Ethics

1
Ethics

• What is it, why is it relevant to HCI, why is it
  important?

2
What is ethics?

• Right and wrong
• Behaviour
• absolute not conditional
• Professional issues

3
Why us?

• Technology changes society
• Need to understand that change, put it to
  effective use, understand the consequences of our
  actions
• We are often asked to do things that create
  ethical dilemmas
• We have powerful tools at our command that we can
  do significant things with

4
Why HCI people?

• At the intersection of technology, individuals
  and society
• Understand the capabilities of technologies, the
  needs of individuals, the needs of societies
• Sometimes in conflict

5
Examples

• Boss asks us to monitor employees email
• Legal or illegal
• Ethical or unethical
• Specialist knowledge puts you into major role in
  consultancy company
• Company asked to develop missile offence system
  for government
• Many employees are pacifists
• Take the contract, or not?

6
Philosophical approaches to ethics

• Utilitarianism
• greatest happiness of the greatest number
• Happiness sum of pleasure sum of pain
• Simple, democratic, forward looking and
  consequential

7
Problems with utilitarianism

• Copying software could be argued as good as it
  spreads more happiness to more people
• Yet most would regard it as unethical
• Punishing an innocent person for a crime may be
  sanctioned
• the deterrent effects may be more beneficial than
  the problems suffered by the single person

8
And more

• Hard to measure happiness and compare different
  happy events
• No notion of duty or friendship

9
Kantian ethics

• Deontic (to do with acts)
• Do your duty
• The right motive is to do the right thing, to
  do ones duty, to respect the moral law.
• A rational being who consistently has the right
  motive has Good Will.
• Nothing is more important for morality than
  having a good will. According to Kant, a rational
  being with a Good Will automatically does its
  duty.

10
Kant II

• Not consequentialist
• Do duty regardless
• E.g. Do not lie
• Woman comes into your house seeking shelter from
  a violent partner. Partner comes in and asks if
  woman is there.

11
Ethical issues to consider

• Data protection/freedom of information
• (Ethical) hacking
• Consequences of software errors who is
  responsible?

12
Biometric identity cards

• Government want to bring in biometric identity
  cards to cut down crime, stop identity theft,
  reduce the chances of terrorist attack, reduce
  illegal immigration and asylum seeking, cut
  benefit fraud,
• So a good thing

13
Facts

• 1.3 billion cost of identity theft in UK per
  year
• 1.6 million credit card fraud in UK per day
• 2 billion benefit fraud
• Biometrics uses human physical characteristic to
  identify the person
• Retinal scans
• Fingerprint recognition
• Face recognition

14
Problems

• German magazine tested almost every biometric
  security device available to consumers
• Bypassed them all with sellotape, talcum powder,
  and a photograph
• 2.3 falsely identified as terrorist on every
  flight using facial recognition
• 10 failure rate of biometric passports in UK
  and EU trials

15
Terrorism?

• Identity theft a big business, with competent
  computing people in it
• Will get identities from dead people, emigrated
  ones, etc.
• Privacy International 25 countries suffering
  from terrorism since 1986, 80 have national i.d.
  cards, 33 of which have biometric data

16
Fraud?

• Only 50m of the 2b is identity-related
• Presence of centralised biometric identity system
  will give more power to those with expertly
  forged cards
• If we trust biometric system then a faked i.d.
  becomes very powerful

17
Privacy?

• Privacy issues as well
• Notion is that information can be shared by
  government departments
• Will the govt always be trustable?
• And by private organisations
• Ads whilst you walk

18
Costs

• 5.5 billion to set up
• And of course that wont get larger, given its a
  government project
• 85 for biometric passport, 40 for i.d. card
• Every 10 years or so
• Savings to each of us 83p/year
• If works perfectly, doesnt take any more police
  time, eliminates all identity crime, doesnt
  delay us, doesnt go over budget

19
Dilemma

• Should we have biometric identity cards?
• Should you work on them?