Technology Advancement Ethics issue in Malaysia

The development of technology is getting better and more advance as time passes which often leads to a complex ethical, illegal and societal issues. Thus, there were many ethic centers developed in order to examine the implication of the moral principles into various field that raise throughout the development of the technology such as the business ethics, engineering ethics, computer ethics and medical ethics.

The unethical way of using the facilities of ICT may or may not lead to crime or illegal action which is called cyber crime and in which is also increasing in our modern days. This is why computer security is defined to protect the CIA (confidentiality, Integrity and accessibility) principles of the users.

In Malaysia, technology is booming and can be said as the latest addiction to the Malaysian society, especially the internet. Hence, the increased amount of this interest tends to lead to ethical issue in various ways. For examples of the ethical issues are:

1) Unemployment - Technology advancement has lead to many unemployment around the globe as because technology is proven to be more cost effective and more productivity as machine do not need food or sleep. Job such as check in counter are slow replaced by check in kiosk and job such as those locals selling food on the streets are also reduce by food vending machine in Japan. Thus, from this Malaysian will also slowly adapt and advance to the technology change and who knows in the future what would people do when all those jobs are replaced by machine.

2) Computer Crime -More and more people are hacking into computers and programmes. A lot more crimes are being committed over and because of the Internet also. For example people can hack into bank accounts and steal money, or manipulate systems to cause destruction. A man in Australia hacked into a sewerage system and released millions of litres of raw waste into rivers and parks and sooner or later Malaysian will also learn from the expert and hack billions worth of goods/information in Malaysia. Other than hacking, there are also many people who use the internet for the purpose of meeting and kidnapping people using the social media or other online dating website. Many would argue that this can be prevented through proper education for the children  However, there are many out there who are still unaware of the risk involve when meeting people through online. Thus, leading those people to meet their online friend which may or may not lead to a kidnapping/rape case. 

3) Privacy loss - All web communications are subject to "eavesdropping". Browsers record your activities in history files. Cookies deposited by web sites collect information about you and your browsing. EG many online e-commerce sites use cookies to track buying habits. When these cookies are collected into a database, they may reveal identities of individuals and some companies even sell these databases. In addition, as we had a debate in class about human resource manager using Facebook to evaluate their candidates on whether their suitable for the job is also part of privacy loss. 

4) Freedom of speech - People have to respect Copyright laws, and many of these laws are being violated, resulting in other laws being enforced banning people from downloading things like music off the Internet. We had a debate last week about the prohibition of downloading music. It is good for musicians who don't want their music stolen, but bad for musicians who are wanting their music to be downloaded so they can become popular. There are also people who warp what other people say, or criticise it. This isn't fair because the Internet is open to anyone to say whatever they want.

5) Security -  it is becoming increasingly easy to hack into people's computers and websites. This needs to be stopped because hacking into someones computer is the equivalent to breaking into someones house - it shouldn't happen.

In conclusion, all those above can never be completely solved but it can be reduce by the online computer forensic FBI and with proper education on the ethical behaviour of using the internet is thought to the individual.