Theft of Unprotected Data: Ethical Issue

Analysis

As mentioned before, the ethical dilemma under discussion is the theft of unprotected data and the factors related to the situation. One of the analogy to the situation is an unlocked door in a house. If a house is not protected by a locked door and the owner forgot to lock the door, that doesn’t make it ethical for someone to go into the house and take some property. Such as action of an individual can also be considered to be illegal. In the same way, data can be considered to be the intellectual property of an individual irrespective of whether its secured or not. The theft of the intellectual property of any individual should be considered unethical even if the owner didn’t keep the property secure (Warren, 2016). Another analogy of the situation is the garbage thrown out to trash in front of a house and whether it is unethical for an individual to go through the dumpster to take some items without the consent of the owner of the house. The action of an individual to go through the dumpster is certainly not illegal, but unethical. In case of a professional environment, the data that isn’t useful isn’t available ethically for anyone to take it. So even if the data is not useful to the owner, it’s not ethical for anyone to steal it even when its unsecured or unprotected (Conn, 2013).

The code of ethics established by the Australia Computer Society provides a number of guidelines for the decision making process for similar situations. One of the social values focuses in the code of ethics defined by Australian Computer Society is honesty, which in turn can be applied to this situation in order to define the action of stealing unprotected data to be unethical. Professionalism is another social value that the Australian Computer Society focuses on for the code of ethics. As per this social value, it’s not professional for an individual to steal the unprotected data kept in any condition (Leicester, 2016). If the owner hasn’t kept the data secured or protected, professionalism suggests that we should respect the privacy of the owner and leave the data untouched even if its unprotected. The code of ethics from the Australian Computer Society also focuses on the practice of keeping the interest of public in front of personal interests. The application of this social value to the situation under analysis, suggests that the interest of the owner of the data should be kept in front of the personal interests. The theft of the unprotected data negatively affects the interest of the owner to keep the data safe, which in turn makes such an action unethical (Casteleyn, 2013).

Conclusion

It is certainly unethical for an individual to steal unprotected data, even if the owner forgot to keep it safe or the owner didn’t want to keep the data safe. The analogies of this situation to the real-world scenarios of a house with its door unlocked and dumpster in front of a house suggested that the action of stealing unprotected data is unethical even if it’s the responsibilities of the owner to keep it secure. The social values mentioned in the code of ethics established by the Australian Computer Society include professionalism, primacy of the public interest and honesty, all of which suggest that the act of stealing the unprotected information can be considered as unethical. In some situations, such act can also be considered to be illegal. So such factors should be kept in focus in order to avoid from similar actions (Bowern, 2013). 

References

Bowern, M. and Burmeister, O.K., 2013. 14. Business benefits from keeping codes of ethics up to date. Professionalism in the Information and Communication Technology Industry, 3, p.295.

Casteleyn, L., Dumez, B., Van Damme, K. and Anwar, W.A., 2013. Ethics and data protection in human biomarker studies in environmental health. International journal of hygiene and environmental health, 216(5), pp.599-605.

Conn, J., 2013. Unprotected data. Advocate breach highlights fact that 36% of providers don't use encryption. Modern healthcare, 43(36), pp.16-16.

Finn, R.L. and Wright, D., 2016. Privacy, data protection and ethics for civil drone practice: A survey of industry, regulators and civil society organisations. Computer Law & Security Review.

Leicester, N., 2016. Ethics in the IT Profession: Does a Code of Ethics have an Effect on Professional Behaviour?.

Warren, M. and Lucas, R., 2016. Ethics and ICT: Why all the fuss?. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 14(2).