ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct

ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct: 

ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct Submitted by: GUARDIANS De Leon, Sheila Bacani , Misael Ali, Hussam Sanqui , Florence Bitancur , Maricar

ACM – Association for Computing Machinery: 

ACM – Association for Computing Machinery ° Contribute to society and human well-being. ° Avoid harm to others. ° Be honest and trustworthy. ° Be fair and take action not to discriminate. ° Honor property rights including copyrights and patent. ° Give proper credit for intellectual property. ° Respect the privacy of others. ° Honor confidentiality. ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct THE CODE represents ACM’s commitment to promoting the highest professional and ethical standards, and makes it incumbent on all ACM Members to:

And as computing professionals, every ACM Member is also expected to:: 

And as computing professionals, every ACM Member is also expected to: Strive to achieve the highest quality, effectiveness and dignity in both the process and products of professional work. Acquire and maintain professional competence. Know and respect existing laws pertaining to professional work. Accept and provide appropriate professional review. Give comprehensive and thorough evaluations of computer systems and their impacts, including analysis of possible risks. Honor contracts, agreements, and assigned responsibilities. Improve public understanding of computing and its consequences. Access computing and communication resources only when authorized to do so.

Section 1: GENERAL MORAL IMPERATIVES: 

Section 1: GENERAL MORAL IMPERATIVES As an ACM member I will...

1.1. Contribute to society and human well-being.: 

1.1. Contribute to society and human well-being. This imperative is concerned about the lives of all people. People have different cultures and beliefs which should be respected always and at all times. This principle also aims to ensure a healthy and safe environment. Computing professionals should make certain that in developing their programs, their foremost concern should be the safety of all humans.

1.2. Avoid harm to others.: 

1.2. Avoid harm to others. Computing professionals should be guided by this imperative that with all their system developments, harm should not be inflicted to anybody. There should be no damage to property, loss in resources especially injury to people. To avoid negative consequences, computing professionals should check and test their designs and make sure there will be no malfunctions which may lead to serious loss of lives.

1.3. Be honest and trustworthy.: 

1.3. Be honest and trustworthy. Honesty is an essential component of trust. Without trust an organization cannot function effectively. The honest computing professional will not make deliberately false or deceptive claims about a system or system design, but will instead provide full disclosure of all pertinent system limitations and problems. A computer professional has a duty to be honest about his or her own qualifications, and about any circumstances that might lead to conflicts of interest.

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Membership in volunteer organizations such as ACM may at times place individuals in situations where their statements or actions could be interpreted as carrying the “weight” of a larger group of professionals. An ACM member will exercise care to not misrepresent ACM or positions and policies of ACM or any ACM units. Computer professionals, as with all other professions, are expected to uphold transparency in all industry-related matters particularly system information and design including all pertinent system limitations and problems. One good example is how open source software is developed in such a way that anyone can access the complete source code of a program allowing other users to identify bugs and fix them. Claims about one’s qualifications and any other circumstances that might lead to conflicts of interest should be factual and supported by proper documentation.

1.4. Be fair and take action not to discriminate.: 

1.4. Be fair and take action not to discriminate . The values of equality, tolerance, respect for others and the principles of equal justice govern this imperative. Discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, age, disability, national origin, or other such factors is an explicit violation of ACM policy and will not be tolerated. Inequities between different groups of people may result from the use or misuse of information and technology. In a fair society, all individuals would have equal opportunity to participate in, or benefit from, the use of computer resources regardless of race, sex, religion, age, disability, national origin or other such similar factors. However, these ideals do not justify unauthorized use of computer nor do they provide an adequate basis for violation of any other ethical imperatives of this code.

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This imperative implies upholding fair treatment for all industry-related matters regardless of one’s personal biases. More public areas offering free Wi-Fi access are good examples of this. Most establishments use to charge customers for Wi-Fi access within their stores. As such, it was considered a luxury to request for such access including owning devices requiring it. But due to the proliferation of more affordable gadgets with this feature, more establishments now are offering this service to their customers. In turn, end-users are expected to use this free service responsively without violations to ethical imperatives similarly discussed for this code.

