Online Voting

Ethics for the Information Age Chapter 6

I was fascinated by the section about online voting. I had known some of the benefits and risks but this section did a very thorough job of laying them out. Some of the benefits include giving more people a chance to vote, improving efficiency of vote counting, and lowering costs. Some of the risks include potential privacy risks, the increased chance of buying votes, and the risk of vote tampering. I have always been concerned that if we begin online voting, the vote could be tampered with by hackers. Of course, in the long history of elections, there have been many cases of election fraud. However, I would think many hackers would take it as a challenge to change the results of the election even if by only one vote. I could also imagine an election where the side with the best hackers would win. The side who could change as many votes as possible and leaving the system without a trace would win.

Privacy Issues

Ethics for the Information Age Chapter 5

I found the section about privacy and trust very interesting. Privacy is on the rise in our society. One-family homes, televisions, automobiles, and other things allow us to go about our daily lives without interacting with many people. The "small town" feeling in which everybody in the community knows everybody else and what they do is on the decline (although not entirely gone). However, with so much privacy, it can be hard to determine who to trust. A good example of this is credit reporting. Banks and other companies are in the business of lending money to people. However, if they just lent money to everybody, many people would not or could not be able to pay them back. Thus, credit agencies exist to keep track of pertinent information so banks can make informed decision when determining who to lend money to. The credit report exists as a form of trust between the bank and the customer. However, the trust comes at the expense of privacy. Sensistive personal information is collected and sold to organizations requesting it. Negative information is often recorded with little or no explanation. A person who has to pay late because of a crisis may look just like a person who was intentionally trying to steal. False information can easily makes its way onto the report and it is left to the customer to put the effort into removing it. There are many horror stories of people who have had false, negative information put into their credit report because of company errors. Companies refuse to admit mistakes and negative information can remain with little concern from the company who put it there. Credit reporting is meant to prevent untrustworthy people from lending money. However, credit reporting punishes trustworthy people and can often harm them. This violates the Kantian idea of never using people as means to justify an end.

Larry Magid: Keeping Kids Safe On-line

I agree with many of Larry Magid’s opinions about online safety. I agree that the internet is too valuable to keep from kids and that kids need to learn appropriate ways of using the internet. From my own experience, I know it is easy for kids to get by the internet filters at school. I observed some kids getting into games directly blocked by the filter (the games were not inappropriate just non-educational). They did this by googling the game and getting on through another site that wasn’t blocked. I found his websites very helpful and I will use those sites as well as others to guide students toward safe and respectful internet use.

Ensuring Student Privacy on the Internet

I read this article because I take this issue very seriously in my classroom. Every once in a while, I will catch a student trying to sign up or log into a site that asks for specific personal information. I do not believe students should be giving that information at school or at home. I often question why I am giving that information in situations not involving the internet. I think there are too many people out there willing to misuse that information for their own gain. Just look at all the identify theft issues going on with information stolen from a company not the person themselves. If that information were never collected and stored, the problem would not exist. I do not believe teachers should have the right to provide personal information for students instead of parents. However, the more I think about it, I am probably doing so in an indirect way. I am sure personal student information is getting back to the company with the Accelerated Reading and Math programs. Thanks to this article, I will probably take a few more walks down the hallway to give academic information about students rather than give it over e-mail.

The Educator’s Guide to Copyright and Fair Use

This article gets down to the nitty-gritty on what media is acceptable to use in the classroom. The article gives very specific guidelines to follow if you plan to use an item that may be copyrighted or protected in some way. The general rule provided is that if you are not sure if a work is copyrighted or prohibited from use, seek permission from the holder just in case. I really liked that the article gave instructions for how to seek permission for use. This article would be very helpful to me if I had a technical question about what I could use in the classroom. I typically do not run into problems that could be answered by this article. I am careful to not load unauthorized software, show clips taped from television, etc. if nothing else than to set a good example for the kids. In the past, I have taped shows from PBS but I made sure I followed the instructions provided on their website for such use. I did not have this problem in my classroom, but I noticed that students were using copyrighted pictures from websites for Power Point presentations. The article did not answer my most pressing question on the issue (which I think I know the answer to but am not quite sure) which is can I show a DVD I have purchased legally to my class if it is for instructional purposes only.

Blue Nowhere: Computer Addiction

I just love the description of the hackers in this novel. I find it very interesting that the fingers of hackers are calloused over and they often break their keyboards. That shows an obsession I am not even close to achieving. I also love how Wyatt spends a lot of time obsessing over Pop Tarts even when he is offered better food. The prison he was in had to set special protocals to prevent him from gaining access to the internet. He could even turn basic appliances into modems and such.

Blue Nowhere: Real World vs. Computer World

I find it very interesting how the real world and the computer world are seperate but often intertwined throughout this novel. Phate is playing a "game" that started on the internet but then carried over to the real world when the online game was shut down. Phate could not be a "real" person unless he was online. When he was in the real world, he was always social engineering and pretending to be someone else. I also found it interesting that the team tracking Phate produced many leads online but those leads were often anticipated and resulted in damage being down to the investigation. However, many leads often surfaced through good old-fashioned police work and these often put Phate on the run (even though he came out on top until the end). I also found it interesting that Wyatt and other hackers in the story did all of these great exploits on the computer but still kept an ethical framework.