1. Professionalism

Professionalism

Professional

A professional can be described as a person competent or skilled in a particular activity.

Typically professionals have a few things in common:

• Have substanatial education and training to practice their profession.
• Are tied into one or more professional bodies.
• Members of the profession are expected to conduct their activities in accordance with codes of conduct provided by these bodies.
• The professional bodies decide the nature of training and control entry to the profession.

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Benefits of having a framework around professions include:

• Safer supply of service to the public
• Improved confidence for the public
• Greater impact
• Receive recognition through titles

UK Professional Bodies for IT

• British computer society (BCS) Founded 1957 Approx. 100,000 members
• Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Founded 2006 Approx. 150,000 members
• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Founded 1947 Approx. 100,000 members
• Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Founded in 1946 Over 100,000 members

What defines a professional body?

• Has professional examinations.
• Support for Continuing Professional Development through opportunities and tools for recording / planning.
• Publish professional journals or magazines.
• Professional networks to meet and discuss the field.
• Issue a Code of Conduct / ethics to guide behaviour.
• Deal with complaints against professionals and implement disciplinary action.
• Advise goverments and regulatory bodies.
• Enabling fairer access to the professions.
• Provide careers support and opportunities.

BCS Code of Conduct

BCS Code of Conduct

The BCS Code of Conduct:

• Sets the professional standards required as condition of membership.
• Applies to all members.
• Governs the conduct of individuals.

It covers 4 main topics:

• Matters of Public Interest You shall:
  • have due regard for public health, privacy, security and wellbeing of others and the environment.
  • have due regard for the legitimate rights of Third Parties.
  • conduct your professional activities without discrimination on the grounds of sex, sexual orientation, marital status, nationality, colour, race, ethnic origin, religion, are or disability, or of any other condition or requirement.
  • promote equal access to the benefits of IT and seek to promote the inclusion of all sectors in society wherever opportunities arise.
• Professional Competence and Integrity You shall:
  • only undertake work that is within your professional competence.
  • NOT claim any level of competence that you do not possess.
  • develop your professional knowledge, skills and competence on a continuing basis, maintaining awareness of technological developments, procedures, and standards that are relevant to your field.
  • ensure that you have the knowledge and understanding of Legislation and that you comply with such Legislation, in carrying out your professional responsibilites.
  • respect and value alternative viewpoints and, seek, accept and offer honest criticisms of work.
  • avoid injuring others, their property, reputation, or employment by false or malicious or negligent action or inaction.
  • reject and will not make any offer of bribery or unethical inducement.
• Duty to Relevant Authority You shall:
  • carry out your professional responsibilities with due care and diligence whilst excerising your professional judgement at all times.
  • seek to avoid any situation that may give rise to a conflict of interest between you and your Authority.
  • accept professional responsibility for your work.
  • NOT disclose, or use for personal gain, confidential information except with the permission of your Authority, or as required by Legislation.
  • NOT misrepresent or withhold information on the performance of products, systems or services (unless lawfully bound by a duty of confidentiality to not disclose such information), or take advantage of the lack of relevant knowledge or inexperience of others.
• Duty to the Profession You shall:
  • accept your personal duty to uphold the reputation of the profession and not take any action which could bring the profession into disrepute.
  • seek to improve professional standards through participation in their development, use and enforcement.
  • uphold the reputation and good standing of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.
  • act with integrity and respect in your professional relationships with all members of BCS and with members of other professions with whomy ou work in a professional capacity.

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ACM Code of Ethics

ACM Code of Conduct

These are ACM’s general ethical principles:

• Contribute to soceity and to human well-being, acknowledging that all people are stakeholders in computing.
• Avoid harm.
• Be honest and trustworthy.
• Be fair and take action not to discriminate.
• Respect the work required to produce new ideas, inventions, creative works, and computing artefact.
• Respect privacy.
• Honour confidentiality.

They also provide professional responsibilities:

• strive to achieve high quality in both the processes and products of professional work.
• maintain high standards of professional competence, codnuct and ethical practice.
• know and respect existing rules pertaining to professional work.
• accept and provide appropriate professional review.
• give comprehensive and thorough evaluations of computer systems and their impacts, including analysis of possible risks.
• perform work only in areas of competence.
• foster public awareness and understand of computing, related technologies, and their consequences.
• access computing and communication resources only when authorized or when compelled by the public good.
• design and implement systems that are robustly and useably secure.

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2. Ethical Theories and Computer Ethics

Ethical Theory

Ethics

Ethics are the moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity.

