Computing and accountability

Subscribe (Full Service)


	Search: The ACM Digital Library The Guide

	Feedback

Computing and accountability

Full text

Pdf (5.91 MB)

Source

Communications of the ACM archive
Volume 37 , Issue 1 (January 1994) table of contents

Pages: 72 - 80

Year of Publication: 1994

ISSN:0001-0782

Author

Helen Nissenbaum

Princeton Univ., Princeton, NJ

Publisher

ACM New York, NY, USA

Bibliometrics

Downloads (6 Weeks): 13, Downloads (12 Months): 155, Citation Count: 11

Additional Information:

references cited by index terms review collaborative colleagues peer to peer

Tools and Actions:	Review this Article Save this Article to a Binder Display Formats: BibTex EndNote ACM Ref

DOI Bookmark:	Use this link to bookmark this Article: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/175222.175228 What is a DOI?

REFERENCES

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

	1	Alan Borning, Computer system reliability and nuclear war, Communications of the ACM, v.30 n.2, p.112-131, Feb. 1987 [doi>10.1145/12527.12528]
	2	Andrew Clement, Computing at work: empowering action by “low-level users”, Communications of the ACM, v.37 n.1, p.52-ff., Jan. 1994 [doi>10.1145/175222.175226]
	3	Fernando J. Corbató, On building systems that will fail, Communications of the ACM, v.34 n.9, p.72-81, Sept. 1991 [doi>10.1145/114669.114686]
	4	De George, R. Ethical responsibilities of engineers in large organizations. The Pinto case. In Collective Responsibility, L., may and S. Hoffman, Eds., 1991, Rowman land Little field, pp. 151-166.
	5	Feinberg, ,J. Collective responsibility. om Doing and Deserving. J. Feinberg. Ed., 1970. Princeton University Press, Princeton N.J.
	6	Fitzgerald, S. Hospital Computer Predicts Patients' Chances of survival. The miami Herald, 1992, Miami, p.,6}
	7	Hart, H.L.A. Punishment and Responsi bility. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1968.
	8	Hart, H.L.A and Ahonore, T.Causation and the Law. Second ed., Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1985.
	9	Jacky, J. Safety-crotoca; cp,{itomg. Hazards, practice, standards and regulations. Unpublished manuscript. Universityu of Washington. 1989.
	10	Johnson, D.G. and Mulvey, J.M. Com puter Decisions: Ethical Issujes of Respon sibility and Bias. Statistics and Operations Research Series, Princeton University, 1993.
	11	Ladd., J. Computers and moral responsibility: A framework for an ethical; ama;usos. In the Inforamtion Web: Ethical and social Imnplications of Computer Networking, C.C. Gould, Ed. Westview Press, Boulder Colo. 1989.
	12	Nancy G. Leveson, Software safety: why, what, and how, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.18 n.2, p.125-163, June 1986 [doi>10.1145/7474.7528]
	13	N. G. Leveson , C. S. Turner, An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents, Computer, v.26 n.7, p.18-41, July 1993 [doi>10.1109/MC.1993.274940]
	14	Littlewood, B. and Strigum, L. The risks of software, Sci Am. (1992), 62- 75.
	15	Mor, J. What is computer ethics? Metaphilosophy 16, 4 (1986), 266-275.
	16	Neuman.P.G. Inside RISKS. Commun.ACM.
	17	Nissenbaum, H. Should I copy my neighbor's software? Comput. Philos. To be published.
	18	David L. Parnas , A. John van Schouwen , Shu Po Kwan, Evaluation of safety-critical software, Communications of the ACM, v.33 n.6, p.636-648, June 1990 [doi>10.1145/78973.78974]
	19	Samuelson, P. Adapting Intellectual Preopery Law to New Technologies: A Case Study on Computer Programs. National Research Council, 1992.
	20	Pamela Samuelson, Liability for defective electronic information, Communications of the ACM, v.36 n.1, p.21-26, Jan. 1993 [doi>10.1145/151233.151234]
	21	Doug Schuler, Community networks: building a new participatory medium, Communications of the ACM, v.37 n.1, p.38-51, Jan. 1994 [doi>10.1145/175222.175225]
	22	Smith, B. The limits of correctness. center for the study of languate and information, Rep. CSLI-85-35, Stanford, 1985.
	23	Snapper, j.W. Responsinility for computer-based errors. Metaphilosophy 16 (1985), 289-295.
	24	Richard M. Stallman, GNU EMACS Manual, iUniverse, Incorporated, 2000
	25	Thompson, S.mThe moral responsino;otu opf m,au hands. In Polotical Ethics and public office. Harvard University Press, Cambrige, Mas. 1987. pp.40-65.
	26	Turkle, S. The second self. simon & Schster, Inc., New york, 1984.
	27	Velasquez, m/ Why corporations are nbot norally responsible for anything thy do . In Collective Responibility, I., May and S. Hoffman, Eds. Rowman and Little field, 1991, pp. 111 131.
	28	Weizenbaum, J. on the inpact of the computer on sociey, Science 176. 12 (1972), 609-614.

