You are a new hire in a product design team for a start-up company that is...

  

Transcribed Image Text:

You are a new hire in a product design team for a start-up company that is developing new and more powerful versions of the kind of packet-sniffing and email scanning software systems used by law enforcement agencies and large corporations to monitor data traffic for illegal activities. This kind of software might, for example, be programmed to detect illegal downloads of copyrighted materials, or to flag for review email keywords like 'bomb,'| 'steal,' or 'bribe.' You are a young parent of two small children, with parents and friends who are deeply proud of your achievements. You are looking forward to using this first job to cultivate a reputation in your industry for being an excellent software engineer. One day, you happen to overhear your supervisor chatting with another supervisor about a new contract the company has recently received from a foreign government. You happen to recognize the name of this country as one that is currently run by an oppressive military regime that routinely imprisons its citizens without trial or other due process. In this country, people perceived as political dissidents and their families are often sent to labor camps with deplorable living conditions, without hope of appeal, for an indefinite period. Your own nation has strongly criticized this country's human rights record, and many international organizations as well as the United Nations have condemned its practices. You realize now that the product your team is working on is part of your company's contract with this government; and in fact, you have been assigned specifically to develop the part of the product that searches for specific keyword strings in private emails, texts, social networking messages, Skype and phone conversations. Reviewing the specs for your task, you realize that your contribution to the product will almost certainly be used to identify for extraction and review conversations between private citizens of this country in which there is any specific discussion of their government or its policies, and especially those in which words like 'reform,' 'injustice,' 'corruption,' 'due process' or 'human rights' occur. Question 3.1: Who are the various stakeholders in this scenario, and what do they each have at stake in your action? Reflect carefully and deeply, and answer as fully as possible. Question 3.2: What do you think is your ethical obligation in this situation? What do you think an excellent software engineer would do in this situation? Are they the same thing, or different? Please explain your answer. You are a new hire in a product design team for a start-up company that is developing new and more powerful versions of the kind of packet-sniffing and email scanning software systems used by law enforcement agencies and large corporations to monitor data traffic for illegal activities. This kind of software might, for example, be programmed to detect illegal downloads of copyrighted materials, or to flag for review email keywords like 'bomb,'| 'steal,' or 'bribe.' You are a young parent of two small children, with parents and friends who are deeply proud of your achievements. You are looking forward to using this first job to cultivate a reputation in your industry for being an excellent software engineer. One day, you happen to overhear your supervisor chatting with another supervisor about a new contract the company has recently received from a foreign government. You happen to recognize the name of this country as one that is currently run by an oppressive military regime that routinely imprisons its citizens without trial or other due process. In this country, people perceived as political dissidents and their families are often sent to labor camps with deplorable living conditions, without hope of appeal, for an indefinite period. Your own nation has strongly criticized this country's human rights record, and many international organizations as well as the United Nations have condemned its practices. You realize now that the product your team is working on is part of your company's contract with this government; and in fact, you have been assigned specifically to develop the part of the product that searches for specific keyword strings in private emails, texts, social networking messages, Skype and phone conversations. Reviewing the specs for your task, you realize that your contribution to the product will almost certainly be used to identify for extraction and review conversations between private citizens of this country in which there is any specific discussion of their government or its policies, and especially those in which words like 'reform,' 'injustice,' 'corruption,' 'due process' or 'human rights' occur. Question 3.1: Who are the various stakeholders in this scenario, and what do they each have at stake in your action? Reflect carefully and deeply, and answer as fully as possible. Question 3.2: What do you think is your ethical obligation in this situation? What do you think an excellent software engineer would do in this situation? Are they the same thing, or different? Please explain your answer.

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

31 In this scenario the various stakeholders include 1 You the software engineer You have a stake in maintaining your reputation as an excellent softw... View the full answer