of privacy in the United States for the following years. Privacy could be regarded as a right that provides the foundation for the legal right. This is important because it is necessary for the fulfillment of other rights such as freedom and the personal autonomy, which are quite related. The respect of someone’s privacy acknowledges the person’s rights to freedom and recognizes that the person is an autonomous human being. Thus, respecting a person’s privacy is a duty that everyone is obliged to follow.
Categories of Private Information
According to Kauffman, Lee, Prosch, and Steinbart, (2011), privacy is usually expressed by means of information. This implies that it is possible to categorize privacy, namely; information that is related to the privacy of an individual’s body, private communications, information regarding a person’s possessions and other personal information.
The category of private communications concerns all the forms of personal communication, which one wishes to keep private. This kind of information is usually exchanged, for example, between the user and informational professional during a reference interview. The category of the privacy of the body normally refers to the medical information and enjoys a separate legal protection (Kauffman, Lee, Prosch, & Steinbart, 2011). This legislation defines the right of a person to be notified about the nature of an illness and the implications associated with it.
The category of personal information refers only to the information of a specific person. Examples of these kinds of information include name, address, which are the bibliographic data, and the financial information. All of these are relevant to the categories of the information professionals. Lastly, the category of the information about someone’s possession is known to be closely related to the right to own property (Thierer, 2013). A person has the right to control the information, which relates to his personal possessions in certain instances. A good example of this is the secrecy about the place where a person has kept his wallet.
Ethics
Ethical actions of a person are described as those actions, which are performed within the criteria of what is regarded as right. In terms of human actions, it relates to the question of what is good or bad. Its purpose is to help people behave in an honorable manner and attain the basic good that make them fully human.
The Influence of the Internet on the Processing of Personal and Private Information
Definition of the Internet in relation to Information Technology
According to Busch (2013), the concept of technology is defined as the process of gathering, organizing, storing and distributing information in different formats by the use of computer means and the techniques based on the micro-electronics. He defines internet as a form of technology that is a network of many computers, which he sometimes calls the Global Information Infrastructure (GII) (Busch, 2013).
Ethical Implications for the Use of Technology in Processing Information
The main ethical impact of technology relates to accessibility and inaccessibility and the handling or manipulation of information. Through its implications, it becomes easy to access the private information of an individual by many people. Other than that, the person may be excluded from necessary information in the electronic format by use of security formats such as passwords. This kind of manipulation of information by the use of technology refers to the integration of information done by the merging of documents, repackaging of information, which involves the translations and the integration of textual and the graphical formats, and the alteration of information by the means of computer electronics, thus, changing the photographic images.
The use of technology to process information is not regarded as ethically neutral. Technology has, however, changed the ontological status of a document while accompanying the ethical implications (Mingers & Walsham, 2010). This refers to the manipulation of personal information by the use of the internet as a form of technology.
The impact of technology use on the private lives of people manifests itself in a variety of areas. First, is the use of the electronic monitoring of people in the workplace. Research shows that companies justify their use of technology to the increase of their productivity. However, there are several ethical problems pertaining to it (Nunan & Di, 2013). People’s privacy in their workplaces are threatened by these devices, which could lead to fear and the panoptical phenomenon. Second is the interception and the access to the email messages of people. This is an ethical problem related to the private communication of a person. The reading of email messages is justified at workplaces because they get to see the technology infrastructure as usually a resource being to the company rather not to an individual. Aside from that, they get to intercept the messages so as to get to know whether their employees use the facilities for their own private and selfish reasons or for the right purposes of the job.
Thirdly, there is the merging of databases, which contain the private information known as the data banking (Nunan & Di, 2013). This shows the integration of personal information from various databases into one central database. The problem here comes up because the individual is not aware of his personal information that is being integrated in the central database, the purposes for that, and if truly the information gathered is accurate. Forth, is the buying of cards by the retail stores. These cards are buried with computer chips that record every item that is purchased together with the variety of information of the buyer which allows companies to do targeted marketing to people they may have known their personal information and their buying habits (Busch, 2013). Lastly, another threat to information privacy is the increase in the number of hackers and crackers, which break into the computer systems (Kauffman, Lee, Prosch, & Steinbart, 2011). This comes together with the shift in the ethical values as well as the emergence of the culture of the cyberpunk with the ‘information wants to be free’ motto.
Associated Effect
The use of technology affects the individual level in that it causes loss of dignity and spontaneity as well as a threat to the right of information privacy and freedom. Technology is viewed more as a cause of threat rather than personal freedom. Research conducted by one of the biggest credit bureau companies in the USA, Equifax, showed that approximately 79% of the respondents indicated that they were weary of the use of technology for the processing of personal information (Nunan & Di, 2013).
