MN501 Trimester 3, 2018: Ethical Issues in ICT Technologies Report

This report investigates ethical issues associated with the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), specifically focusing on Google Glass and smartwatches. The report identifies ethical concerns such as privacy violations, misuse of data, and potential for cybercrime. It analyzes the impact of these issues on businesses and society, highlighting potential economic losses, brand damage, and social implications like self-obsession and psychological distractions. The report evaluates these issues, providing justifications and concluding that while these technologies offer numerous advantages, addressing ethical concerns is crucial for their continued success. The report also includes figures depicting Google Glass components and contactless payment using smartwatches, and references supporting literature.

Running head: ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FORM THE USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FORM THE USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
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1ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FORM THE USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Discussion:.......................................................................................................................................2
Identification of the ethical issues:..............................................................................................2
Impact of the ethical issues on business and society:......................................................................4
Evaluation and justification:............................................................................................................5
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................6
References:......................................................................................................................................7

2ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FORM THE USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
Introduction:
Information and communication technology (ICT) is being implemented by most of the
companies in today’s world all across the world. Most of the important processes across the
different department such as sales and marketing, human resources management, logistics are
automated and made much faster and efficient by the use of advanced and innovative
technologies. However, with the advent of these technologies there are different kinds of ethical
issues that are associated to it and must be addressed by the companies. Google glasses as well as
smart watches are important applications of ICT and they have different ethical issues associated
to them. The following report will explain the ethical issues associated to the use of these devices
and recommendations will be provided to prevent such issues in the future.
Discussion:
Identification of the ethical issues:
Google class ethical issues:
Using Google glasses the employees can record videos as well as click pictures of other
coworkers. The glasses have the capability of recording the meetings even without the consent of
the employees, which is even considered as bullying (Tully et al., 2015). The person wearing the
glasses can misuse secret recording of the meetings as well as clicking pictures of the employees.
The confidential organizational information recorded by the classes can be used to conduct tax
frauds. The information can also be leaked to the outside world under acts of employee
vandalism. Surreptitious video recording in meetings can be used by the employees to blackmail
the organization and they can even ask for ransom money from the organizations. The
information can also be manipulated to provide business statistics.

3ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FORM THE USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
Figure 1: parts of a Google glass (Ashman et al., 2014).
Smart watches ethical issues:
There are different ethical issues associated to the use of the ethical issues. The smart
watches are capable of making calls. Recent researches have shown that the employees often use
their smart watches, which are attached to their wrists to make phone calls to their managers or
coworkers while they are driving to work. This has resulted in more road accidents since
employees have been made to attend conference calls by their managers even when they are
driving which they do using their smart watches (Strandvik, Rindell & Wilén, 2013). This is
unethical. Smart watches also have hidden cameras installed in them, which are capable of
secretly clicking photographs. Often this feature they tend to click photographs of other
employees and they are misused. The employees in the healthcare industry also misuse it, the
important biometric data of the patients are being often hacked by the hackers, and the

4ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FORM THE USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
information are manipulated. Important data about the user that is stored in the smart watches is
being shared across different employees including the personally identifiable information or PII.
This is one of the major ethical challenges of the smart watches in the workplaces. Contactless
pay using smart watches can cause hackers to steal debit card as well as other bank details of the
users.
Figure 2: Contactless pay using smart watch using Samsung pay (Caron et al., 2016).
Impact of the ethical issues on business and society:
The inbuilt security of the smart watches is extremely low therefore causing them to be
vulnerable to cybercrime and hackers. The important data stored by the employees in the smart
watches can be hacked by the hackers and they can use the data to conduct tax fraud and other
unethical activities (Muensterer et al., 2014). Even the wearable technologies like Google glasses
can be misused by recording of confidential meetings in the organizations and the information
can then be leaked to the outside world by acts of employee vandalism (Crane & Matten, 2016).
It has the ability to cause huge economic loss for the organizations as well as defame the brand

5ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FORM THE USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
image of the companies. Hackers can also use the wearable’s such as smart watches and Google
classes to hack into the organizational networks and manipulate important data and results,
which in turn can adversely affect the business.
These ethical issues also have adverse effects on the society. People often appear rude if
they check their watches suddenly in the middle of a conversation with another person. Recent
studies have revealed that smart watch and smart glasses users seem to be more self-obsessive
and always try to portray to the world about the recent technologies that they always remain
updated with (Jardine, Fisher, & Carrick, 2015). This causes immense psychological distraction
for the users of these devices and have negative social implications (Denecke et al., 2015). They
tend to be more self-conscious at all points of time, which is often not well accepted by the
society they live in. Children often tend to be carried away and swayed by seeing their parents
and friends using these devices and often end up in the clutches of the hackers in the outside
world who used advanced hacking tools to breach the privacy of the home networks (Weiss,
2014). This is due to their inadequate knowledge of the children about these devices.
Evaluation and justification:
The ethical issues of Google glasses and the smart watches in the work places are quite
justified. It has been found in a recent study that one of the employees in an organization in the
United States had used the smart glasses to record the conversation of his manager and another
employee, which he had used to blackmail his manager later. Similarly, it has also been found
through researches that the medical records of the patient’s that are stored in devices such as
fitness bands are shared over the hospital network so that they can be accessed by the doctors
and the nurses (Moshtaghi et al., 2015). Such important data have also been seen to be
manipulated and changed by the hospital administrators for the benefits of the hospital business.

6ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FORM THE USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
Therefore, the concerns related to the use of Google glasses and smart watches is quite justified
from these evidences from the recent past.
Conclusion:
Therefore, it can be concluded from the above report that even though there are multiple
advantages of the warble technologies such as Google glasses as well as smart watches, there are
multiple privacy related ethical issues associated to them. These new internet technologies and
the devices will reach newer heights of success and popularity provided these issues are properly
addressed.

7ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FORM THE USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
References:
Ashman, H., Brailsford, T., Cristea, A. I., Sheng, Q. Z., Stewart, C., Toms, E. G., & Wade, V.
(2014). The ethical and social implications of personalization technologies for e-
learning. Information & Management, 51(6), 819-832.
Caron, X., Bosua, R., Maynard, S. B., & Ahmad, A. (2016). The Internet of Things (IoT) and its
impact on individual privacy: An Australian perspective. Computer law & security
review, 32(1), 4-15.
Crane, A., & Matten, D. (2016). Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and
sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.
Denecke, K., Bamidis, P., Bond, C., Gabarron, E., Househ, M., Lau, A. Y. S., ... & Hansen, M.
(2015). Ethical issues of social media usage in healthcare. Yearbook of medical
informatics, 24(01), 137-147.
Jardine, J., Fisher, J., & Carrick, B. (2015). Apple’s ResearchKit: smart data collection for the
smartphone era?.
Moshtaghi, O., Kelley, K. S., Armstrong, W. B., Ghavami, Y., Gu, J., & Djalilian, H. R. (2015).
Using Google Glass to solve communication and surgical education challenges in the
operating room. The Laryngoscope, 125(10), 2295-2297.
Muensterer, O. J., Lacher, M., Zoeller, C., Bronstein, M., & Kübler, J. (2014). Google Glass in
pediatric surgery: an exploratory study. International journal of surgery, 12(4), 281-289.
Hwang, G. J. (2014). Definition, framework and research issues of smart learning
environments-a context-aware ubiquitous learning perspective. Smart Learning
Environments, 1(1), 4.

8ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FORM THE USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
Strandvik, T., Rindell, A., & Wilén, K. (2013). Ethical consumers' brand avoidance. Journal of
Product & Brand Management, 22(7), 484-490.
Tully, J., Dameff, C., Kaib, S., & Moffitt, M. (2015). Recording medical students’ encounters
with standardized patients using Google Glass: providing end-of-life clinical
education. Academic Medicine, 90(3), 314-316.
Weiss, J. W. (2014). Business ethics: A stakeholder and issues management approach. Berrett-
Koehler Publishers.