Ethics of Metadata Retention - Report Example

ETHICS OF A REAL-LIFE SITUATION By Name Course Instructor Institution City/State Date Table of Contents Ethics of a Real-Life Situation Executive Summary The introduction of metadata retention connotes that a data about various online communications and activities will be kept, despite the fact that the owner of the data has not committed any crime. The data retention requirements have fiercely been criticised due to the possibility that it can result in data intrusions and breaches. Besides that, the opponents of this scheme argue that the retained metadata could be utilised for other activities such as marketing rather than promoting security. One of the ethical issues cited in this report is that metadata retention may create a honeypot for cyber-criminals and hacker; thus, resulting in the infringement of privacy. This Report has been divided into three sections; the first section is about stakeholder Ethics, whereby the key stakeholders that are relevant to the case study have been identified. For each key stakeholder describe the situation and reasoning from their perspective (customers, government, and service providers). The second part is about International Codes of Ethics, whereby Australian Computer Society (ACS) and Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) have been examined with the view to metadata case study. It was noted that the code of ethics is crucial to increasing the prestige and competence of the members working for the identified stakeholders. Besides that, virtue ethics, consequentialism, and ethical pluralism principles have been used to examine the three identified stakeholder. The third part is about the ethical issues of advancing technology, specifically ownership, privacy and security. It has been established that although scores of people are against metadata retention, the scheme can be justified by its value in rooting out terrorism in Australia. It is still early to identify whether the scheme has yielded the results, but the end will justify the means. 1.0 Introduction On 13th October 2015, the new metadata retention law came into effect, and ISPs together with Telecoms were required to retain communications metadata for a period of two years so as to facilitate terrorism and crime investigation. Even though the law is already in effect, the types and extent of data that will be collected is not yet unclear. Furthermore, the law has been criticised widely for infringing the right to privacy of Australians by overly introducing broad surveillance of the people. However, the government maintains that the scheme benefits Australians and that the retained data is about the date, time, location as well as the duration of the call and not the communications content. Retention of metadata retention brings about complex ethical issues normally framed based on privacy. Proponents of metadata argue that it provides an inferior risk of the privacy violation than the communication content (primary data). The difference between the ‘nature’ as well as ‘content’ of a communication suggests that the protection of message content improves the privacy of both the sender as well as the receiver. Still, Mittelstadt (2015) maintains that the supposition that metadata retention is more suitable due to its lower risks of privacy is regrettably ill-advised. Adequate volumes of metadata provide a chance of generating invasive information concerning the Australians. Furthermore, technologies like virtual private networks, encrypted communication platforms, as well as anonymity networks, can be used to undermine collection of metadata through hiding features of users’ communications. In this report, the focus is on the ethics of metadata retention as reported in the public domain. 2.0 Stakeholder Ethics Key stakeholders relevant to this case study include customers (Australians and businesses), the government, and service providers (Telecoms, ISPs and data suppliers). 2.1 Stakeholders’ Perspective From the customers’ perspective, their data ranging from emails, mobile logged data, landline voice calls as well as text messages to location information and download volumes are mandatorily retained by Australian ISPs and Telecoms; this results in the violation of their right to privacy. Eventually, the customers’ metadata could expose their fixed-line caller traffic, SMS, private email as well as professional habits and activities. The metadata would exhibit the customers’ communications patterns, their monetised download or subscriptions as well as commercial transactions. This undoubtedly violates the Australians right to privacy. In 2015, Optus revealed that it had suffered major data breaches that had affected over 300,000 customers. While in 2011, details of approximately 734,000 customers were leaked by Telstra and this also happened in 2013 wherein 15,775 customers were affected. This proves retaining metadata can result in privacy infringements and may also act as honeypot for malicious attackers. From the government perspective, metadata is very important for counter-espionage, counter-terrorism as well as investigating cyber-crimes and organised crime. The metadata help the law enforcement agencies to investigate serious crimes such as sexual assault, murder, kidnapping and child exploitation. The metadata helps the government to easily identify suspects as well as be able to offer evidence in prosecutions. Metadata plays a crucial role in crime investigations and support law enforcement agencies to utilise intrusive and complex tools, like a warrant to intercept the communications content. From the service providers’ perspective, the metadata retention scheme found the ISPs off-guard. They were not prepared to collect and store metadata as necessitated by the Australia’s data retention laws. For this reason, the service providers begun gathering a substantial amount of new data, and adhering to these laws has become challenging as well as time-consuming. For instance, two-thirds of internet service providers as mentioned by Ockenden (2015) do not clearly understand the type of metadata that the government wants them to collect and store. 