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Home > Listed below are additional cases to analyze. These cases differ from those found in Computer Ethics & Professional Responsibility. Our readers are invited to analyze the cases using the various methods described and illustrated in the textbook in Part I. Clicking on the title of a case will take you to the relevant case description. This collection of additional cases will grow over time. Please note that some individual cases could include issues from several different areas of Computer Ethics, such as computer security, professional responsibility, privacy, ownership of intellectual property, global conflicts, and so on. The House of McAdam Margaret and Julian McAdam were planning to move to a new house, and they made an offer on an ideal four-bedroom detached house. The sellers accepted the offer, and everything was apparently progressing smoothly. The McAdams had applied for a joint mortgage through Red Rose Bank. To obtain a credit reference for both Margaret and Julian, Alice Cooper, who was dealing with their application, contacted Creditworthy, one of three credit-rating companies that Red Rose Bank uses. Several days later Alice telephoned the McAdams to explain that the credit report from Creditworthy indicated that Julian had defaulted several years ago on a previous mortgage with the Tartan Line Bank. For this reason, Red Rose Bank was unable to offer a mortgage to the McAdams. Julian was most annoyed and told Alice that he had never had any dealings with the Tartan Line Bank, so there had to be a mistake. Alice explained that if the McAdams wanted a Red Rose mortgage to purchase the house in question, then they had to get the problem sorted out very quickly, since another buyer had made an offer on the house and the seller would only wait a couple of days before selling to the other buyer. Alice gave the McAdams the telephone number of Mary Miller, who was her contact person at Creditworthy. Julian contacted Mary who immediately investigated the problem. She discovered that there were two Julian McAdams in the database and both had the same date of birth. The other one lived in a different town, and he was the one who had defaulted on a mortgage. Mary promptly corrected the credit profile of Margaret’s husband, Julian, and sent a new revised credit rating to Red Rose Bank. However, this was not in time to prevent the McAdams from losing the house to the other buyers. The McAdams were very disappointed about losing the house, but they were even more concerned that Red Rose Bank might always associate them with the default at Tartan Line Bank and that the other credit rating companies could also distribute this erroneous information. Mary discussed the incident with Pam Chad, the head of the information systems department at Creditworthy. There had been an increasing number of complaints about incorrect credit reports, and this latest incident prompted Pam to speak to Henry Webster, the vice president, about modifying the database and associated systems. Her suggestions for modification centered around having unique alphanumeric identifiers for each person in the database, which would eliminate any mistaken identity. Although the cost-benefit analysis of the update did not show a clear financial gain, Pam believed that the improvement in accuracy would warrant undertaking the work and would prevent future unhappy incidents like the one that affected the McAdams. Henry Webster, however, considered the errors in the database to be too small to matter and, given the projected cost, decided not to authorize the work. GARAGE Online Auction Auction sales on the Internet were growing rapidly and were forecast to represent nearly 25% of online retail sales within a couple of years. This promising prospect led Wendy Jones to establish a new auction web site, which she called GARAGE, that was aimed at attracting young people 16 to 25 years old. Wendy believed that this age group had the greatest potential sales growth. She carefully analysed the functions and style of existing auction web sites so that she could offer an alternative. She concluded that the site must have an anarchic anti-establishment feel so that it would attract a lot of young people. The business model for GARAGE was based on several key points: GARAGE would receive a fee from people who wanted to list and sell items for auction. It would charge a percentage of the final sales price for completed auctions. GARAGE would merely be a publisher, much like a newspaper that publishes classified advertisements, with no responsibility for transactions since it would simply provide the conduit through which auction transactions could occur. GARAGE would not veto items posted for auction, but it would be marketed to ensure that posted items were of interest to the targeted age range. It was likely that some items would be controversial in the opinion of other age groups, and this was part of the marketing strategy. GARAGE users would be tracked, since this would be essential for growing the business. HTML e-mail would be sent to all those accessing the site. HTML email would act like a Web page, requesting graphics and content from a Web server and counting as a “hit” on the GARAGE web site. GARAGE would be able to track how and when people responded to e-mail, note where they click, and trace follow-up actions on GARAGE pages. GARAGE would set up an advice service, called GI, on the products being auctioned. This would enable potential purchasers to find out more about the products offered. Those wishing to provide “expert advice” would register with GI giving contact details and a brief description of their credentials. Information providers would pay a fee for GI registration. In return a GI expert would receive a commission for each access of information they had posted. The fee for completed sales would cover this commission. Five weeks ago GARAGE was launched. It was an immediate success. The design of the site and the use of street language