Mobile Apps and Risky Behavior

According to app security analytics firm Appthority’s App Reputation Report (2014), 93% of the top 200 free apps for iOS and Androids exhibited at least one risky behavior. However, so did 89% of the top 200 paid apps. Just about every app requires that you click “yes” on the user agreement, which gives your consent to use your data. Types of risky behaviors are shown in Table 14.1.

Mobile apps, such as Twitter, Foursquare, and Instagram, routinely gather information from personal address books and other places on your phone. Apple admits that any app that gathers a user’s information without its permission is a violation of the law. Fortunately, Apple and Androids can only monitor apps available through the Apple Store and Google Play. However, there are countless third-party apps that are unregulated. If a user has an app that allows a company to access data on his or her phone and that phone is linked to the company’s network, then privacy violations will happen.

Google’s Street View Wi-Spy Snooping Scandal

Google’s Street View cars drove along U.S. streets—and later in Europe, Canada, Mexico, and everywhere else—collecting a stream of images to feed into Google Maps. Google’s engineers realized that the cars could be used for wardriving—driving around sniffing out and mapping the physical location of the world’s Wi-Fi routers. Wardriving is also a hacking technique, an invasion of privacy, and an information security risk.

Creating a database of Wi-Fi hotspot locations would make Google Maps more useful on mobile devices. Mobiles without GPS chips could use the database to approximate their physical location, and GPS-enabled devices could use the system to speed up their location-monitoring systems. When Google was building its system, a few start-ups had already created their own Wi-Fi mapping databases. However, Google was not only recording the location of people’s Wi-Fi routers. When a Street View car encountered an open Wi-Fi network—a non-password-protected router—it recorded all the digital traffic traveling across that router. That is, when the car was within range of someone’s open router, Google captured personal data, including login names and passwords, the full text of e-mails, Internet histories, people’s medical conditions, online dating searches, streaming movies, and all other traffic.

According to the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) report, French investigators reviewed the data Google collected and found “an exchange of emails between a married woman and man, both seeking an extra-marital relationship” and “Web addresses that revealed the sexual preferences of consumers at specific residences.” The sniffing stopped only when regulators discovered the practice. Google denied any wrongdoing.

The FCC posted the following on its website: “Google’s behavior also raises important concerns. Whether intentional or not, collecting information sent over Wi-Fi networks clearly infringes on consumer privacy.”

The FCC determined that Google’s actions were not technically illegal because snooping on unencrypted wireless data is not prohibited by the Wiretap Act. Given that Google manages so much of our personal data, this privacy invasion is an example of irresponsible conduct.

The story did not end with the FCC’s decision. The FCC’s investigation into Google’s mapping project was itself investigated. The renewed attention followed release of a mostly unredacted version of the FCC’s findings in the case. The unredacted findings appear to contradict Google’s claim that it inadvertently intercepted “payload data,” or the content of individuals’ Internet communications, in the process of gathering information from Wi-Fi networks across the globe for the Street View project. The document shows that, during preparations for the Street View effort, a Google engineer shared e-mails with colleagues at the firm revealing that he designed software for the project that was capable of collecting payload data. The new revelations have prompted Consumer Watchdog, a Washington-based advocacy group, to call for a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law.

Tech-Savvy Individuals and Scalpers Exploit Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) was designed to make our lives better and more efficient, but that is not always the case. For example, buying event tickets online is more stressful and near impossible in some instances than ever before due to AI.

Tech-savvy individuals create macros, which are computing apps that allow users to input one instruction that coincides with a long list of instructions to be completed automatically by the program, to instantly and automatically buy as many tickets to popular events and shows as possible. Acting alone or in collaboration with “scalpers,” they resell the tickets at immensely inflated prices since the original tickets are sold out (Heritage, 2016).

One example of this type of unethical behavior was evident in tickets sales for Canadian hip-hop star Drake’s February 5, 2017 concert in Greenwich, United Kingdom. To the consternation of many Drake fans who had roused themselves from sleep to have a chance to buy a ticket, the concert sold out online almost immediately. With original ticket prices ranging from 55 to 132 euros, the scalpers sold tickets for up to 800 Euros. It is estimated that one macro developer profited more than 25 million euros using this method.