1.5. Honor property rights including copyrights and patent.: 

1.5. Honor property rights including copyrights and patent. Violations of copyrights, patents, trade secrets and the terms of license agreements is prohibited by law in most circumstances. Even when software is not so protected, such violations are contrary to professional behavior. Copies of software should be made only with proper authorization. Unauthorized duplication of materials must not be condoned. This principle states that duplication of material, legally protected or not, must always be done with permission from the author, creator, or owner. Unauthorized copying of legally protected materials is, of course, against the law. Unauthorized copying of works not explicitly protected by exclusive rights, on the other hand, is considered conduct unbecoming of a professional.

1.6. Give proper credit for intellectual property.: 

1.6. Give proper credit for intellectual property. Computing professionals are obligated to protect the integrity of intellectual property. Specifically, one must not take credit for other’s ideas or work, even in cases where the work has not been explicitly protected by copyright, patent, etc. This imperative talks about giving credit to whom it rightfully belongs. Passing off an idea or work as one’s own when it really comes from someone else is not acceptable behaviour for professionals, whether the idea or work is protected or not. All computing professionals are required by the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct to protect and respect intellectual property.

1.7. Respect the privacy of others.: 

1.7. Respect the privacy of others. The advancement of computing and information technology enabled mankind to collect and exchange information on a very large scale. Alongside with this, the proliferation of personal information exchange meant that there is also an increase in potential for violating the privacy of individuals and groups. While users must be cautious with whom they exchange information with, the professionals in computer security must be responsible with maintaining the privacy and integrity of private information of individuals.

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Additionally, there must be an established system for the individuals to allow reviewing of their records and correcting inaccuracies. Personal information security is a serious concern, that is why only the necessary amount of information must be collected in the system. Retention and disposal of information must be clearly defined and enforced, and the information collected for a specific purpose must not be used for any other purpose without the consent of affected individuals. These principles should apply not only to electronic communications, but also to procedures that capture or monitor user data, without the permission of the users or bona fide authorization related to system operation and maintenance. All user data and information collected must be treated with utmost confidentiality, except in cases where it is an evidence for the violation of law (as in the case of CCTV recording of BSP concerning a man stabbing his girlfriend and running over her with a car in a parking lot) and organizational regulations.

1.8. Honor confidentiality.: 

1.8. Honor confidentiality. The principle of honesty is applicable to issues of confidentiality of information. It means that confidentiality must be implicitly honoured. Individuals must be informed that information is collected, and how this information will be used.

Sample Violations on Section 1 of ACM Code of Ethics: 

Sample Violations on Section 1 of ACM Code of Ethics VIOLATION OF SECTION 1.2. Avoid harm to others. The Silicon Valley incident caused the indictment of Randy Samuels (formerly employed as a programmer at Silicon Techtronics , Inc.) on charges of manslaughter. According to the indictment, Samuels negligently misinterpreted the formula which led to the gruesome death of Matthews. This incident is a clear example of violation of Section 1.2. of ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct .

VIOLATION OF SECTION 1.2.: 

VIOLATION OF SECTION 1.2. 1.2. Avoid harm to others. Silicon Valley Programmer Indicted For Manslaughter: Program Error Caused Death by Robot Mabel Muckraker Special to the Silicon Valley Sentinel-Observer Silicon Valley, USA Jane McMurdock , prosecuting attorney for the city of Silicon Valley, announced today the indictment of Randy Samuels on charges of manslaughter. Samuels was formerly employed as a programmer at Silicon Techtronics Inc., one of Silicon Valley's newest entries into the high-tech arena. The charge involves the death of Bart Matthews, who was killed last May by an assembly-line robot. Matthews worked as a robot operator at Cybernetics Inc., in Silicon Heights. He was crushed to death when the robot he was operating malfunctioned and started to wave its "arm" violently. The robot arm struck Matthews, throwing him against a wall and crushing his skull. Matthews died almost instantly. The case has shocked and angered many in Silicon Valley.