attracted many young people. By the end of four weeks 7000 products had been sold. A typical virtual auction attracted 1000 people. There were now 250 registered experts on GI. The products offered for auction included clothes, music, books, various equipment and appliances, adult items and recreational drugs. Controversy was growing about GARAGE, but it was this which seemed to be boosting the numbers of people using the site. Last Friday it was reported in the German national press that a 19 year old man had killed a 25 year old woman. The man was inquisitive about martial arts and had come across a GARAGE auction of nunchaku sticks and throwing stars. Both were martial arts weapons. Using GI the man had found out how these weapons could be used and their relevance to martial-art culture. According to the posted credentials, the GI expert who had posted the information had been a martial arts instructor for over ten years. The man purchased four throwing stars from the GARAGE auctioneer, who was based in the USA. Eager to try out his new acquisition, he went into his back yard to practice throwing the stars using the information he had gotten from GI. The stars need careful handling because they can be thrown long distances with relative ease. This was not indicated in the GI information. The man threw one of the stars very hard. It missed the target, veered to the right and hit the main artery in the neck of a woman who was walking down a public pathway some 50 metres away. The woman collapsed and tragically died in hospital through loss of blood. On hearing the news, Wendy was sorry that the tragic accident had occurred; but she did not see how it could be blamed on GARAGE. She argued that these minor negative effects were symptomatic of the business model on which GARAGE was built. This feeling of being in a slightly risky lawless environment in which you could purchase otherwise unavailable products was what was attracting such great numbers of young people to GARAGE. Indeed she felt vindicated that her strategy was working. Nancy’s Dilemma Quality Technology Solutions (QTS) was a major well-respected computer hardware and software vendor. Nancy Johnson worked as a user-support software engineer at the QTS regional center in the middle of the country. She communicated with her customers mainly by telephone and email. Reported program bugs were passed on to technical support agents, and Nancy provided software patches to her customers over telephone lines, usually via a computer-to-computer connection. In addition, whenever Nancy heard about difficult software problems, she visited the customer personally. Until last year, her on-site support and occasional training were provided as part of the customers’ maintenance contracts. As a result of Nancy’s expertise, this service became very popular and thus very costly for QTS , so the on-site support service was split from maintenance and billed separately. During a recent economic recession, QTS’s fortunes declined. As a result, salaries were frozen for 18 months. After that, times continued to be difficult, and people were losing their jobs. Nancy believed that it was only a matter of time before she became a casualty. She knew, however, that she was still valuable to QTS, and her boss had said that she would be the first to get a pay raise when it became possible. One of QTS’s largest customers, and one of Nancy’s most important clients, was District Benefit (DB) with offices throughout the country. Over a period of time she had established a close relationship with many key employees at DB offices, and there were several offices where employees needed a lot of technical help and training. DB preferred to enter into a contract with QTS, rather than develop its own in-house expertise. Nancy had been working closely with Mike Williams in the Information Services Department of DB, and they know each other well and had high professional respect for each other. Last week, Mike telephoned Nancy at home. “Nancy, I have a proposition you might be interested in.” “What is it?” “The main office needs someone to help them with their new system. It’s the new BENEFIT-p system that QTS installed six months ago and they desperately need support and training. It is the sort of thing you’re expert at. Do you want to take it on?” “It sounds interesting. Just send some details to the office and I’ll put the wheels in motion.” “Let me explain. We don’t want QTS to handle the job; we want you to do it personally. If we go to QTS, it will take ages to set it up, and what’s more we will have to pay QTS’s overhead.” “I’m not sure, Mike. You’re offering to pay me for the type of work which QTS pays me for and that feels like a conflict of interest.” “I don’t think so, and we want you to do the job, not some other consultant who might be allocated by QTS. DB is important to QTS, particularly the work at the main office. I’m sure if we explained the situation to your management they would agree to go along with the arrangement.” “Why don’t we then? What’s the rush? Put a proposal to them and maybe they can sort something out in a couple of weeks.” “Nancy, you don’t understand. We can’t wait that long! BENEFIT-p was installed to rectify serious problems that we were having in managing the complex benefits package. We simply have to have it working in the very near future. We won’t ask you for any time that would interfere with your normal work schedule at QTS. We’ll fit in with your schedule because we know you’ll do a great job. To make it worth your while, we’ll pay you 25% above the normal rate and give you a 30% bonus on completion of the job. Please come and work for us on this one job.” Nancy said nothing. She was pleased that her reputation was so good, and she was overwhelmed by the size of the financial offer. It would certainly provide some extra funds if she were to be let go by QTS. But she wondered about the consequences if QTS were to find out, and she was undecided about what to do. |
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