Legal, Ethical, and Social Issues in IT

Legal, Ethical, and Social Issues in IT

With the improvement of technology comes other concerns and new issues concerning it. In today’s world, it is popular to hear of crimes that are carried out with the help of man’s invented technology or acts of good. It is therefore with no doubt that just like everything else, technology has its own pros and cons.

1. Legal issues

It is a common fact that without information technology many of the big corporations existing today wouldn’t be. IT has greatly been of tremendous help to companies like Google, Amazon, E-bay, the upcoming Netflix, among many others. Legally information technology can be used to commit cybercrimes. Cyber-crimes are criminal offences carried out by the help of information technology. These range from morality issues to online scamming. Cyber-crimes may be a great subject for writing law essays or dissertation works. Cyber-crimes are explained in detail as follows.

Identity theft

Though not common in many African countries, identity theft is a crime that has taken its toll in the better half of Europe, America and Asia. Identity theft refers to the impersonation of someone by a cyber-criminal. This can be achieved in various ways by the help of phishing sites which are pseudo sites that collect personal information or phishing emails which also collect personal information. On acquiring this information, the criminal uses it to make purchases and commit other crimes under the other person’s details.

Copyright infringements

Copyright is the protection given to any creative works. It gives the author control over who uses the work and how who distributes the work among other rights and controls. Piracy is, therefore, one of the highly perpetrated cyber-crime with digital products. With the increasing speed of internet access and affordable storage costs, piracy and other crimes to copyright are more easily perpetrated.

Hacking

Hacking is defined as the process of bypassing security controls of a system to access unauthorized information. Upon gaining access the hackers can do anything they want. They mostly install spyware to keep spying on the said system, steal highly sensitive information like personal details of people, among other things. This information gained is either sold to the highest bidder or used to threaten the owners of the information into the payment of money.

Computer viruses

Computer viruses are unwanted programs that self-install on a computer and do damage in various ways. They can steal sensitive information, corrupt sensitive information, control machines controlled by computers, among other things.

2. Ethical issues.

With the consistent, rapid development of computing power, new issues arise. Above, we have mentioned legal that are as a result of improving information technology, and we shall proceed to investigate ethical issues.

Privacy intrusion.

Privacy is defined as the state of being free from unwanted or unauthorized intrusion. Today privacy is very desired by all but hard to achieve. Consistently, laws have been put in order to protect the privacy of people all over. Ethically privacy is an issue that has been debated over by many professors and politicians alike. Information attained from these organizations is to be used in providing services; however, a lot of organizations may stray.

Cyber-bulling

Cyber-bulling is the use of hateful words to disrespect someone. This is very common in teenager and young adults to celebrities or those who are popular in society. This act of demoralization leads to psychological issues that may be faced by the victim in question. This is done by cyber-trolls who consistently degrade the victims.

Social issues

Socially, information technology has impacted society by easing the communication process over a long distance. This is a big achievement that has been reached by the improvement of text and audio feature all over. Also, the consistent improvement in mobile technology has contributed significantly. However, just like other aspects, there are social issues raised by information technology.

Increased pornography

Pornography dates back to the Greek civilization with the popularization of brothels and pornographic literature and dances. However, the improvement of information technology has led to increased pornography freely available to any connected person; just a click away. This has degraded society and made it susceptible to psychological disorders like depression, among others.

Social disintegration

With this newly found connectivity has rendered society less communal and more personal or more individualized. In return, psychological issues, such as social anxiety, rose. Furthermore, the socialization of people has been reduced to none due to dependence on social media. This has caused estranged relationships.

In conclusion, information technology has not only impacted businesses but also the daily life of us all. However, like they say “with great power comes great responsibility.” IT has tremendously improved lives but has also brought forth new issues.