Information Technology Ethics - Violation of Privacy, Intellectual Property Rights and Whistleblowing

Running Head: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ETHICS 1
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ETHICS
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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ETHICS 2
PART 1
Q1. What’s going on?
Ethics of Whistleblowing are in play
Q2. What are the facts? (2 marks)
Recording individual’s private information without their consent is unethical due to sensitivity of
private information like financial details and health information. For that matter, Edward in this
case has just acted as a whistle blower exposing the unethical act of the National Security
Agency (Vandekerckhove, 2016)
Q3. What are the issues (non-ethical)? (2 marks)
NSA act of gathering individual private information without their consent is non-ethical issue
because of the sensitivity of some of the private information the agency might come across like
personal health information and financial details.
Edwards’s act of directly exposing the agency’s privacy on the public domain before consulting
the management to chat the best way forward is also non-ethical. This is because the act was
likely to cause harm to the security of the country by making terrorists change their tactics.
Q4. Who is affected? (2 marks)
Mainly, the group which is highly affected by the whole scenario is the citizens whom personal
data has been monitored without their consent. This is a direct violation to their privacy rights
Q5. What are the ethical issues and implications? (3 marks)

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ETHICS 3
The act of Edward (whistleblower) revealing what has been happening to the privacy of common
citizens was ethical. This is because privacy rights have stipulated it clearly that privacy rights
must be respected and if private information must be gathered, the owners must be notified.
Q6. What can be done about it? (3 marks)
Citizen’s whose information is being monitored by the organization should be notified that their
activities online are under surveillance and the extent of their information which is under
surveillance (Mittelstadt & Floridi, 2016).
Q7. What are the options? (3 marks)
The first option and which will protect citizen’s private rights is the total avoidance of gathering
their private information
The second option will be collecting their private information but making them aware of what
extend of their private information is being monitored.
Q8. Which option is best - and why? (3 marks)
Carrying out metadata gathering and monitoring with the consent of the citizens is the best
option. This is because the information collected act as a way of fighting against insecurity issues
(Kostyuk, Chen, Das, Liang & Hussain, 2017).
PART 2
Q1. What’s going on?
Violation of privacy rights
Q2. What are the facts? (2 marks)