Ethics, morals and the information highway

In several past columns, we dealt with the aspect of the ever-changing realm of information technology as it pertains to you, the private citizen and businesses.

There has been an emphasis on how the changes will affect each one’s pocketbook as the technology expands in strength, capabilities and functionality .

Well, this time we are going to take a look at the growing concern with what is felt to be a problem that is and continues to reach beyond the scope of everyone’s ability to correct and navigate through.

Some of the greatest minds of our times are completely baffled and stumped at how to institute a means of providing a sustainable moral and ethical roadmap for the information highway, and the effects of the void are growing increasingly obvious with each passing day.

Consider the recent e-mail intrusion that claimed several high-ranking U.S. senators had died, even though they had not; and to take it even further, the e-mails appeared to come from each of their offices.

This, of course, created a panic and potential security breach throughout the capitol as there was a move to beef up security around the senators in question.

It is obvious that this was a case of hackers breaking into their e-mail accounts and, if you recall, I did recently write a column on this very matter indicating just how ramped e-mail hacking is becoming.

Furthermore, it goes without saying that the government is supposed to have the top cyber security hardware and software in place with protocols that should make it almost impossible to penetrate.

Yet it happens all the time and more than we will ever know or hear about.

One must ask the question, “What kind of ethics and moral understanding did the person or persons have who, without any feelings or conscience, felt it was perfectly acceptable to hack the Senate e-mail accounts? And then falsify obituaries indicating that they had died and send it out to numerous news agencies, both print and TV?”

I remember watching an episode of a TV show called “The Closer” that centered around a young woman who was the daughter of a prominent senator.

The woman had been murdered in a most horrifying and brutal way by a teenage boy, who frequented a particular Web site that specialized in bringing people together who were into what is considered S&M sex.

Now for the clincher! As the investigation progressed, the real situation began to unfold and it was determined that it was not a true murder in the sense of break in and robbery.

Without going into all the gory details, what had really happened was that an ex-boyfriend of the women was angry at the fact that she broke up with him and wanted to get his payback.

So he hacked into her computer, created an online profile relative to her being into S&M and then, from her own e-mail account, he posted it on a Web site requesting an S&M sexual encounter, which was false, as the woman was never involved in that practice, and as a result of what he did she lost her life.

This an extreme case, but it is something that is very possible as there are individuals and groups who operate in the dark and evil recesses that are void of ethics and morality in our society.

Consider that ethics and morality, relative to the information highway, have been studied and continue to be under intense scrutiny for the last 30 years and yet, to date, there is still an overwhelming amount of unanswered questions and the list grows ever longer with each passing day.

As the power and reach of the technology increases, it has a residual effect that comes with it of those who are going to be unethical and immoral having a greater playground on which to exact their sinister plans and desires without being seen, as well as being able to more effectively and easily link up with those of like mind on a global scale.

So how do we survey our society in an attempt to find out just how we, human beings, view and perceive ethics and morals on the information highway?

We will look at the groups that are studied on this issue and what has been determined about their viewpoints as a result of the information obtained from the studies.

Do you have an opinion or negative experience relative to ethics and morality on the World Wide Web or the Wild Wild West? Whichever you prefer!

- Andino Ward

Can data traffic clogging be resolved?

We now know that the cellular companies are in dire straits due to the proliferation of data traffic and the fact that they were not prepared for the overwhelming amount of use by cell phone users all over the world, to the degree that their systems just cannot handle the overload.

So what did AT&T Wireless do to combat the huge data demand from devices such as the iPhone and iPad?

Instead of trying to make things more efficient, they decided to take away unlimited data or Internet packages.

AT&T believes that devices like the iPhone are more computers with phone capability rather than phones with Internet capability and now they have changed their pricing model in order to capitalize and make more profit.

This change came mere days before the launch of the new iPhone 4 and the iPad.

Why is unlimited data so important?

Imagine you have a 600-minute cell phone plan and you go over your minutes. Unless you have something similar to AT&T’s Rollover minutes, you are probably going to get hit with some outrageous per-minute fee, like 3 to 10 cents per minute for each minute over the 600 minutes during “peak” time.

Let’s apply this idea to data plans. For people who get a lot of e-mail and attachments, or who listen to the radio on their cell phone, or are using a data card to get online — they can very easily go over the limit and get charged 6 to 10 cents per kilobyte over their limit.

Just to put this in perspective, a gigabyte is 1,000 megabytes and a megabyte is 1,000 kilobytes. The average digital picture size is 5 megabytes and the average e-mail size is 5 kilobytes.

AT&T claims that most data users do not need an unlimited package and use less than 400 megabytes every month, and this is why they decided to discontinue the unlimited package and lower the cost of a “limited” data package in order to make things more affordable for customers.

Why didn’t they simply leave the unlimited data package alone and come up with a lesser expensive limited data package for customers that do not need unlimited?

Why do customers now need to watch their cell phone Internet usage like their cell phone minutes?

There are many cases where customers were slammed with multiple thousands of dollars in data usage from cell phone companies — upwards of $10,000. I know this is an extreme case; however, there has to be a red flag at some point and it looks like the customer in the end will get hurt.

Well, I am not an AT&T subscriber, so what does this have to do with me, you ask?

Verizon Wireless has already hinted that they are going to follow suit in cutting their unlimited data package. Verizon has yet to pull the trigger, as they don’t want to cut the cord as abruptly as AT&T has; however, at some point in the not so distance future it will happen.

If the top two carriers in the country press the red button to kill the unlimited data plan, the question then becomes, will the other carriers follow behind them?

There is no clear answer to that question. Maybe other carriers like Sprint, T-Mobile and lower-tier carriers like MetroPCS, Cricket, Boost Mobile, and so on, may find it a selling feature to bring subscribers over to their side.

The only problem is that the cell coverage areas for high-speed data, from the lower-tier carriers, does not compare to the top two carriers.

The bottom line is that you need to seriously pay attention to what is going on and babysit your cell phones or else you could end up with an outrageous cell phone bill one day.

I am sure at some point you have either gone over your minutes or your text messages. Well, now be ready to go over your data package.

This is yet another mechanism for the cell phone companies to generate profit, as cell phones are becoming less phone and more multimedia devices.

Be aware and you won’t despair.

- George Bardissi