It can be defined differently depending on the field of study:

• sociology: underlying sentiment informing beliefs, customs, practices
• philosophy: science of the character of a group or individual
• science: the moral element determining a characters’ action rather than thought or emotion

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Ethics is not necessarily the law and not the same for everyone.

Where does it comes from?

Hippocrates may have been the first proponent of “ethical behaviour”.

Normative Ethics

Normative Ethics looks at what theories we can create to explain what is good or bad, whether an action will be positive.

• Deontic ethics categorises actions into right and wrong.
• Aretaic looks at virtue / the person, it categorises how we should live.

Ethical Theories

• Deontology is an ethical theory that uses rules to distinguish right from wrong. It looks specifically at whether you follow the rules.
• Consequentialism says that the morality of an action should only be judged by its consequences.
• Virtue Ethics says one needs to try strive to become a virtous person, to reach a state where you are ‘fulfilled’.

Ethical Issues in IT

• Intellectual Property Rights
  • Copyright, ownership, how to reward authors
  • Software theft, illicit copying, spurious backups
• Social impacts
  • Quality of software
  • Unemployment and deskilling
  • Digital divide in society
• Privacy & Anonymity
  • Data mining, web surveillance, facial recongition, customer profiling
  • Monitoring access to data on networks
  • Digital Security
• Artifical Intelligence
  • Interactions between algorithms and the people they affect

Ethical Issues in Business

Personal values in business ethics include:

• integrity, honesty, quality, loyalty
• professionalism, responsibility
• mutual respect, fairness and meritocracy
• leadership and responsiblity
• client focus and teamwork

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3. IPR and Internet Censorship

IPR and Internet Censorship

Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property is intangible property that is the result of creativity, such as patents, copyrights, confidential information, trademarks, etc.

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One can own the following aspects of a program:

• The source code
• The object code
• The algorithm
• The HCI of a program

Internet Censorship in the UK

• Blocking access to sites Some sites may be blocked for ethical concerns or if they are suspected to be in breach of laws such as the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
• English Defamation Law
• Copyright law of the UK
• Incitement to Terrorism
• Child Pornography / CSAM

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4. Computer Misuse Act 1990

Computer Misuse Act 1990

Computer Misuse Act 1990

The Computer Misuse Act 1990 is a piece of law that deals specifically with the crime of accessing or modifying data stored on a computer system without being authorized to do so.

Offense Levels

There are three levels of offenses under the Act:

• Unauthorized access to computer material. Holds a penalty of up to 6 months in prison and a £5,000 fine.
• Unauthorized access with intent to commit or faciliate commission of further offences. Up to 5 years in prison and receive a fine of unlimited amounts, depending on the severity of the crime.
• Unauthorized modification of computer material. Up to 5 years in prison and can receive a fine of unlimited amounts, depending on severity of the crime.

Background Reading: The Computer Misuse Act 1990

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Background Information

The law was introduced following the 1987 case of Regina v Gold and Schifreen, which saw two hackers remotely access the BT’s Prestel service using credentials gleaned from a BT engineer at a trade show by shoulder surfing.

They hacked into the Prestel and were able to find their way into the email account of the Duke of Edinburgh, the late Prince Philip.

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5. Introduction to Contract Law

Introduction to Contract Law

Contract

A contract is a written or spoken agreement with the intent that it is enforceable by law. It must have:

• An agreed set of specification.
• Clear outline of responsibilities.
• Clear mechanisms for resolving disputes.
• Liabilities: clearly stating whose fault it is in event a resolution is not achieved.

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Privity of contract

Privity of contract means that person C cannot sue due to a contract between persons A and B.

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Sale contract

A sale contract means a tangible item must be delivered and working to a certain level of specifications and duration.

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6. Software Contracts

Software Contracts

Licensing

Most software is licensed and not owned. It defines:

• Duration
• Transferrable
• Scope

Pricing

• The license fee plus additional costs, such as training.
• If requirements change, how much should modifications cost?
• Terms of payment: may apply interest for later payment.

Specifications

• Drawn up by systems analysts / architects.
• Covers the software functionality, hardware platform and performance.
• When the desired specification changes mid-development, we typically follow novation.
• We may want to also build prototypes to figure out what the customer wants.

Due date and penalties

• Penalties attached to late completion.
• Starts from the agreed date of completion.
• Usually money is paid as parts of the software is completed.

Maintenance and enchancements

• Need to figure out who fixes bugs.
• Maintanace contracts provide support beyond bug fixes, such as adding new features or supporting new platforms.
• Depends also on who owns the source code or otherwise the intellectual property.

Escrow

If the supplier goes out-of-business mid-contract:

• We need to consider who owns the code.
• Can other supplies be used to complete / maintain the products?
• Design documents could be held by a third party.

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