Contribute to Copyright - Ethics and Privacy in an It Environment

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accessible to whom), group ownership of resources or information (these need not necessarily be regarded as owned exclusively by the employer), and fair information practice (including due practice and informed consent. A key intention is to enable people to exercise informational self-determination — the right to determine when and under what circumstances their personal data may be processed.) (Allen, 1993; Clement, 1993). Privacy (notions of personal and collective dignity, identity and autonomy) is an emotional label and perhaps a better way of handling related issues is under labels such as social control 5 or fair information practice. For example, group ownership implies privacy diminution in that in order to function group members must have personal information about each other to define themselves as a group, and mutually influence each other’s behaviour (Allen, 1993, p 41). The question for CSCW designers is not so much how to alleviate privacy concerns, but how to support the group interactions that constantly negotiate appropriate levels of privacy intrusion, social control, and control over space and resources. (Allen, 1993, p 41) Further issues to explore in the area of privacy might include whether different types of privacy need to be considered as separate issues. For instance, intrusion versus exposure, or personal versus group privacy. There may also be trade-offs and priorities to consider, such as sacrificing a degree of privacy to increase security.

2. What do you say in response to the Executive Officer?

My response would be;

It is not a reasonable question. In this instance it may be that you want to make use of examples on video tapes (gathered for one purpose, usability testing), for another purpose. This raises issues about informed consent, that is, consent may have been given for the initial videotaping, but participants may not have been informed as to the ultimate audience(s) of the video. This violates not only the privacy of the participants, but also has the potential to harm the designers involved in the initial videotaping session.