2.2 Major Areas of Conflict The metadata retention laws are likely to be abused easily; therefore, there is a need for more oversight. For instance, the data may be utilised against Australians who download TV shows as well as music. Evidently, all pools of data are at risk for abuse, both by hackers and those who legally have access to it. Following the 2013 revelations by Edward Snowden concerning the data mass collection by the U.S. MSA, numerous cases of shocking misuse of data by NSA employees were revealed. For instance, some NSA staffs utilised their access to metadata to spy on other people such as their lovers. In view of this, the Australian authorities could misuse the metadata like their American counterpart unless the privacy safeguards laid out by the government is adequate. Still, the likelihood for abuse is very high. If the data will be secured successfully and used wisely by the law enforcement, then all the stakeholders may largely benefit. The data retention laws do not provide guidelines on how customers can be alerted in case their private information is compromised. Retaining enormous amounts of data of the customers by the service providers has implications to the customers’ privacy considering that their personal information can possibly be infringed if stored for a long time. 2.3 Ethical view Virtue ethics – Service Providers Virtue ethics according to Trevino and Nelson (2011, p.46) is an ethical approach that considers the character of a person as the main component of ethical thinking, instead of rules concerning the acts themselves or their implications. Evidently, retention of metadata brings about complex ethical issues; therefore, the virtuous such as data suppliers believe that privacy protection is important in the current age of Big Data. The service providers place emphasis on individual interests as well as rights. In view of the virtue ethics, there are particular attributes such as virtues that make a person moral, but they depend on the society and the context of the situation. Due to the potential harms to customers that may be brought about by privacy violation, the virtuous providers have to ensure that the customers are protected from such a risk. Service providers must act in virtuously and should ensure their staffs have a virtuous character, regardless of whether any of the stakeholders is right or wrong. In virtue ethics, the character is considered very important. The consequences of the service providers’ actions depend on their responsibilities and intentions. Therefore, when the service providers act in a manner that can be considered unvirtuous such as negligence, devoid of concrete harm or damage to the customers, they are still culpable according to virtue ethics. Therefore, the service providers are culpable for careless acts that can result in privacy violation or data breach. Consequentialism – Government Consequentialism is an ethical approach arguing that the morality of any action pends on the consequence or outcome. Therefore, an action that generates good results is considered morally right while the action consequences generally prevail over other considerations. In this case, consequentialism supports the government actions to introduce the metadata retention laws because they are for the wellbeing of Australians. Consequentialists would argue that the government actions are crucial for creating national safety and security for the people of Australia. This can help Australian not to experience what Americans experienced during the 9/11. It is the role of the government to protect the people’s freedom and liberties from cowardice acts of terrorists; therefore, action to retain metadata is justified since it promotes national security Ethical pluralism – Customers Ethical pluralism maintains that there are some values that could be equally fundamental as well as correct, but still in conflict with one another. For instance, the proposed laws are beneficial to Australians in terms of security but can result in the violation of their privacy. Service providers have warned that retention of metadata can generate personal information a honeypot that could easily be compromised by criminals as well as hackers. Beyond hacking, however, metadata retention results in improved security and reduction of piracy. The Australia's national security and law enforcement agencies can use the retained metadata to improve their investigative capabilities. Therefore, the security enhancement aspect of metadata is both fundamental and important, but data breach and privacy violation bring about a conflict. 2.4 Personal View In view of the identified stakeholders, the metadata retention law is undoubtedly both beneficial and disadvantageous to the people of Australia. The law protects them from criminals such as hackers and terrorists, but at the same time violates their rights to privacy. Furthermore, as evidenced above, metadata retention results in ethical issue, especially in terms of privacy. Because of advancements in technology, the need for the government to spy on its citizens has increased considering that terror attacks have has increased across the globe. Therefore, surveillance of the civilians for purposes of improving their security is ethically justifiable. Neglecting the moral principle of plausible virtuousness places Australia at risk of possible attack, but the government is devaluing human dignity when it monitors the activities of its people without their authorization. The human dignity footing, as well as the egalitarianism, defines Australia; therefore, the government can only discard such core principles at its own risk. 3.0 International Codes of Ethics For staffs of the service providers, their day-to-day work is defined by the code of ethics and conduct of the companies they work for and the bodies that represent them. For instance, Australian Computer Society (ACS) expects its