Computers are having a profound effect on social behavior. 51. {{U}}With easy access to processing power, individuals who, in every other respect, could be regarded as good citizens now find them- selves indulging in unethical—and even unlawful—behavior. The theft of copyright software is widespread, while recent, well—publicized incidents of hacking, virus creation, computer-based fraud, and invasion of privacy have been followed by a rising chorus of calls for a new morality in computing and new laws to protect citizens from computerized anarchy.{{/U}}
52. {{U}}In the short span of forty years, computers have become central to the operation of com- plex societies: Without computers and communication systems, much of manufacturing, industry, commerce, transport and distribution, government, the military, health services, education, and research would grind to a halt. Yet as society becomes more dependent on computers, it also be- comes more vulnerable to the misuse of computers by human beings.{{/U}}
53. {{U}}The very existence of computers has created a new range of social problems or issues with which we urgently need to grapple. These include the theft of software, the use of computers to commit fraud, the phenomenon of hacking, sabotage in the form of viruses, the unreliability of computers and the vulnerability of society to system failure, computerized monitoring and theinvasion of privacy, the excessive hyping of computers by the computer industry, and traces of deterioration in the quality life in the computerized workplace.{{/U}}
Some of these issues are entirely new, but in other respects, computers have merely created new versions of such "old" moral issues as right (versus wrong) , honesty, loyalty, responsibility, confidentiality, and fairness.
54. {{U}}Because computing is relatively new and open field, the computer profession as such has bad neither the time nor the organizational capability to establish a binding set of moral rules or ethics. Older professions, like medicine and the law, have had literally centuries to formulate their codes of conduct. And there is another problem, too: computer usage, unlike the practice of medicine or of the law, goes outside the profession.{{/U}} We are all computer users now, and we are all to some extent faced with the same ethical dilemmas and conflicts of loyalty as computer professionals. Many of these dilemmas--whether or not to copy software, for instance--are new "grey areas" for which there is little in the way of accepted roles or social conventions, let alone established case law.