Technology also has effects on the economic and the social levels. The biggest effect is the growth of businesses such as the credit bureau and the telecommunication companies that specializes in the processing and trade of person related information. The legislation on the protection of information privacy on the internet of an individual is known to fall behind due to the rapidly changing world in terms of technology (Thierer, 2013).
Relevance to the Information Professional
Ethical Issues
Handling and processing of the categories of personal and private information is entitled with several ethical issues. First is the confidential treatment of such information which refers to the information that is gained from the reference interview. The main ethical problems regarding this could be the use of personal details obtained from the interview for other purposes rather than what they were gathered for. This involves the re-use of a search strategy of one user for another user and discussing the nature of the specific query with other people.
Second is the issue of accuracy of information, which is important in cases where an information professional is working with the personal information that could have a direct influence to a person’s life. Third is the purpose for using different categories of information. The question is whether an information professional will employ the categories of private information for other reasons other than the original reason and whether the person should be informed about it (Mingers & Walsham, 2010).
Last is the ethical problem of the rights of a person in the use and distribution of his or her personal information. The related questions to this is if the user has the right to verify the information held by the professional and what rights the person has regarding the correction of any wrong information. Other than that, it is necessary to question if the person has the right to know the person using his personal information and for what reasons.
Ethical Norms
It is necessary to formulate the ethical norms to address the ethical issues. The ethical norms that can be distinguished are freedom, truth and the human right. Truth has a dual application in ethics. It is a norm for factual correctness of information. It thus guides the information professional to accurately and correctly handle the private information of an individual.
An individual also has the freedom to make choices in terms of the freedom of privacy and the freedom from intrusion though it may not become absolutized. The human rights norm on the other hand means the juridical acknowledgement and protection of the right to privacy of a person. It protects an individual from the unlawful interference from the society in the private life of an individual.
Ethical Guidelines
The recognition of person’s autonomy and freedom together with the fact that the guidelines on information privacy do not give a complete framework for ethical actions of the information professional regarding handling an individual’s private information. Thus, it is important to have the following ethical guidelines in mind.
The information professional is required to act on the assumption that is regarded by the client as confidential. This implies that the information professional is obliged to acknowledge the right of the client to control any private information. Regularly, the client is obliged to have access to all the private and personal information that is used by the information professional. This helps the client to have the opportunity to verify if the information is accurate.
Merging of personal information of an individual into a different database should be done with necessary caution. This is applicable in certain situations where the client is not aware of the merging or rather its implications. The client should be informed about that and be given the right to access the information in the central database. Other than that, the client should be given the right to change the information in the central database if it could by any chance be incorrect. In addition it is the right of the client to know those people using the information and for what purposes.
It is necessary for the information professional to notify the client of any intended purpose of using the information. This implies that the client has granted permission to that. No unnecessary private information should be gathered. This is for both the logistics reasons and to prevent any unnecessary violation of the person’s information privacy. Aside from that, any personal information that is collected and is no longer necessary should be destroyed (Bush, 2013). This is based on the norms of freedom and the human rights. In addition, in case the rendering of a specific product or service is refused to an individual due to his or her personal information like the credit worthiness, it is necessary to inform the individual the reason for denial. This is based on the norm of truth and the human rights. Personal information must be given strict confidentiality. This is the security and the control of information regarding the right to access it and the right to change and add any necessary information to it (Thierer, 2013).
Conclusion
In conclusion, the use of the internet in processing information has various important questions with regard to a person’s right to information privacy, which is directly linked to the freedom right and the human autonomy. These problems relate to the accessibility and the manipulation of information. It is, however, relevant to the information professional who deals with the private and the personal information. Their practical guidelines to handle the problems are formulated according to the truth, norms of freedom, and the human rights. In a world that is facing a rapid technological advancement, it is important that relevant sectors take appropriate measures to curb cases of cyber-crime, in order to protect the rights of users and ensure complete confidentiality. Otherwise, this piece of unprecedented innovation might as well become its own barrier.
References
Busch, T. (2013). Fair Information Technologies. The Corporate Responsibility of Online Social Networks as Public Regulators. University Of St. Gallen, Business Dissertations, 1-158.
Kauffman, R. J., Lee, Y. J., Prosch, M., & Steinbart, P. J. (2011). A Survey of Consumer Information Privacy from the Accounting Information Systems Perspective. Journal Of Information Systems, 25(2), 47-79.
Mingers, J., & Walsham, G. (2010). Toward Ethical Information Systems: The Contribution of Discourse Ethics. MIS Quarterly, 34(4), 833-854.
Nunan, D., & Di Domenico, M. (2013). Market research and the ethics of big data. International Journal Of Market Research, 55(4), 2-13.
Thierer, A. (2013). The Pursuit Of Privacy In A World Where Information Control Is Failing. Harvard Journal Of Law & Public Policy, 36(2), 409-455.
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