2019 Summer, First Writing Assignment

You will be assigned a website in order to analyze its privacy policy and terms of use.

Please read the privacy policy and terms of use for the website that you have been assigned. (If you are using any browser extensions, you may have to suppress some of those to get to some of these pages.)

Please write a paper of at least 1500 words (about four pages of double-spaced material) covering:

  1. A summary of the website and of the website's policies. These policies must include those that you received links for, and may include other policies that you find relevant.
  2. Places where you see positive and negative aspects to these policies. These positive and negative aspects should include some mention of ethical principles; the ethical principles that you use are up to you. The ethical principles that you reference can be normatively formulated (for example, you explicitly invoke some form of utilitarianism). Or you could use applied principles from a particular code of ethics. (These are not mutually exclusive, and you are welcome to use both normative and applied formulations.)
  3. A comparison and contrast with the Electronic Frontier Alliance Principles.
  4. As part of your summary, you should note where you find any of the website's policies violate some provision or provisions of any code of applied ethics that we have discussed in class.

The principles for part 3 are:
  Electronic Frontier Alliance Principles

   Free Expression:
     People should be able to speak their minds to whoever will listen.

   Security:
     Technology should be trustworthy and answer to its users.

   Privacy:
     Technology should allow private and anonymous speech, and allow users to set their own parameters about what to share with whom.

   Creativity:
     Technology should promote progress by allowing people to build on the ideas, creations, and inventions of others.

   Access to Knowledge:
     Curiosity should be rewarded, not stifled.

   (https://www.eff.org/electronic-frontier-alliance)

For part 4, the relevant ethical codes are:

  1. ACM code of ethics and professional conduct
  2. ACM/IEEE Joint Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice
  3. Australian Computer Society's Code of Professional Conduct
  4. LOPSA / Usenix System Administrator's Code of Ethics
  5. Archimedean Oath

Please make sure that you put your name and email address in your paper.

Here's the schedule for this exercise:

  1. Your first draft is due by at the beginning of class on Friday, June 7. You will not receive a grade on this draft, and the only penalty for not submitting a satisfactory draft is a reduction of 1 point in your class participation score.
  2. You will receive your marked-up draft back on June 14.
  3. The final paper will be due by 11:59pm on June 21 June 24.