Wiretapping, whistleblowing and IT ethics

I found a closely related article to the Chapter 4 case study on how the telephone company is violating our privacy. The article brings up several ethical questions. Mark Klein, a retired AT&T employee, announced that "An exact copy of all Internet traffic that flowed through critical AT&T cables...was being diverted to equipment inside the secret room." The NSA had taken wiretapping beyond phone lines and was monitoring everything coming through AT&T's Internet wires. There are secret rooms set up in communication facilities like AT&T across the country. The NSA is not being selective in its monitoring, but observing all communication. The government is analyzing connections rather than content. The problem with this monitoring is that the NSA could incorrectly accuse an innocent person of terrorist activity or gather information for future cases not related to terrorism. The author of the article goes on to ask if you were Klien, the man working for AT&T, would you have blown the whistle knowing that it could cost you your job?

Since we discussed the ethical issue of wiretapping in the case study, I'm going to discuss what choice I would have made in Klien's situation. I would have most definitely blown the whistle on AT&T's involvement in wiretapping. This is too large of an ethical issue to be overlooked and needed to be reported upon immediately. It's one thing to witness a coworker using the copy machine for personal use, but quite another to know of an ethical wrong at this level. I think that Klien made a good choice and I'm sure a future employer would look upon this act favorably. There are several business owners that would appreciate this honesty and ethical behavior.

Mark Gibbs (2007, November). Wiretapping, whistleblowing and IT ethics. Network World, 24(44), 54. Retrieved April 10, 2008, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1388463031).