INFO1111 Chap.4 Data, Privacy and Corporate Ethics Cases
Data, Privacy and Corporate Ethics Cases
This chapter applies ethics to organisations and to personal data, using the cases from the Week 2 lecture. It starts with corporate social responsibility, an organisation's responsibility for how its decisions affect society and the environment, and the fourth bottom line, which adds progress, purpose or principles to profit, people and planet.
It then reads two social-network cases: an experiment that adjusted users' feeds to test emotional contagion, and personality profiling from posts used for political advertising by Cambridge Analytica. It reviews the Toysmart case, where a bankrupt retailer tried to sell customer data its privacy policy had promised to protect.
Finally it turns to the requests a system administrator may receive, such as searching a colleague's computer or tracking an employee, and shows how to answer the lecture's question of whether you would do it and under what circumstances.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Choosing an employer as an ethical decision
- 02
Corporate social responsibility and the fourth bottom line
- 03
Feed manipulation and emotional contagion
- 04
Profiling for political advertising
- 05
Toysmart and promises made in a privacy policy
- 06
Requests from authority to access personal data
- 07
Using the ACS Code to decline or set conditions
Worked example · free
A club election and a login log
- +1Identify the interests: the member's privacy, the fairness of the election, and the club's duty to its members.
- +1Check authority: who in the club's constitution may order an election review, and is the request in writing from that person?
- +1Check the rules: what the club's privacy notice says members' data may be used for, and whether an election review is covered.
- +1Limit and record: release only the voting records the review needs, not the full history, and log the release.
Key terms
- Corporate Social Responsibility
- An organisation's duty to answer for how its decisions and activities affect society and the natural environment.
- Fourth Bottom Line
- An extension of profit, people and planet that adds progress, purpose or principles as a fourth measure.
- Emotional Contagion
- The spread of moods between people, tested in the case where altered feeds changed what users posted.
- Psychometric Profile
- An estimate of a person's personality or traits built from their data, such as social-network posts.
- Privacy Policy
- An organisation's public statement of how it collects, uses and shares personal information.
Data, Privacy and Corporate Ethics Cases FAQ
What was the Toysmart case about?
A bankrupt online toy store tried to sell its customer data, including names, addresses and purchase histories, although its privacy policy said it would not share such details. Disney eventually bought the assets and destroyed the customer information.
Why is the feed-manipulation experiment considered an ethics problem?
Users agreed to a service, not to an experiment that changed their mood. The case raises consent, real effects on people's wellbeing, and whether a research purpose can justify that.
Is profiling acceptable if the result benefits people?
A beneficial purpose does not repair missing consent or hidden manipulation. A strong answer weighs consent, harm and purpose separately and links them to the ACS clauses on privacy and harm.
What should I do if my manager asks me to monitor an employee?
Do not act covertly on an informal request. Ask for the authority, the written policy and the process, limit any monitoring to what is approved, and record what you do.
What is the fourth bottom line?
It adds progress, purpose or principles to the triple bottom line of profit, people and planet, asking what an organisation is for beyond those three measures.
Exam move
Keep a case sheet with one row per case and four columns: whose data, what they were told, who benefited, and which ACS clause applies. Fill it for the feed experiment, the profiling case and Toysmart, then add one case of your own from current news. Practise the lecture's format for privacy scenarios: write the conditions under which you would act, the conditions under which you would refuse, and the record you would keep.
When you revise corporate ethics, list two employers you might apply to and write one sentence each on what their purpose tells you about the work you would do there. In the exam, avoid moralising: a short answer that names the stakeholders, the value and the condition earns more than a paragraph of disapproval.
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