In the context of software engineering, I think that “ethics” means to act accordingly and keep society in mind. It’s about making sure that your actions as a software engineer don’t negatively impact others. You should act and work in a way that is beneficial to everyone. Behaving ethically as a software engineer is important because there are many things they can do that may potentially harm society.
I chose to analyze the Privacy case study regarding Google’s Street View feature, which has raised questions about ethics in software engineering. During the launch of Street View, people raised concerns about their pictures being taken. There was obviously a privacy issue that hadn’t been dealt with. In the article, it said that
One thing I’ll be talking about is the Street View feature from Google that has raised questions about ethics in software engineering. During the launch of Street View, people raised concerns about their pictures being taken and there was obviously a privacy issue that hadn’t been dealt with. In the article, it said that,
“… it did not take long for people to realize that the feature displayed photographs of unwitting customers leaving adult bookstores and patients leaving abortion clinics, children playing naked, adults sunning themselves topless in their backyards, and employees playing hooky from work.” A link to the original article.
Because of this, there are many things that need to be solved with ethics in software engineering. There are things that are bound to happen without the knowledge of the engineers, but it’s their job to think of all of the consequences of their actions.
3 years later, Street View was once again being criticized because they were collecting personal data while taking pictures. They first said that they weren’t collecting data, but later had to backtrack because they really were. Google later blamed a single engineer on the breach, but it turned out that the engineer had told his superiors about it.
In my opinion, Google did not ethically launch Street View because they didn’t consider the privacy concerns beforehand. Instead, they should’ve made sure that their ‘streamlined’ process was ready before sending the cars out on the road. If you go onto Google Street View now, people’s faces are blurred out and that diminishes some of the privacy concerns. These things should have been put into place before their initial launch. Additionally, the supervisors at Google knew that the cars were collecting data and they continued to overlook it. In my opinion, this is very unethical, and the cars shouldn’t have been collecting data in the first place. In the ACM Code of Ethics, General Ethics Principle 1.3 says to be honest and trustworthy, and Google did not do that. They instead lied and blamed the engineer that initially brought it up. In the ACM Code of Ethics, General Ethics Principle 1.6 says to respect privacy. It also says that “Only the minimum amount of personal information necessary should be collected in a system.” Street View was supposed to be an extension of Google Maps. In my opinion, this is a clear violation of the Code of Ethics, and they should not have been collecting data in the first place.