Engineering Innovation and Ethics : Facebook Data Privacy Scandal

Running head: ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS
Engineering Innovation and Ethics
Topic: Facebook Data Privacy Scandal
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS1
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Brief about the case................................................................................................................2
Pressures and motivations that resulted in this course of action by the company.............3
Realistic actions that could be taken to remain in compliance with the Engineer’s
Australia Code of Ethics, working as an employee in Facebook.......................................5
The outcomes of these actions to the working employee, the company, its investors and
the wider community..........................................................................................................8
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9
References................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
The discussion about data breaches and identity theft in cyber security has been
profusely reported within the latest few years. Several organisations have faced data breach
and information theft by several malicious hackers. Every cyber based organisation has been
associated with security related issues, sometimes malware threats and attacks and sometimes
data breaches causing important organizational confidential information of both the
customers and the employees sacrificed at the hands of a malicious attacker. The discussion
about this case would be about a similar incident but with a with bigger outcome, where
Cambridge Analytica has been accused of improperly receiving and retaining data of millions
of Facebook users (Common, 2018). The data breach scandal was considered as the world's
largest social medias can be since it involves one of the biggest organisations in the world
right now, Facebook. The impact that the organisation would have on its customers is so huge
in number because of the millions of users that provide their personal and professional
information on the site. How the ethical considerations of these activities were not followed
by Cambridge Analytica and how without a required consent their activities can be rendered
as unethical would be discussed in this particular report. The personal data harvesting and the
unethical behaviour would be discussed as below to understand if the organisation hand
precious and motivations that resulted into this course of action by Facebook, if there could
be realistic action speak in in compliance to the Engineers’ Australia Code of Ethics and the
outcomes of these actions to a working employee to Facebook and its investors exceeding to
a wider community.
Brief about the case
Facebook is a huge organisation with almost 2.19 billion of maximum monthly active
users reported till today. It was in March 2018 when Facebook was caught in a data breach

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS3
scandal that was of a major magnitude (Hoke, 2018). The incident of the data breach was
related to the Cambridge Analytica, which was political Consulting organisation that was
accused of pulling out personal data of more than 87 million Facebook user. All the data that
were pulled out of these active users were not at all authorised and under every circumstance
was not consensual in any way. Even the Facebook users did not have any clue that their
personal data Where are already breached. When the revolution was made in March 2018, it
was found that these set of data where used up by the US presidential candidate Donald
Trump for forging favour during the 2016 elections (Thiel, 2019). The Presidential elections
went in favour of Donald Trump, which was now being questioned of allegedly being in data
manipulation for winning the fever. The data was also found to be misused for the for
influencing the Brexit referendum result which went in favour of the vote League campaign.
The entire incident was such clumsy that even the technical giants where finding at confusing
enough and defensive from the end of the Cambridge Analytica organisation. The most
surprising fact of the incident was the vulnerability of Facebook that even the company had
no idea about. They had no knowledge of the data being breached and so they wait for several
months to send orders for deleting all the data to Cambridge Analytica. The organisation
event in check if Cambridge Analytica had already deleted data or they were illegally
acquiring it. This put Facebook in such a situation that it was facing the wrong side of ethical
conduct from the perspective of a Facebook user, advertiser and several legal authorities.
This is why this incident would be discussed in the next section to find out the ethical and
unethical behaviour that could have been pressurized by the course of the company or are
handled by an employee having cyber security and cyber hygiene awareness.
Pressures and motivations that resulted in this course of action by the company
Facebook already announced that they were suspending Cambridge Analytica since
they had unauthorised access to the user data of all the active users of Facebook. The scandal