Texting  While  Driving

Texting while driving is comparable to driving under the influence (DUI), according to safety experts. Several studies indicate that the use of mobile devices is a leading cause of car crashes. At any given moment, more than 10 million U.S. drivers are talking on handheld cell phones, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Why is this a problem? Mobiles are a known distraction, and the NHTSA has determined that driver inattention is a primary or contributing factor in as many as 16% of all police-reported traffic accidents, and teen drivers are distracted by a mobile device while driving 25% of the time (Scopatz and Zhou, 2016). This does not include the thousands of accidents not reported to the authorities.

In most or all states, distracted driving carries mandatory fines. For example, in California and New York State, drivers charged with this crime face fines and have their driving license suspended. If driving while distracted causes injury or death to others, violators face jail time.

3D Printing and Bioprinting—Additive Manufacturing Dilemmas

Another trendy technology that has sparked ethical and other debates is the 3D printer and 3D bioprinting. Actual and planned applications include heart valves and other human organs (Martin, 2014). In 2014, surgeons used a 3D-printed model of a baby’s skull in an intricate surgery to correct a serious birth defect. Bioprinting of aortic valves and 3D bioprinting technology have been used by researchers at Cornell University to fabricate living heart valves that possess the same anatomical architecture as the original valve.

In 2015, 3D-printed airway splints for babies with tracheobronchomalacia, which makes the tiny airways around the lungs prone to collapsing, were successfully tested in three children between the ages of 3 months and 16 months (Hendricks, 2016). 3D technology may seem like a win-win with no dark side or ethical challenges. Unfortunately, that is not true.

Despite benefits, the medical application of bioprinting to produce living tissue and organs is expected to spark major ethical debates about whether lives are being saved or redefined (McRae, 2016). 3D-bioprinted human organs may be subject to conflicting religious, political, moral, and financial interests. The 3D printing of nonliving medical devices, such as prosthetic limbs, is expected to be in high demand because of longer life spans and insufficient levels of health care in various countries. A major hurdle is determining who is legally responsible for ensuring the quality of the resulting organs and devices? Without medical malpractice insurance covering these new applications, they cannot proceed.

According to a study by sustainable design strategist and Berkeley mechanical engineering expert Jeremy Faludi, 3D printers can exert impacts on the environment worse than those of standard manufacturing (Martin, 2014). The carbon footprint depends on what is being made and the type of printer used to make it. 3D printers use a lot more energy than conventional milling machines. 3D printers can use 100 times more electricity to produce a part than would have been used to produce the same part by nonadditive manufacturing.

Gartner (2016) predicts very strong growth in the 3D printer market with Greater China, emerging Asia/Pacific, and mature Asia/Pacific regions experiencing a combination of high 3D printer shipments and high growth rates through 2020. The growth will be driven by private-sector and public-sector organizations who recognize the threat that 3D printing poses to industries that don’t get onboard and continue to rely on conventional manufacturing technologies. As the use of 3D printing accelerates, so will the debates about the ethical challenges it poses.

Social Tools for Recruiting and Background Checks

In order to cast a wide net for potential candidates, social media are used in social recruitment. However, improper use of information scraped from these sites may be discriminatory and illegal. The problem starts with members who post age, race, gender, and ethnicity information—or enable it to be learned from content on their sites. To the extent that employers conduct a social media background check on job candidates, these are three best practices. Figure 14.3 shows the job levels that are typically recruited through social media (SHRM, 2016).

Recruiting through social media often involves searching information the job candidate did not want considered or that is illegal to use in the hiring process. To guard against this, it’s advisable for companies to carry out the following steps:

1. Have either a third party or a designated person within the company who does not make hiring decisions do the background check.
2. Use only publicly available information. Do not friend someone to get access to private information.
3. Do not request username or passwords for social media accounts.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has passed summary legislation preventing employers from requesting passwords to personal Internet accounts to get or keep a job. To date, 25 states have enacted such laws. Other states have such laws pending, and there are several proposals before Congress to do the same on a federal level.

Social Recruiting and Social Stalking

Recruiters see LinkedIn as the world’s largest resume database. Depending on how job candidates control their privacy and how much they reveal through check-ins and posts, recruiters learn a great deal of information that should not be used in their decision to interview, recommend, or hire someone. A 2016 Jobvite survey reported that 92% of all participating recruiters used social media in their outreach and that 87% said that they found LinkedIn to be the most effective way to vet candidates during the hiring process. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other forms of social media are also used.

