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Regional News/Midwest

by Netiva Caftori
Midwest Regional Director

CPSR News Volume 15, Number 3: Summer 1997

The Chicago Chapter meets every two months. Recent programs have focused on topics such as copyright law, privacy, encryption, PGP, and technology in education. For further information check our webpage at http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/discussions/cpsr/cpsr.html or email the Chapter contact person, Donald Goldhammer <dhgo@midway.uchicago.edu>

The Madison Chapter has announced an exciting monthly discussion series for the Autumn. The series will feature regional experts and is designed to raise public awareness and build local membership.

• September: "Children in Cyberspace". Now that the Supreme Court has ruled the Communications Decency Act in violation of freedom of speech, what do parents and concerned adults need to know to provide a safe on-line environment for their children? Does the nanny "filtering" software work? Is there a CDAII on the horizon? All parents are invited to this meeting, with or without "Internet experience".
• October: "Information Haves and Have-nots". What are the social consequences of the concentration of information technology among wealthy nations? How does global information flow affect preservation of culture and distribution of wealth? What does universal access mean in telecommunications and in relation to the Internet? What is being done nationally and internationally to increase information equity?
• November: "Cookies and Other Threats to Your Privacy". What are the facts behind the 'cookie' controversy? Are website administrators planting electronic spies on your hard drive, or are cookies harmless devices necessary to provide better on-line services? The Internet Engineering Task Force proposal on cookies will be explained, and other on-line privacy issues will be open for discussion.
• December: "Grassroots Activism Using the Internet". Come hear how international alliances are being formed and enhanced using the 'network of networks.' The environmental movement's use of the Internet will be examined on a global level. In addition, strategies used by local activists will be discussed. Limitations and paradoxes of using information technology for grassroots organizing may also be discussed--Luddites welcome!

Several CPSR-Midwest members organized a panel at the Ethics and Technology Conference at Loyola University in Chicago. Here is a personal report from: Jim Huggins <jhuggins@nova.gmi.edu>

These notes are in more-or-less random order ... sorry if it seems like stream-of-consciousness.

About half of the papers presented at the conference are on the web ... <http://www.math.luc.edu/ethics97/program.html> and check the individual speaker list. All papers are in ASCII or HTML format, so you should be able to read it without difficulty.

I mostly attended the panel discussions, as most of the other papers were available on the web. One of the early panels, sponsored by the Center for Ethics at Santa Clara University, dealt with "The Unanticipated Consequences of Technology". Some thoughts from my notes:

• Tim Berners-Lee, one of the creators of the WWW: his vision for the WWW is "a seamless world in which all information, from any source, can be accessed in a consistent and simple way" (emphasis added). I noted how this embedded assumption is at the heart of many of the problems being discussed in the context of the WWW, and to some extent, the Internet as a whole today:
  • censorship by political bodies: how do you access 'all' information when a censor has to approve it first?
  • accuracy: getting 'all' information includes getting fraudulent or erroneous information.
  • copyright: how does getting 'all' information interact with author's rights to control information they produce?
• The recently-overturned Communications Decency Act actually had a far more reasonable basis that I had originally thought. The courts have consistently ruled that in TV/radio broadcasting, regulation of indecent material is permissible because there is no perfect way to protect children from accessing that material. Indecent material can be broadcast over TV/radio, but typically only late at night when children are presumably asleep and thus unlikely to accidentally encounter the material. The CDA was phrased in much the same way, basically applying the same standards used in TV/radio broadcasting to the 'net. As we now know, the courts have ruled that the 'net is a radically different type of medium, with different standards.
• One of the keynote speakers, Dr. Carl Mitcham of Penn State, spoke on "Why We Should Learn to Say No To Technology". He is a philosopher and spoke in philosophical terms. I've had no training in philosophy, but I did manage to pick up an interesting sound-bite or two:

  "The foundation of ethics is morality; ethics will not make you moral."

  "The essence of morality is saying 'no'." Cf. the Ten Commandments: "You shall not ..." and the Hippocratic Oath: "Do no harm..."

• Netiva Caftori moderated a wonderful panel on ethics and computing in the classroom-from elementary grades through college classrooms. Most striking was a real-life case study by Marsha Woodbury about a high school where students used Netscape to send anonymous harassing email. After the school email system was shut down for 48 hours, a student assembly addressed the issues of ethics in computing square in the face.

Note : All the presenters on the panel are members of a proposed new CPSR Ethics Working Group. The chair of this working group will be Flo Appel <APPEL@vaxd.sxu.edu> and Netiva Caftori will serve as the liaison to the board. If you are interested in joining this Working Group, please contact Flo or Netiva.

Originally from Israeli, Netiva teaches at Northeastern University in the Computer Science Department. She is the Midwest Regional Director of CPSR.

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