CITED BY 11

	Batya Friedman , Helen Nissenbaum, User autonomy: who should control what and when?, Conference companion on Human factors in computing systems: common ground, p.433, April 13-18, 1996, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
	Douglas Birsch, Moral Responsibility for Harm Caused by Computer System Failures, Ethics and Information Technology, v.6 n.4, p.233-245, December 2004
	David C. Walls, Integrating views on ethical behavior for computer professionals in an interdisciplinary environment, Proceedings of the 10th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education, June 27-29, 2005, Caparica, Portugal
	Carey Heckman , Alex Roetter, Designing government agents for constitutional compliance, Proceedings of the third annual conference on Autonomous Agents, p.299-305, April 1999, Seattle, Washington, United States
	Tomas A. Lipinski , Elizabeth A. Buchanan , Johannes J. Britz, Sticks and stones and words that harm: Liability vs. responsibility, section 230 anddefamatory speech in cyberspace, Ethics and Information Technology, v.4 n.2, p.143-158, 2002
	Laura Lally, Enumerating the risks of reengineered processes, Proceedings of the 1996 ACM 24th annual conference on Computer science, p.18-23, February 15-18, 1996, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
	Andrew Clement, Computing at work: empowering action by “low-level users”, Communications of the ACM, v.37 n.1, p.52-ff., Jan. 1994
	Mark Manion , William M. Evan, The Y2K problem: technological risk and professional responsibility, ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, v.29 n.4, p.24-29, December 1999
	Robert Schaefer, A critical programmer searches for professionalism, ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, v.31 n.4, July 2006
	Steve Sawyer , K. R. Eschenfelder , Andrew Diekema , Charles R. McClure, IT skills in the context of BigCo., Proceedings of the 1998 ACM SIGCPR conference on Computer personnel research, p.9-18, March 26-28, 1998, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
	Rob Kling, Beyond outlaws, hackers and pirates, ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, v.26 n.2, p.5-15, June 1996

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
K. Computing Milieux
K.4 COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY
K.4.1 Public Policy Issues
Subjects: Human safety

General Terms:
Human Factors, Legal Aspects

Keywords:
liability, responsibility

REVIEW

"Andrew Robert Huber : Reviewer"

Nissenbaum's thesis is that computerization is undermining accountability. Accountability provides value to society by motivating those most likely and able to prevent risk and harm to society to do so. Accountability, of course, implies poten more...

Collaborative Colleagues:

Helen Nissenbaum: colleagues

Peer to Peer - Readers of this Article have also read:

Data structures for quadtree approximation and compression Communications of the ACM 28, 9
Hanan Samet
A hierarchical single-key-lock access control using the Chinese remainder theorem Proceedings of the 1992 ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied computing
Kim S. Lee , Huizhu Lu , D. D. Fisher
The GemStone object database management system Communications of the ACM 34, 10
Paul Butterworth , Allen Otis , Jacob Stein
Putting innovation to work: adoption strategies for multimedia communication systems Communications of the ACM 34, 12
Ellen Francik , Susan Ehrlich Rudman , Donna Cooper , Stephen Levine
An intelligent component database for behavioral synthesis Proceedings of the 27th ACM/IEEE conference on Design automation
Gwo-Dong Chen , Daniel D. Gajski

Adobe Acrobat

QuickTime

Windows Media Player

Real Player