Computers and Ethical Use: In Regards To Employee Monitoring

Essay by pimpgirl28University, Bachelor'sA, January 2005

download word file, 10 pages 5.0 1 reviews

Downloaded 187 times

Computers, Monitoring of use, and law are very intersting areas to reveiw.

Internet Privacy and Business Ethics is a topic we will take a closer look at.

"We, who have a private life and hold it infinitely the dearest of our possessions...." Virginia

Woolf

INTRODUCTION_________________________________________________

An important part of the ethics of business is computer ethics (CE) . According

to Luciano Floridi ," the urgency of computer ethics has not yet been raised to the status

of a philosophically respectable topic." Most philosiphers view computer ethics as

"a professional ethic," rather than a true ethics issue.

This paper will be to examine some of the legal issues of the Internet and the privacy

of those who use the Internet and frame those legal issues in the context of an ethical

issue. Kant's categorical imperatives of morality will be used to model the selected

legal issues into an ethical framework.

Part 1 of the paper provides background information on Internet privacy and the

vulnerability of the user on the Internet, Part 2 explains some of the causes of invasion of

privacy over the internet, Part 3 outlines some of the practices of business and

government using the Internet and the legal implications, Part 4 contains a discussion of the

Page 2

ethical issues of the practices described in Part 3, and Section 5 summarizes the discussion.

BACKGROUND__________________________________________________

The Internet is the global Web of linked networks and computers, so its nature is

such, that it is very difficult if not impossible, to determine its size at a given moment. It is

indisputable, however, that the Internet recently has experienced tremendous growth, with

the ranks of new users swelling at ever-increasing rates. This expansion has catapulted it

from the realm of academic research towards new found mainstream acceptance and

increased social relevance...