The Advancement of the Information Age - Term Paper Example

Task The information age has come in to change every aspect of how people conduct business and relate with each other. With theadvancement of the information age, economic activities are based on using technology since it has developed and has being accommodated in all sectors. Despite the fact that information technology has been instrumental in increasing efficiency in every sector, there is the question of the right and wrong actions as it pertains to use of information technology and these issues are what are referred to as ethical considerations (Sembok, 2003). Ethics in information technology is a branch of philosophy that deals with how people should make decisions concerned with their professional conduct, when using information technology. Computers have dramatically changed information handling and communication, but have also caused ethical questions to be raised on standards that the users of information technology should uphold in order to be at par with the expectations from the society. The most theatrical abuse of computer technology is the rampant internet hackings of company websites and online theft of credit card numbers. Such cases are imperceptible, frequent and tied to everyday workings of ordinary, law abiding citizens and different situations are on the rise with great frequency due to computer hacking. Hacking is a situation where an individual referred to as a hacker, gains, or attempts to gain access to resources or services belonging to someone else from their computer databases, usually organizations or companies without their prior authorization or awareness (Davis, Philipp and Cowen, 2005). Such activities lead to the disruption of services, loss of data as well as vandalism of data, software or even hardware resources. Hackers are motivated by a multitude of reasons, which include, getting profits, protests, or to gain recognition based on the enormity of the challenge. Hackers have different attitudes and aims. They use different terms to differentiate themselves from each other, or to exclude themselves from specific groups that they have disagreements with. Members of the computer underground should be referred to as crackers and not hackers. A cracker is someone who gains unauthorized access to a computer in order to commit crimes such as information theft. The amount of data and its confidentiality amplifies the concerns that are raised over information technology ethics, and why they should be maintained. Organizations are then forced to device come up with ethical standards that will guide their employees conduct while at the same time ensuring that they remain within the bounds of acceptable public ethics. However, there has been a disregard of societal ethics where companies have employed espionage tactics over rival companies to gain unfair competitive advantage by hacking into their information systems or purchasing information from hackers. In other cases, inquisitive minors have done hacking using a computer and an internet connection. A good example is that of a juvenile who, in March of 1997, sent a couple of computer commands from his personal computer effectively and disabled a telephone company services that was serving an airport in the United States. Such actions have drawn major attention from security agencies such as the F.B.I, and they have made fighting computer hacking be one of their priorities. In the recent past, there has been an accelerated increase in the number of organized hacker groups all over the world. Such groups gather occasionally in conventions such as DEF CON, HoHoCon, and SummerCon and such conventions provide information and a means to learn from other members. Hackers also gain credibility by affiliating themselves to elite hacker organizations. Public interest groups such as the computer Ethics Institute have been in the frontline in trying to lay down the ethical standards that computer users should uphold. Various security agencies have highly prioritized cases of hacking to the extent of setting up a cybercrime department to deal with cases of unethical use of information technology. Hacking or cracking is sometime legal although unethical. This is in the case where security intelligence agencies hack into individuals’ emails, telephone conversations and internet usage statistics for identifying criminal activity such as terrorism plots. Many argue that such acts are a breach of people’s privacy and there have been campaigns trying to limit the government’s ability to search bank records. In 1988, the Computer Matching and Privacy Act was initiated and it restricted the government from accessing people's information. The subject of hacking spans beyond the aspect of ethicality. There have been numerous cases where nations have traded accusations of one trying to or successfully accessing the others information resources such as top-secret military documentation. This has not only strained the diplomatic ties between such countries, but also brought them to the brink of war. Large organizations have been hit by civil lawsuits that have cost them fortunes amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. Others have been paralyzed by attacks leading to loss of millions of dollars in revenue. There have been instances where hacking has placed the life of citizens of a nation in grave danger such as when the hacker targets mission critical infrastructure such as water supply systems, power grids, airport computer systems and hospital systems. When attacks escalate to such heights, they are no longer considered as unethical acts but as acts of terrorism. Because of the prevailing rampant abuse of information technology, there is a great need to review various computer ethics codes. Computer usage has brought about an increase in efficiency of people and organizations, but the ethical issue of hacking is greatly undermining this by people misusing information of others without their permission (Erickson, 2008). Institutions have been forced to increase the safety of their websites by using security strategies such as encryption in order to deal with this menace. However, hackers who find ways of decrypting the codes and accessing information they are not authorized constantly break into the security measures institutions have set. People getting ensuring that they uphold ethical standards will be instrumental in ensuring that hacking is eliminated in the information technology sector and that the right of privacy is maintained. References Davis, C., Philipp, A., and Cowen, D. (2005). Hacking Exposed Computer Forensics: Secrets And Solutions: Hacking Exposed. California: McGraw-Hill Professional Erickson, J. (2008). Hacking: The Art of Exploitation: San Francisco: No Starch Press. Gupta, S. (2004). Hacking In the Computer World. New Delhi: Mittal Publications Sembok, T. (2003). Ethics of Information Communication Technology. Regional Meeting on Ethics of Science and Technology, Bangkok. . Read More