Essay Contest

CPSR Essay Contest Winners 2003-2004

Congratulations to the winners!

Essay Contest Rules for 2004-2005

CPSR is committed to educating the public and our profession on the social implications inherent in today's information technology. The CPSR Essay Contest is intended to further that commitment, by encouraging faculty members to integrate topics of social responsibility of information technology into their coursework, and encouraging students to consider the issues effecting their lives.

E-voting: A Trail of Money, Lies and Deceit

 

Software's IP Crisis

 

Ethical Decision-Making in the Development, Communication and Enforcement of Information Security Policy

Abstract: Information security professionals develop, communicate and enforce security policy in organizations. Ethical decision-making plays a role in each of these tasks, as it does in any endeavor that pits behavior rules against actual behavior. Policy developers should make an effort to ensure that policies strike a balance between protection of the organization and the rights of employees. Managers in charge of policy dissemination and enforcement should be encouraged to act in ways that maintain ethical interaction between the organization and the employee. Finally, the organization should be willing to re-evaluate policies that fail to treat employees ethically. From development through implementation and review, ethics should influence every decision made in the lifecycle of information security policy. Introduction

The 2004 Winner

This year’s top CPSR contest winner, Jim MacAulay, is a student at Pennsylvania State University. Investigating e-voting, he told us, helped him to think beyond the technical aspects of computers and technology, to consider the role of technology in society. Often that meant confronting the skepticism of his friends, who viewed technology more narrowly as computer languages and coding.

Jim Macaulay