1. Ethics in a Computing Culture
Chapter 8
Computing and Vulnerable Groups

2. Objectives
How can the work of computer professionals harm vulnerable members?
How is paying attention to vulnerable populations beneficial?
How are the arguments of theorists applied in order to protect vulnerable members of society?
Ethics in a Computing Culture

3. Why Pay Special Attention to Vulnerable Groups?
What types of assistance does your school provide to students from vulnerable groups?
Ethics in a Computing Culture

4. The Threat Analysis Method
Threat analysis: an attempt to systematically identify the ways that a technology might be vulnerable to a malicious attack
Who might want to abuse this system?
Why might they want to abuse a system?
Vulnerabilities: potential avenues of attack
Ask students to explain why people might want to abuse Web cameras in laptop computers as discussed in Chapter 3. Ask them to list the vulnerabilities that make such abuse possible.
Ethics in a Computing Culture

5. Case: Should Gun Camera Videos be Public?
Does the existence of gun cameras make soldiers vulnerable to harm that they otherwise would not experience?
Ask students to list some ways that leaking gun camera footage could harm soldiers. Could gun cameras also benefit soldiers?
Ethics in a Computing Culture

6. People with Impaired, or Legally Limited, Decision-Making Abilities
Autonomy: freedom for an entity to make decisions without outside constraints or interference
Chilling effect: a situation in which one feels pressure not to do something, even though it is legal to do so, because of fear of prosecution
Ask students to consider how the chilling effect might impact the behavior of teenagers. What are some things that teenagers might technically be allowed to do, but which they might choose not to do if they think parents are watching?
Ethics in a Computing Culture

7. Case: Cell Phones and Family Locator Services
Locator: anyone who has permission to see the locations of others using a family locator service, such as via cell phones
Locatee: anyone whose cellular phone is being tracked
Most families make all adults locators and all children locatees
Consider the following claim:
“The most moral way to use this technology is for all members of the family to be both locators and locatees. That is perfectly fair.”
Ask students to consider some potential chilling effects on the adult members of the family if all family members are both locators and locatees?
Ethics in a Computing Culture

8. Case: Cell Phones and Family Locator Services (continued)
Do the benefits of using a family locator service to decrease the vulnerability of children outweigh the harms?
Should the phones of locatees display an icon or message, so that the users knows they are being tracked?
Should it be possible for locatees to turn off the location feature whenever they want?
Are the elderly more vulnerable, or less vulnerable, than college students?
Ethics in a Computing Culture

9. People with Physical Limitations or Frailties
Accessibility: the degree to which people with disabilities can use a given technology
Examples of technologies that promote accessibility include:
Screen-readers: Software that reads the text on the screen audibly
Predictive typing: Software that can tell which word you are trying to type based on the first few letters
Subtitles: Software that displays the text of any audible dialog
High contrast displays: Software that changes the colors of the screen to make text easier to read
Haptic feedback: User interfaces that make cell phones vibrate
Text alternatives for images: On a Web page, provides a text description of an image so that a screen-reader can describe an image
Ethics in a Computing Culture

10. People with Physical Limitations or Frailties (continued)
Ethics in a Computing Culture

11. Case: Hackers and Implantable Medical Devices
Given the security vulnerabilities of the ICDs studied by Halperin’s team, was it ethically permissible for the ICD manufacturer to create and sell the defibrillators?
Suppose a software company is designing a spreadsheet program. The program designers are considering using red to indicate negative numbers (instead of a negative symbol) and do not plan to provide any other formatting options.
Is it morally permissible to create such software?
Ethics in a Computing Culture

12. Case: A Right to Gaming?
Suppose a software company is designing a video game. The game designers are considering using yellow and green puzzle pieces and do not plan to provide any accommodations for color-blind users.
Is it morally permissible to create such software?
Is this more or less permissible than the software proposed in the previous question?
Ask students to consider if it is morally significant that roughly 5% of men in the U.S. suffer from red-green color blindness. Would students’ responses differ if it were only 0.5%? What if it were 50%?
Ethics in a Computing Culture

13. Case: Computer Donations and Recycling
E-waste: discarded electronic devices
Can contain precious metals, as well as toxins
If people in developing countries understood the harm they were doing to themselves and their children by participating in e-waste recycling, do you think they would stop?
Ask students to use an ethical theory from Chapter 1 to support their reasoning.
Ethics in a Computing Culture

14. Members of Minority Groups
Is it possible to write a policy that would ban hate groups, while not banning other innocent groups?
Blizzard’s anti-harassment policies go above and beyond what the law ordinarily requires.
Should private companies like Blizzard create and enforce policies that are different from the law?
Or should the police handle all harassment complaints?
Note the key difficulty in banning hate groups: How can you tell which groups are hate groups and which are not?
Ethics in a Computing Culture

15. Case: Sex Selection in India
Use a rule utilitarian analysis to explain why the Indian government might ban sex selection of babies. In particular, what are the consequences for a society if a serious imbalance arises between the number of boys and number of girls born each year?
Indian officials could, if they wanted, ban ultrasound sonograms altogether. Should they?
Would this benefit female fetuses?
Whom would it harm?
Ethics in a Computing Culture