CASE STUDY 1:

“Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and Trump Scandal: Lessonfor Government, Business, Consumers and Voters”.

In early 2018, Facebook admitted to mishandling datafrom over 50 million Facebook users which had been improperlyobtained by political data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.

By just a few months later, that number had risen considerablysomewhere in the range of 87 million Facebook users were impacted.Facebook apologized, CEO Mark Zuckerberg went in front of Congressto answer questions, and the FTC slapped Facebook with ahistorically large fine $5 billion. Cambridge Analytica harvestedinformation from over 87 million Facebook users through an externalapp in 2015. The data came from a personality quiz, which around270,000 people were paid to take. The quiz “thisisyourdigitallife”in turn pulled data from their friends’ profiles as well, ending inthe enormous data stash.

In March 2018, a Cambridge Analytica employee named ChristopherWylie was responsible for revealing the extent of the data firm’sactivities in interviews with The Guardian and The New York Times.Cambridge Analytica harvested personal information on where userslived and what pages they liked, which helped buildpsychological profiles that analysed characteristics andpersonality traits.

This kind of information was later deployed in politicalcampaigns. Wylie said: “We exploited Facebook to harvest millionsof people’s profiles. And built models to exploit what we knewabout them and target their inner demons.” The quiz was created byAleksandr Kogan, a Russian psychology professor at the Universityof Cambridge, who shared the information in a commercialpartnership with Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), whichlater created Cambridge Analytica.

Trump’s campaign hired Cambridge Analytica in June 2016 to helptarget ads using voter data gathered from millions of adults in theUS. The problem, Facebook says, is that Kogan then sent this userdata to Cambridge Analytica without user permission, something thatis against the social network's rules.

Facebook, however, says that while Kogan mishandled its data,all the information Kogan got was accessed legally and within itsrules. The problem is that Kogan was supposed to hold on to theinformation himself, not hand it over to Cambridge Analytica oranyone else. Because the information was accessed through normalmeans, Facebook disputes the characterization of the incident as abreach.

Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook had made mistakes withusers' information. "We have a responsibility to protect yourdata," he wrote. "And if we can't then we don't deserve to serveyou."

(Adapted from “Facebook understood how dangerous theTrump-linked data firm Cambridge Analytica could be much earlierthan it previously said. Here’s everything that’s happened up untilnow.” Business Insider US, August 23^rd, 2019)

Answer the following questions:

1. Briefly define the term privacy and list THREE(3) different concept of privacy.

(3 marks)

2. Privacy nowadays has become an issue in the global era. Basedon the case study, why do you think ethical issues such as privacyoccurred? (9marks)

(c) Inyour opinion, do you think the Privacy Laws in Malaysia, such asPersonal Data ACT 2010 (PDPA) enforced in January 2013 are adequateto protect against the privacyissue?

(6 marks)

4. Suggest FIVE (5) ways to overcome ethicalissues in business.

(5 Marks)

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

A Privacy is the right to be let alone to control who has access to one s personal information and to expect that information to be kept confidential The three concept of privacy include 1 The right t... View the full answer