Recruiters are also social stalkers! Almost half of the recruiters in the Jobvite survey said that they regarded photos of alcohol consumption and marijuana use on social networks negatively. And, interestingly were also negatively influenced by bad spelling in social media posts! Facebook members who expose too much information about themselves through social posts are vulnerable to employers and recruiters who use social content in the hiring process. Although laws forbid the use of certain types of social media information, it’s hard to monitor its effect on hiring practices.

And job seekers fight back in response to these somewhat questionable recruiting practices. Jobvite reported that 23% of job seekers have modified their privacy settings on their Facebook pages and 10% on LinkedIn. In addition, 13% of job seekers have deleted some content on their Facebook pages and 10% said they’d changed content on their LinkedIn page (Jobvite, 2016).

Protected Classes and Information

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC, 2014), discriminatory practices are prohibited. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), and Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) make it illegal to discriminate in any aspect of employment, including recruitment, hiring, and firing. GINA, the latest of these laws, was passed when results from the Human Genome Project started raising ethical dilemmas. Protected classes is a term used in these laws to describe characteristics that cannot be targeted for discrimination and harassment. Protected classes include age, disability, gender, religion, genetic information, race, national origin, and pregnancy.

If information about protected classes is used to weed out candidates, it can lead to corporate social media discrimination. Discrimination is not always black and white because it is prejudicial treatment that may be tough to prove. Although job applicants might not know whether or not their social media profiles had been screened, they have several ways of finding out. For instance, an applicant might be tipped off after receiving a suspicious friend request or by talking with current employees and hiring managers who disclose the information—either purposely or accidentally—during the interview.

Enterprises that have not implemented formal processes for the use of social media in recruiting and selection may put themselves at risk of legal complaints because of inconsistent practices.

Discrimination via Social Media Scenario

Imagine that an employer reviews a candidate’s activity on social media platforms and discovers the following information about him.

1. The candidate checks in via Foursquare at Woodsman Gym once or twice a day usually around 7 a.m., noon, or 6 p.m.
2. His Facebook album is filled with party photos, showing what might be considered excessive drinking.
3. His resume suggests that he is in his early 30s, but his social profile about high school indicates that his real age is late 40s.
4. His posts describe his religious beliefs and customs, family’s serious medical conditions, financial stress, and desire to spend as much time as possible snowboarding.
5. He makes fun of and posts insulting cartoons of people who follow a dress code at work.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has ruled that companies that research how you spend your personal time, hobbies, and so on, do not violate your privacy. Party photos might not show illegal behavior, but when posted on a social network, they could influence a potential employer’s evaluation of a job applicant as well as disclose information about race, gender, age, and other protected characteristics.

As many other job seekers, this candidate is posting, tweeting, and blogging information he would not want a recruiter or prospective employer to know about. If he is rejected because of his age, religion, or genetic condition, the company has committed social media discrimination and is very likely in violation of other laws.

Reducing the Risk of Negligent Hiring

In the past, employment law attorneys dealt with this risk by advising companies to avoid using social media in their hiring and recruitment process to avoid legal risk. However, that proposal is not realistic. By opting out of social media, recruiting firms lose a productive way to find candidates, which could cost them millions of dollars. Additionally, background checks must be conducted. Almost all employers do some form of background screening in order to avoid the risk of negligent hiring. Negligent hiring is a claim made by an injured party against an employer who knew or should have known about an employee’s background that indicates a dangerous or untrustworthy character. Employers have a legal obligation to make the best effort to protect their employees and customers when they hire. Steps companies can take to balance the competing risks of negligent hiring and social discrimination are as follows:

1. Ask candidates to sign a disclosure statement Let candidates themselves disclose information found on social media. Explain to them the reason for the disclosure statement.
2. Create a standard process and document it A consistent and well-documented process is needed to ensure and show compliance if there is an EEOC employment investigation.
3. Avoid coercive practices Make sure that recruiters do not pressure applicants to disclose protected information via social media by requiring them to disclose passwords or relax privacy settings for purposes of review by the employer.
4. Training This may sound like a no-brainer, but training and repeated reminders are important to emphasize that management intends to be in compliance with laws and regulations related to social recruiting.

