Choicepoint and Sony, an Ethical Analysis Essay

estim sufficient motive refers to what comes off as right or wrong to an individuals conscience .The internet age has brought round new ethical issues, non only for an individual but for the society as well as it has eased anonymous manipulation and distribution of in formation, creating new and easier paths for committing crimes like piracy, individualism theft, infringement of an individuals privacy etc. In this root we will be analyzing the Choice-point case and the Sony data despoil case from an ethical point of view. (Laudon &Laudon, 2010, p.128)BackgroundThe ChoicePoint Data suspension On September 27 of 2004, ChoicePoint,a beau monde that aggregates and stores in-person information, suspected that some of its small business nodes were baffling in suspicious activities and informed the police. (Paine, Phillips, 2008)On February of 2005, ChoicePoint only notified those residents of California whose data had been leaked to the extrajudicial customers, since a certain law in California requires it. A stand from the macrocosm, however, forced the company to notify the details of the breach to the other tortuous parties residing in the other states. The swindlers who swipemed ChoicePoint had created over 50 accounts with previously stolen identities over the bod of a year or even longer. (Pantesco, 2006)Look morethe issues concerning indistinguishability element theft essayChanges in business practices (Otto, Anton & Baumer, 2007) ChoicePoint do numerous changes after(prenominal) the 2004-2005 data breach. The company closed the 50 fake accounts and made a policy to refuse any faxed business licenses in the future .The troupe formed a new policy, that all nongovernmental organizations need to be re-credentialed in order to do business with it, and increased its procedures in verifying the identity of the company. More stringent and better business policies in ensuring the safety of their customers data, for e.g. partial masking of social se curity numbers were employed. The company continued its investigations of its databases for further indications of foul play and brought in outsiders to assess and right their practices. The Sony Data BreachThe Sony data breach was a result of an onset from an outsider party, causing an outage in the PlayStation interlocking and Qriocitys services mingled with 17th April 2011 and 19th April, 2011.A con buckramation from Sony revealed that pieces of personal information had been stolen from each and every(prenominal) 77 million accounts. This breach resulted in Sony shutting off the PlayStation Ne 2rk for 23 years. (Hirai, 2011)Sony stated that the chairman of the company had submitted explanations wanted by fall in States House subcommittee regarding the attack and that they were taking some measures to prevent further breaches. When questioned about the last out in reservation the breach public, Sony explained that theyd sought suffice from outside officials to conduct an investigation in order to comprehend the record and magnitude of the incident and hence forensic analysis and investigation had caused the contain since they wanted to subscribe all the unavoidable details before making the breach public. On May 14, 2011, Sony released a security patch called PlayStation 3 firmware version 3.61 requiring users to change their password upon signing into their account in the PlayStation Network. (Seybold, 2011)Compensation In compensation for this outage, Sony announced hosting of special events for their users. Sony wanted to treasure the loyalty of the customers who stuck to using Play Station network and didnt sapidity for other alternatives. Hence Sony announced an extension of let go 30 days of its various services for its existing users. Also, few of their games in the PlayStation network were made free, though these games are available only in some regions or countries. In addition to that Sony as well offered one years price of free i dentity theft protection to all of its customers. (Wesley, 2011)Ethical epitome concord to Culnan and Williams (2009, p.679),the two aspects of morality that are principal to the relationship betwixt information aggregators and information providers are vulnerability and avoiding harm.Aspect of Vulnerability compend Since the customer gives away his data in exchange for something in return, he loses control on how that information would be used in the future.(Culnan& Williams, 2009, p. 681) The firm that is aggregating the data has the commerce to exercise caution in protecting the consumers vulnerability, not only for the sake of the customer but also to build its own reputation.However, in the cases of both ChoicePoint and Sony breach, the consumers were vulnerable. Individuals whose data ChoicePoint and Sony stored lacked knowledge about the risks represent by Choice Points credentialing procedures or the way personal information was stored by Sony.Aspect of Do No Harm out line Most ethicists are of the opinion that data aggregators have the minimum duty of doing no harm whenever there is an issue concerning information privacy rights (DeGeorge 2006 Goodpaster 1987 Marcoux 2003 Valesquez 2003 as cited in Culnan& Williams, 2009), even more so when their treatment of the consumers polished personal information makes the consumers unnecessarily vulnerable. (Culnan& Williams, 2009, p. 682)In both the cases of ChoicePoint and Sony Data breach however, the DO NO Harm principle was violated and moral responsibility was clearly absent in the behavior of the officials of these firms. (Culnan& Williams, 2009, p. 682)ChoicePoints questionable intentions in delaying the notification of the breach to the public and the fact that ChoicePoint only bothered to count records that were leaked within 15 months to the term of the search ,until pressurized, were criticized heavily.( Evers, 2005)Further investigations revealed that ChoicePoint had been subjected to a s imilar scam in 2002.( Paine, Phillips, 2008)The fact that ChoicePoint could be duped so easily within two years proved that ChoicePoint hadnt done anything to improve its practices since the last breach. Similarly, Sony also had a delay in notifying the users of PlayStation network about the breach. The public challenge Sonys reason for its delay by speculating that, if Sony judged the situation to be so grave that it felt the need to shut down its PlayStation network, then they should have warned the public without any delay as well.Moreover, Sony failed to give any cover reports regarding the breach and merely stated that they cannot rule out the possibility of a username or password leak. One more thing to be renowned is that the fiends could have possibly gotten information like email addresses and first name calling of the customers who had consented to receiving information about new deals or products from Sony or its partners.Now, there is a pretty good chance that the fien ds might send emails in the format of a Sony webpage template and extract valuable information from those customers. Hence this breach indirectly paved the way for more unintentional breaches in the future. (Eddy, 2011)According to, (Laudon &Laudon, 2010,p.135),the basic Concepts of ethics are as followsResponsibility where the individual or the organization should accept the duties, costs and obligations for the decisions that it made. Accountability where the organization should be cognizant of what decision is catchn by whom. If it is impossible to find out who was obligated for what action then that organization is basically incapable of ethical analysis. indebtedness this basically extends the concept of responsibility to legal actions where the bear upon individuals should be able to get compensation for their damages.Analysis In my opinion, both ChoicePoint and Sony showed half-hearted ethics on these incidents as a whole. While Choicepoint did inform officials about the breach as soon as it found out, yet it only felt necessary to inform the public because of the California law. The people in the other states were notified because of public outcry. Also limiting the search results for leaked records to only 15 months prior to the date of the search just because it was necessary by the law was another stray on ChoicePoints part.Thus ChoicePoint violated the ethical concepts of responsibility and obligation yet they seemed to have understood their mistake when they were making changes in their policies and practices after the 2004-2005 breach, and were willing to take restorative actions. But it is debatable whether ChoicePoints corrective measures were taken to save its own business or whether it genuinely cared for the affected individuals. Similarly, though Sony did do necessary investigations, it failed to concretely identify which parties had been affected or what kind of information have been stolen.Similar to ChoicePoint, there was a delay i n notifying the public regarding the breach. Hence, there is a dearth of responsibility and function from Sonys side as well .The compensations given can similarly be argued to be a ploy for keeping itself in the market. While, ChoicePoint and Sony offered free credit monitoring and free identity theft protection severally for one year, they disregarded the possibility that the thieves might lie low and take advantage of the stolen information after the passage of a year. Hence these companies showed half-heartedness in being ethically liable as well.