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This essay examines ethical aspects of the use of facial recognition technology for surveillance purposes in public and semipublic areas, focusing particularly on the balance between security and privacy and civil liberties. As a case study, the FaceIt facial recognition engine of Identix Corporation will be analyzed, as well as its use in “Smart” video surveillance (CCTV) systems in city centers and airports. The ethical analysis will be based on a careful analysis of current facial recognition technology, of its use in Smart CCTV systems, and of the arguments used by proponents and opponents of such systems. It will be argued that Smart CCTV, which integrates video surveillance technology and biometric technology, faces ethical problems of error, function creep and privacy. In a concluding section on policy, it will be discussed whether such problems outweigh the security value of Smart CCTV in public places.

This paper addresses social and ethical issues in computer‐mediated education, with a focus on higher education. It will be argued if computer‐mediated education is to be implemented in a socially and ethically sound way, four major social and ethical issues much be confronted. These are: (1) the issue of value transfer in higher education: can social, cultural and academic values be successfully transmitted in computer‐mediated education? (2) the issue of academic freedom: are computer‐mediated educational settings conducive for academic freedom or do they threaten to undermine it? (3) the issue of equality and diversity: does a reliance on computer networks in higher education foster equality and equity for students and does it promote diversity, or does it disadvantage certain social classes and force conformity? (4) the issue of ethical student and staff behaviour: What kinds of unethical behaviour by students and staff are made possible in computer‐mediated education, and what can be done against it? Existing studies relating to these four issues are examined and some tentative policy conclusions are drawn.

This chapter presents the main findings of the EU-funded SATORI project on ethics assessment of research and innovation (R&I) in its first 18 months. It offers summarised descriptions of the ways in which ethics assessment and guidance of R&I are currently practiced in different scientific fields, in different countries in Europe, the United States and China, and in different types of organisations.

The main findings include the following. Although the most extensive institutions, policies and activities exist in the medical and life sciences, there is evidence of a growing institutionalisation of ethics assessment in non-medical fields. Increasing coordination and cooperation between ethics assessors can be observed at the EU and global levels. Each of 15 types of organisations that were studied performs an important role in ethics assessment, which may not always be well established and sometimes poses significant challenges. Although significant differences exist among the countries that were studied in terms of the degree to which ethics assessment of R&I is institutionalised, all seem to be expanding their ethics assessment and guidance infrastructures.

The findings are an important means by which partners in the SATORI project will take their next steps: the identification of best practices, the development of proposals for harmonisation and shared standards, and, to the extent possible, the proposal of common principles, protocols, procedures and methodologies for the ethical assessment of research and innovation in the European Union and beyond.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ethical implications of video game companies employing psychologists and using psychological research in game design.

The author first argues that exploiting psychology in video games may be more ethically problematic than familiar application domains like advertising, gambling and political rhetoric. Then an overview of the effects particular types of game design may have on user behavior is provided, taking into account various findings and phenomena from behavioral psychology and behavioral economics.

Finally, the author concludes that the corresponding ethical problems cannot – and should not – be addressed by means of regulation or rating systems. The author argues instead that a more promising countermeasure lies in using the same psychological research to educate gamers (children in particular) and thereby increase their capacity for meta-cognition.

The importance of this lies in the tremendous effect these behavior-modifying technologies may have upon our self-determination, well-being and social relations, as well as corresponding implications for the society.

One of the more plausible methods of establishing an off-world human society is to transport a small number of adults alongside a large supply of frozen embryos. This would minimize the costs of transportation and protect genomic diversity across future generations. However, there are various ethical issues with attempting off-world pregnancies, in terms of unknown risks to pregnant people and fetuses, and potential discrimination concerns if the adults selected for the mission are required to be willing and able to gestate this genetically diverse population of embryos. An alternative would be the development and use of artificial womb technology (ectogenesis) to perform this latter function. Benefits might include freeing all crewmembers to devote all their energies to establishing the off-world facility without pregnancy-related illness affecting health and productivity, and providing a safer environment for fetal development, for example, providing additional radiation shielding around the artificial wombs. This chapter will explore some of the ethical issues surrounding ectogenesis and its space applications.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the reasons behind unethical behaviour in the Australian Information and Communications Technology (ICT) workplace.

The study employed a qualitative research methodology. A total of 43 ICT professionals were interviewed during the month of February 2014 in six Australian capital cities. All interviews were conducted face-to-face and followed a semi-structured interviewing format utilising open-end questions and further probing questions. The purposive sample represented ICT professionals from large and small organisations, government and private sector, different geographic locations, ages, genders, types of jobs and employment experience. Data analysis was completed with the help of QSR NVivo 10, a software package for managing qualitative data.

Of the 25 reasons identified for unethical behaviour in ICT workplaces, 30 per cent of participants agreed on five major ones: pressure, bad management, greed, lack of respect towards ICT and communication issues.

By focussing on the reasons behind unethical behaviour in the Australian ICT workplace, this article helps those identifying strategies for dealing with unprofessional behaviour to take into account the root causes of unprofessional behaviour.

There is hardly any literature on reasons for unethical behaviour in the ICT workplaces. This article seeks to address this imbalance in the literature. Also, integrity systems in ICT are a new focus in collective, organisational ethics. Identification of and resolving unethical ICT workplace practice is an innovative contribution to the literature.

Information ethics, as is well known, has emerged as an independent area of ethical and philosophical inquiry. There are a number of academic journals that are devoted entirely to the numerous ethical issues that arise in connection with the new information communication technologies; these issues include a host of intellectual property, information privacy, and security issues of concern to librarians and other information professionals. In addition, there are a number of major international conferences devoted to information ethics every year. It would hardly be overstating the matter to say that information ethics is as “hot” an area of theoretical inquiry as medical ethics. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview on these and related issues.

The paper presents a review of relevant information ethics literature together with the author's assessment of the arguments.

There are issues that are more abstract and basic than the substantive issues with which most information ethics theorizing is concerned. These issues are thought to be “foundational” in the sense that we cannot fully succeed in giving an analysis of the concrete problems of information ethics (e.g. are legal intellectual property rights justifiably protected?) until these issues are adequately addressed.

The paper offers a needed survey of foundational issues in information ethics.