The Importance of Being Able to Focus

Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel wrote in his book In Search of Memory that only by intensely concentrating can a person link new ideas and facts “meaningfully and systematically with knowledge already well-established in memory” (Kandel, 2006). He explained the importance of mental discipline to successful performance. If your mind is free of distraction, your mind is better able to absorb data, interactions, and trends and synthesize the new information with what you already know. As a result, you are more likely to come up with innovative ideas. If you are multitasking or are trying to function with only partial attention, your ability to synthesize information may be compromised.

Researchers at the Communication Between Humans and Interactive Media Lab at Stanford University studied digital distraction and focus. Researchers gave the same three cognitive tests to two different groups of test subjects:

1. Media (high) multitaskers Forty-nine subjects who spent a lot of time searching the Internet, gaming online, watching TV, and hanging out on social media sites.
2. Low multitaskers Fifty-two subjects who spent less time online and multitasked significantly less often.

Ten years ago, many believed that the Internet sharpened cognitive skills. Gaming required fast thinking and good motor skills. In contrast to widely held assumptions, the subjects who were heavy online users scored poorly on the cognitive test. One explanation for their poor performance was that they had attention deficits—less control over their attention. Because of their inability to concentrate for long, they were not able to distinguish important information from trivia. Researchers continue to study whether chronic media multitaskers are born with an inability to concentrate or are damaging their cognitive control by willingly taking in so much at once. Science also shows that the best strategy to improve focus is to practice doing it.

Michael Merzenich, a neuroscientist, gave a biological explanation of the impacts of multitasking on focus ability. He explained that the more you focus, the more your brain releases a chemical called noradrenaline, which helps you concentrate on the task at hand.

The American Psychological Association disagrees saying that “Although switch costs may be relatively small, sometimes just a few tenths of a second per switch, they can add up to large amount when people switch repeatedly back and both between tasks. Thus, multi-tasking may see efficient on the surface, but may actually take more time in the end and involve more error” (Wrike, 2015). Even brief mental blocks created by shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40% of someone’s productive time—that’s 16 hours out of every work week!

In our hyperconnected world, people are always on—collaborating, communicating, and creating—and not always aware of how technology impacts them or the environment. Today’s connected lifestyles will further harm the environment unless corrective actions are taken such as those listed in Figure 14.4.

Learning how to harness ICT to develop the next generation of critical, thoughtful thinkers who are respectful of the environment is the challenge we need to meet.

Global e-Sustainability Initiative and the SMART 2020 Report

The Climate Group’s SMART 2020 Report is the world’s first comprehensive global study of the IT sector’s growing significance for the world’s climate. On behalf of the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), Climate Group found that ICT plays a key role in reducing global warming. Transforming the way people and businesses use IT could reduce annual human-generated global emissions by 15% by 2020 and deliver energy efficiency savings to global businesses of over 500 billion euros or $800 billion. And using social media, for example, to inform consumers of the grams (g) of carbon emissions associated with the products they buy could change buyer behavior and ultimately have a positive eco-effect. Similarly to food items that display calories and grams of fat to help consumers make healthier food choices, product labels display the CO₂ emissions generated in the production of an item. By 2020, not only will people become more connected, but things will as well—an estimated 50 billion machine-to-machine connections in 2020. A benefit of machine-to-machine connections is that they can relay data about climate changes that make it possible to monitor our emissions.

Recommended Actions for the IT Sector

Analysis conducted by management consultants McKinsey & Company concludes the following:

• The IT sector’s own footprint of 2% of global emissions could double by 2020 because of increased use of tablets, smartphones, apps, and services. To help, rather than worsen, the fight against climate change, the IT sector must manage its own growing impact and continue to reduce emissions from data centers, telecom networks, and the manufacture and use of its products.
• IT has the unique ability to monitor and maximize energy efficiency both within and outside of its own industry sector to cut CO₂ emissions by up to 5 times this amount. This represents a savings of 7.8 Gt of CO₂ per year by 2020, which is greater than the 2010 annual emissions of either the United States or China.

The SMART 2020 Report gives a picture of the IT industry’s role in addressing global climate change and facilitating efficient and low-carbon development. The role of IT includes emission reduction and energy savings not only in the sector itself, but also by transforming how and where people work. The most obvious ways are by substituting digital formats—telework, videoconferencing, e-paper, and mobile and e-commerce—for physical formats. Researchers estimate that replacing physical products/services with their digital equivalents would provide 6% of the total benefits the IT sector can deliver. Greater benefits are achieved when IT is applied to other industries. Examples of those industries are smart building design and use, smart logistics, smart electricity grids, and smart industrial motor systems.

