Privacy and ICT Ethics

The core purpose behind the current ICT advancements is to facilitate our day to day activities. Even so, in spite of the many benefits that we continue to reap from ICT, there are considerable challenges as well. As new technologies are developed, people are being exposed to new threats and vulnerabilities. These new technologies include 3D printing, Internet of Things (IoT), big data, virtualization and mobility, artificial intelligence and robotics, biotechnology, etc. In as much as the benefits are immense, we have to be mindful of the fraught challenges as well. It is projected that by the year 2021, 3. 5 million new, unfilled cybersecurity jobs will be created (GlobalSign 2018). There are several ways in which cybersecurity, in the future, is expected to change, i.

e. concerning the motives, speed, and impact. As aforementioned, as time elapses, the amount and the level of connectivity has increased substantially. In essence, this increased connectivity has brought about more access, which consequently calls for regulation to monitor that access using institutions, the law, and technology. The internet, as well, brings a new angle to the discussion of privacy. Information drawn from cookies can be used to track a given user’s activity across different sites (Almeida et al. There is, nonetheless, a recent trend that has increased the already soaring privacy concerns, i. The advancements will also augment the challenge of data privacy in the IoT. The IoT environment is comprised of devices that are interconnected over the internet that work in conjunction with one another by transmitting data autonomously.

Fragmented data transmitted from several endpoints can be collected, collated and analyzed yielding information that can be considered to be sensitive. Another issue that is raised is the fact that IoT devices use a uniform architecture which makes them vulnerable to attacks such as “unauthorized access to tags, tag cloning, Sybil attack, denial of service attack, a man in the middle attacks, malicious injects” etc. (Ren 2017). Here, privacy and data protection is integrated into the design specifications and architecture of the ICT systems and technologies. This aspect spans beyond the technical issues of it as it also incorporates organizational measures. Value sensitive design, according to Friedman (2006), is a very crucial theoretically designs approach that considers the human values. Applying privacy-friendly engineering will be a massive step towards averting the privacy above challenges.

In line with that, in order to regain the trust of the users, technology companies should come up with an innovative approach to inform them on what exactly happens to the data they avail as well as the measures they can take to be control of the information they avail (Stanford 2014). In the event that an end device is hacked, hackers can access the stored data. To avert this, measures such as customer anonymity, mutual authentication secure session key establishment should be put in place. Other measures include tackling the IoT hardware issues as well as testing the hardware. Vendors of IoT devices should also have strong privacy policies, security policies, application level protocols as well as protocol-level security. Controllers also need to put in place mechanisms to ensure that vendors and data handling organizations comply with set standards (Mason 2018).

Organizations that develop and use AI systems need to incorporate ethical principles to guide them confront the challenges that lie ahead of them. The first ethical challenge that can be pointed out is concerning unemployment. If the robots replace human workers in the loading sector, for instance, that will deprive millions of people of their jobs. The other ethical issue that is raised is on AI where robots operate machines. In this case, the main problem is whether or not robots can be entirely trusted to make ethical decisions. It is not ethical for a manufacturer of ICT products to lie on the efficiency of their product. Lastly, there is the aspect of intellectual property. This refers to the unique and original works for instance ideas, inventions, logos etc.

ICT professionals have to observe the legal guidelines governing intellectual property (vermat 2014) With regard to ICT ethics, the solutions can be based on ICT as well. To begin with, we can base all designs on Isaac Asimov’s three laws of Robotics Engineering. Green use involves ensuring electricity consumption of the peripheral devices used is minimized. Green disposal involves appropriate disposal, recycling etc. There is also the aspect of green design and green manufacturing which involves designing energy-efficient computers and minimizing waste during manufacturing respectively (Techopedia 2018). In conclusion, ICT has revolutionized the way in which people go about their day to day endeavors as it now permeates all facets of everyday life. Despite the many benefits that advancements in ICT promise to bring, there are some anticipated challenges as well.