members to advance as well as uphold the dignity, honour and effectiveness of their profession and maintaining high ethical conduct and standards of competence (ACS, 2016). For this reason, ACS code of ethics requires its members to be straightforward, honest, loyal and impartial. They should work hard so as to improve their competence and should utilise their special skill and knowledge to advance human welfare. Basically, ACS code of ethics provides a benchmark for its members and has six principles that its members have to follow: enhancing life quality; public interest primacy; competence; honesty; professionalism; and professional development. Such principles address the law requirements as well as the need to take into account the possible consequences of technology utilisation n the society and the organisation. Furthermore, ACS requires the ICT professionals to be honest and challenge inappropriate and unethical utilisation of technology. In addition, the members of ACS are required by the ethical conduct to take into account the consequence of their actions on the society, customers and others. On the other hand, Association of Computer Machinery (ACM) code of ethics is somewhat lengthy and includes moral requirements that protect the people’s human rights and reduces unfavourable consequences associated with computing systems. Akin to ACS, the members of ACM are required to contribute positively to human well-being as well as society by reducing the computing systems’ negative consequences (ACM, 2016).  Besides that, the members are required to avoid harming other people through actions that can result in data loss or breach.  Furthermore, they should design systems with improved security bearing in mind that their actions can result in harmful results. ACM require its members to be trustworthy and honest by ensuring they do not provide false claims concerning the system. According to the ACM code of ethics, all its members should make sure they are fair, honour property rights, respect other people privacy, and honour confidentiality. 4.0 Problems of Advancing Technology There are different ethical issues that are associated with the advancing technologies; in this case, the focus will be on internet ethical issues mainly, privacy, security and ownership. Privacy Government surveillance infringes the privacy of internet users. Countries such as Australia and the US are tapping the Internet traffic in an effort to improve their national security. Still, revelations concerning the NSA surveillance have resulted in privacy concerns. Whereas scores of issues associated with Internet privacy are about the exposure of identities, hackers are also using Internet services anonymously to do their evil activities. The Internet negatively affects privacy given that web pages concerning users are stored online indefinitely. Security People lives are these days revolving around the Internet; therefore, the likelihood of hackers to gain access users to computers is very high. Hackers are using viruses to infect the Internet users’ computers so that they can perform other malicious tasks. Besides that, hackers are using different tools to break into the Internet network to access the users’ confidential data. Some of the security issues facing Internet users include Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks and Trojan Horses, wherein Internet users’ data is used for identity theft and other malicious activities. Ownership Ownership is a well-defined concept that is protected by law as well as strengthened by cultural norms in schools as well as corporations. The Internet has eased the way data can be manipulated through functions such as copy-paste; thus, allowing users to easily access copyrighted material.  The widespread accessibility of files, software and free content has resulted in data manipulation and copyright infringements. People are using the Internet to unlawfully download files such as music, books and software; and this creates an ethical issue in terms of ownership. 5.0 Conclusion In conclusion, the report has focussed on the ethics of metadata retention as reported in the public domain. As mentioned in the report, there are concerns about privacy despite the fact that government has introduced reforms that reinforce the integrity and security of metadata retention. Proponents of metadata argue that it promotes security and wellbeing of the civilians while the opponents maintain that it violates the right to privacy. From an ethical perspective, privacy is an important human value and every person has a right to it. Therefore, Violations of privacy has to be justified by a competing interest such as promoting security. 6.0 References ACM, 2016. ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "https://www.acm.org/about-acm/acm-code-of-ethics-and-professional-conduct" https://www.acm.org/about-acm/acm-code-of-ethics-and-professional-conduct [Accessed 29 April 2016]. ACS, 2016. Member Conduct. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "https://www.acs.org.au/about-the-acs/member-conduct-and-discipline" https://www.acs.org.au/about-the-acs/member-conduct-and-discipline [Accessed 28 April 2016]. Mittelstadt, B., 2015. Government “only” retaining online metadata still presents a privacy risk. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://blogs.oii.ox.ac.uk/policy/government-only-retaining-online-metadata-still-presents-a-privacy-risk/" http://blogs.oii.ox.ac.uk/policy/government-only-retaining-online-metadata-still-presents-a-privacy-risk/ [Accessed 28 April 2016]. Ockenden, W., 2015. Majority of ISPs not ready for metadata laws that come into force today. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-13/majority-of-isps-not-ready-to-start-collecting-metadata/6847370" http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-13/majority-of-isps-not-ready-to-start-collecting-metadata/6847370 [Accessed 28 APril 2016]. Trevino, L.K. & Nelson, K.A., 2011. Managing Business Ethics. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Read More