Global Warming: A Hot Debate

Does our society have the capacity to endure in such a way that the 9 billion people expected on the earth by 2050 will all be able to achieve a basic quality of life? The answer is uncertain—and hotly debated. As you read, many scientists and experts are extremely alarmed by global warming and climate change, but other experts outright deny that they are occurring.

This debate may be resolved to some degree by NASA. A NASA spacecraft was designed to make precise measurements of CO₂ in the earth’s atmosphere. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) was launched in July 2014. The observatory is NASA’s first satellite mission dedicated to studying CO₂, a critical component of the earth’s carbon cycle that is the most prevalent human-produced GHG driving changes in the earth’s climate (Figure 14.7).

OCO-2 is a new tool for understanding both the sources of CO₂ emissions and the natural processes that remove CO₂ from the atmosphere and how they are changing over time. The mission’s data will help scientists reduce uncertainties in forecasts of how much CO₂ is in the atmosphere and improve the accuracy of global climate change predictions.

According to NASA, since the start of the Industrial Revolution more than 200 years ago, the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities have led to an unprecedented buildup in GHGs. Human activities have increased the level of CO₂ by more than 25% in just the past half century.

It is possible that we are living far beyond the earth’s capacity to support human life. While sustainability is about the future of our society, for businesses, it is also about return on investment (ROI). Businesses need to respect environmental limits, but also need to show an ROI.

Sustainability Through Climate Change Mitigation

There are no easy or convenient solutions to carbon emissions from the fossil fuels burned to power today’s tech dependencies. But there are pathways to solutions, and every IT user, enterprise, and nation plays a role in climate change mitigation. Climate change mitigation is any action to limit the magnitude of long-term climate change. Examples of mitigation include switching to low-carbon renewable energy sources and reducing the amount of energy consumed by power stations by increasing their efficiency. There have been encouraging successes. For example, investments in research and development (R&D) to reduce the amount of carbon emitted by power stations for mobile networks are paying off. A breakthrough in the design of signal amplifiers for mobile technology will cut 200 megawatts (MW) from the load of power stations, which will reduce CO₂ emissions by 0.5 million tonnes a year (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, 2014).

Mobile, Cloud, and Social Carbon Footprint

No one sees CO₂ being emitted from their Androids or iPhones. But wired and mobile networks enable limitless data creation and consumption—and these activities increase energy consumption. Quite simply, the surge in energy used to power data centers, cell towers, base stations, and recharge devices is damaging the environment and depleting natural resources. It is critical to develop energy systems that power our economy without increasing global temperatures beyond 2°C. To do their part to reduce damaging carbon emissions, some companies have implemented effective sustainability initiatives.

Sustainability Initiatives

Communications technology accounts for approximately 2% of global carbon emissions; it is predicted that this figure will double by 2020 as end-user demand for high-bandwidth services with enhanced quality of experience explodes worldwide. Innovative solutions hold the key to curbing these emissions and reducing environmental impact.

Network service providers as well as organizations face the challenges of energy efficiency, a smaller carbon footprint, and eco-sustainability. To deal with these challenges, wired and wireless service providers and companies need to upgrade their networks to next-generation, all-IP infrastructures that are optimized and scalable. The network must provide eco-sustainability in traffic transport and deliver services more intelligently, reliably, securely, efficiently, and at the lowest cost.

For example, Alcatel-Lucent’s High Leverage Network (HLN) can reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) by using fewer devices, creating an eco-sustainable choice for service providers. Fewer devices mean less power and cooling, which reduces the carbon footprint. HLN can also handle large amounts of traffic more efficiently because the networks are intelligent, sending packets at the highest speed and most efficiently.

Technology to Transform Business and Society

People hold the power to shape and apply technology to create positive change, improve lives, and transform business and society. According to Paul Daugherty, Accenture’s Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, “The pace of technology change is breathtaking, bringing about the biggest advancements since the dawn of the Information Age. As technology transforms the way we work and live, it raises important societal challenges and creates new opportunities. Ultimately, people are in control of creating the changes that will affect our lives, and we’re optimistic that responsive and responsible leaders will ensure the positive impact of new technologies.” (Accenture, 2017).