Table of Contents
Introduction
The technological phenomenon known as the Internet has transformed the way people live. Over the years, the power, and the influence of information technology have been universal, and Cyberspace is the result of communication that the internet has created. Cyberspace is not where body lives however, it has always been characterized as consensual hallucination space creating a world by interconnected computer and computer network over the internet. We will need to take baby steps to determine the good and the bad that cyberspace had enabled throughout cyberethics. Nowadays, we are living in a modern country and we are becoming more and more depending on the cybertechnology, therefore, building a secure and sustainable cyberspace is crucial for our Society. In this paper, we will first define what Cyberspace is and the evolution of the Cyberspace then, we will discuss the ethical problems associated with Cyberspace by determining its privacy, social, and moral Issues knowing the fact that many individuals are experiencing common ethical problems every day.
Evolution of Cyberspace
Computers have increasingly connected from one to another and they have been referred to Cyberspace and when its name is mentioned, most of the computers’ users tend to think of Internet or Web-based applications which have been made possible by cybertechnology. According to Andreas Sofroniou INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT, 2015) “The word ‘cyberspace’ is credited to William Gibson, who used it in his book, Neuromancer, written in 1984”. Cyberspace has gained more popularity in social media interaction, rather than its technical execution and implementation because it has not only been limited computer network, but it encompasses all social activities. Throughout the years, cyberspace has developed exponentially especially this past decade in a point that it has brought up more vulnerability, more privacy, social, Moral Issues, more Ethical Problems and countless cyber-attacks. The reason behind that is due to the absence of legal rules or physical force that can cause someone to behave in a manner contrary to one’s private desires. MAJOR, A. M. (2000) emphasize that Cyberspace has literally reached a critical apex where one can no longer ignore regulatory issues. We know that regulating the Internet is a monumental task.
Ethical Issues in Cyberspace
Ethics are the point of views on moral, it guides us to choose between what is right and wrong, they are the rules or standards that rule conduct. As the world awakens to digital consciousness and innovation, the reality of Cyberspace has opened doors to multiple ethical issues and cybertechnology had brought up negative impacts on our society as well. The use of technology has tremendously created new sets of ethical issues and we would not have those issues if computers were never created. Nowadays, everyone has the right to use Cyberspace, however, we are also mandated not to infringe other people over the internet.
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According to Hamelink, C. J. (The Ethics of Cyberspace. London, 2000) “people make distinctions between forms of conduct they find morally justified and behavior they condemn as morally unacceptable”. Normally, the code of conduct is also a code of ethics. Rules of Conduct can be understood as rule of guidance that provides us direction on how we should behave or act on a social level basis at the macro-ethical level. Data mining is another new and serious phenomenon in cyberspace that can cause numerous ethical issues. It involves the indirect gathering of personal information through an analysis of implicit patterns discoverable in data (Rao & Quester, 2006). There are three main issues that had raised concerns about Ethic in Cyberspace which are moral issues, social issues, and privacy issues.
Moral Issues
Based on the previous chapters that we went through this class, we have learned that people tend to disagree on morality, but moralist detains the answers regarding moral questions and issues. To better understand the moral issues associated with Cyberspace we will need to define first the Difference between Moral Value and Non-Moral Values and their difference is that moral value is the combination of principles and rules that apply equitably to all parties, in other words, moral value is a combination of self-interest and rationality and fairness however Non-Moral Values are solely all about self-interest, desires, manners that drives from all decision making. Currently, the development of cybertechnology has changed our moral and standard ethical theories and the rule of conduct that we had been abiding by and then made it ineffective in helping us address the moral problem. Furthermore, another example of moral issues could be the issue of data that are being collected and where those data are being stored and who has access to those data. Another issue that has not been solved still today is the issue of privacy.
Privacy Issues
The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution had given every citizen the Right to be Left Alone, which is known today as the right to Privacy. Thus, the development of Cybertechnology and Social media had made it hard and making every individual think second if privacy still exists in today? on the Contrary, Cyberspace is public, and its users should understand that there is no personal privacy in it because the idea of privacy has been changed in the digital world. The need to be secure, to protect the citizen against terrorism has made the US government to put the society under surveillance.
However, Privacy is not simply an individual good, but it is also a social value. Therefore, privacy issues affect everyone in a society regardless how we use cybertechnology today. We are under surveillance 24/7 because are cellphone data are being monitors, our search histories are being a monitor, medical record are being monitors as well and so on, the amount of Personal Data and the kind of personal information that can be acquired from cybertechnology have been increasingly threatened privacy by the rapid development of technology.
Cybertechnology is making Data gathering techniques much easier than ever before without user’s consent. Since archived files are being stored either on-premises or in the cloud, government or organizations are retaining information for a longer period. I think the questions that still need to answer is to what extent we are being monitored and what privacy really means in this digital world. We can consider the three following facts in order answer the question of privacy, we do not own the cyberspace, the website that we visit, the network of the cell phone that we are using, and the search engine as well. At the end of the day, how could we claim privacy on something that we do not own? In Summary, there is no such thing as privacy in cyberspace.
Case Study: Privacy, Sharing, and Trust: The Facebook Study
In this Case studies, Ari Ezra described using sharing on Facebook as a case Study by emphasizing how trust is a significant factor for those social media users to share personal information online. Facebook was chosen for this case study due to its massive data collection and being the most popular social network with billions of users worldwide. Facebook has become the internet of the internet. She then argued how Facebook is built on trust and in the meantime how it uses that trust to manipulate its users by sharing its user’s information with advertisers. Ari Ezra emphasized what motivates people to share personal information online is based on the trust that we have one to another.
Then she argued that “Much of the work on trust, sharing, and privacy online focuses either on how protecting privacy can build trust”. Furthermore, she went over how Facebook exploit its trust users trust because it depends on our friend connection to make new ones thereby it always encourages us to share our up to date information to our friends are up to. However, based on the privacy issues more users are going from the large public face of Facebook to smaller private social media like Instagram or what’s up. Mark is trying his best to push on the privacy side of Facebook. Contradictorily, most users when they join face they rarely go through the user agreement terms, however on the agreement term users are grating Facebook and its trading partners the right to access on all their personal data that their store in Facebook. More cookies are being stored on users’ website because of Facebook.
Conclusion
In Philosophy, there is no difference between ethics and morality because they both can be understood as what is right and what is wrong. However, in cybertechnology both morality and ethics are defined as two separate entities. Cyberspace had provided us great opportunities and ethical challenges throughout the years. Its challenges had finally become a major asset and a threat to environment. On the Ethical side, with the development of data mining and data speed more and more user’s privacy availability keeps growth and they are many issues that are still unresolved. When it comes to privacy, we still do not know what is still private, what is public and what is still hidden. Although Cyberethics cannot be studied, but further studies are still needed to be done on privacy in cyberspace.
References
- Baird, R. M., Ramsower, R. M., & Rosenbaum, S. E. (2000). Cyberethics: social & moral issues in the computer age. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000
- MAJOR, A. M. (2000). NORM ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT IN CYBERSPACE: MODELS OF CYBERNORM EVOLUTION. Washington University Law Quarterly, 7859.
- Hamelink, C. J. (2000). The Ethics of Cyberspace. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
- Waldman, A. E. (2016). PRIVACY, SHARING, AND TRUST: THE FACEBOOK STUDY. Case Western Reserve Law Review, 67(1), 193-233.
- Andreas Sofroniou (INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT, 2015) 132634496X, 9781326344962
- Asian Social Science ISSN 1911-2017 (Print) ISSN 1911-2025 (Online)