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According to the indictment, Samuels wrote the particular piece of computer program responsible for the robot malfunction. "There's a smoking gun!" McMurdock announced triumphantly at a press conference held in the Hall of Justice. "We have the handwritten formula, provided by the project physicist, which Samuels was supposed to program. But, he negligently misinterpreted the formula, leading to this gruesome death. Society must protect itself against programmers who make careless mistakes or else no one will be safe, least of all our families and our children."

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The Sentinel-Observer has obtained a copy of the handwritten formula in question. There are actually three similar formulas, scrawled on a piece of yellow legal pad paper. Each formula describes the motion of the robot arm in one direction: east-west, north-south and up-down. The Sentinel-Observer showed the formulas to Bill Park, a professor of physics at Silicon Valley University. He confirmed that these equations could be used to describe the motion of a robot arm. The Sentinel-Observer then showed Park the program code, written by the accused in the C programming language. We asked Park, who is fluent in C and several other languages, whether the program code was correct for the given robot-arm formulas.

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Park's response was immediate. He exclaimed, "By Jove! It looks like he misinterpreted the y-dots in the formulas as y-bars, and he made the same mistake for the x's and the z's . He was supposed to use the derivatives, but he took the averages instead. He's guilty as hell, if you ask me.“ The Sentinel-Observer was unable to contact Samuels for comment. "He is deeply depressed about all this," his live-in girlfriend told us over the phone, "but Randy believes he will be acquitted when he gets a chance to tell his side of the story."

VIOLATION OF SECTION 1.5. : 

VIOLATION OF SECTION 1.5. 1.5. Honor property rights including copyrights and patent. MANILA, Philippines - An international law expert claimed yesterday that the decision of the Supreme Court (SC) that cleared an associate justice of plagiarism could be considered a violation of the international convention on copyright. Former Dean Merlin Magallona of the University of thePhilippines College of Law said the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works defines plagiarism “in terms of result, not in terms of intention.”

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Magallona and other UP law professors said this definition is contrary to what the SC decision that cleared Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo stated, that there should be malicious intent for plagiarism to exist. He said a “breach of an international convention preceded from the acts of the High Court.” It is the duty of the Philippines to adhere to the convention as its obligation as a state party to it, he added. UP College of Law professors also assailed the SC order directing them to explain why they should not be penalized for criticizing the concerned justice.

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Magallona , who is among the 37 UP professors named respondents in the show cause order issued by the SC, is an international law expert and had served as undersecretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Del Castillo was accused of copying without proper attribution some quotes and footnotes from three foreign law journals in a ruling issued last April that junked the bid of over 70 Filipino women abused during the World War II to compel the government to support their demands for official apology and reparations from Tokyo. The SC justices voted 10-2 clearing Del Castillo of plagiarism last week. The SC said the alleged plagiarism was a result of an “accidental removal of proper attributions to the three authors” by Del Castillo’s legal researcher while drafting the decision on a computer.

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Magallona admitted that there has not been a case where a country was sanctioned for a violation of the provisions of the convention on plagiarism. But according to Magallona , the writers in the journals that have allegedly been plagiarized “are likely to connect themselves to their government” so the state, if it is a party to the convention, could bring the issue forward. “If state parties would make a complaint, the convention would initiate a settlement of a dispute,” Magallona said. He said that if the matter is not resolved through arbitration, the matter could be brought up before the International Court of Justice.

REFERENCES:: 

REFERENCES: http://www.umsl.edu/ ~sauterv/analysis/ACMcode.pdf http://plone.acm.org/membership/COE_Flyer.pdf http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=623377&publicationSubCategoryId=63 http://www.onlineethics.org/Resources/Cases/killerrobot/article-1.aspx