Harms and Benefits of Privacy, Whistle Blowing, and Winner-take-all Society

Ethics in Technology
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Ethics in Technology
Part 1
In the 21st century, scholars have raised questions touching on the ethical use of technology, especially concerning privacy. Despite a constant outcry emanating from privacy violations, stakeholders have done little to address the concerns. Informational privacy vests interest in how people control personal online data (Quinn, 2020). Informational privacy associated with technology presents both benefits and harms to users.
When using social media accounts and websites, privacy policies require users to provide log-in information consisting of usernames and passwords. It helps users secure the data in their online accounts from third parties. Equally, online sites demand log-in information to protect their users' data from hackers and cyberbullies. Privacy helps individuals prevent cyberbullies or criminals from tracking and accessing user IP addresses and metadata (Quinn, 2020).
Implementation of privacy policies is necessary for individuals who engage in online business transactions and access their bank details online. Online money transfers from one bank to another expose user accounts to hackers with sophisticated software and skills to access user data (Quinn, 2020). After accessing the data, they hijack victims’ bank accounts and steal from their victims or demand ransom. Social media accounts have also been hacked many times in the past. In April 2019, WhatsApp servers were hacked by Israeli tool developers who infiltrated the application's servers. The perpetrators gained illegal access to more than four thousand WhatsApp users' mobile phones. The majority of hacked users were high-profile government officials from more than twenty countries. The famous hacking experience stands out as a major privacy breach in using technology. In other cases, hackers have illegally accessed their victims’ social media accounts and defamed their victims by making inappropriate posts using the illegally accessed accounts. Potential employers examine the activities of potential employees on their social media accounts before hiring. If a candidate's social media account was hacked and his name tainted, it would be difficult to prove that the candidate did not post unprofessional content via their hacked social media accounts.
Part 2
Whistle-blowing is a moral duty by which people expose information about activities and projects that are illegal and unethical in their workplaces or society. Whistle-blowing within organizations is a policy that helps individuals to raise concern over fraud, corruption, and other malpractices (Watts & Buckley, 2017). Richard De George argues that whistleblowers must analyze the harm that whistle-blowing will cause to the public and the organization. He emphasizes that the whistleblower should be equipped with concrete evidence before acting. Criticisms against Richard de George's arguments incline towards dismissing the need for appropriate evidence before whistle-blowing. His critics argue that since whistle-blowing is everyone’s moral duty, raising concerns about malpractices should require little evidence. For instance, if a...