After several occasions of analysing articles, I decided to change my approach to them. I decided to analyse articles using the questions in a typical paper 2 exam, in order to practice for my test next year!
1a) Describe one social/ethical concern related to the IT system described in the article.
The social and ethical concern in the article is that the privacy of the stakeholders is at stake. Google's your timeline collects data about the locations you've been to to personalise your software. Negative impacts of this include the selling of your data to 3rd party organisations.
1b) Describe the relationship of one primary stakeholder to the IT system in the article.
The stakeholder is any user with a device that can connect to Google's "location services" (typically smartphone). The user can activate location services on their device to take advantage of points of interest close to them. Wherever they go with their mobile phone, Google is constantly mapping their journey.
2a) Describe how the IT system works step-by-step
First the user is prompted to activate location services. When they input their consent by activating it, the mobile device sends signals to at least 3 satellites. The satellites then use re-send signals to the mobile device, giving information about time and the distance between the device and the satellite. When 3 different distances are acquired from 3 different satellites, through the process of triangulation, the GPS software on the mobile phone is able to pinpoint the location of the user. This information is then synced with Google's cloud software and saved, then it is presented in "your timeline" on the Goolge Maps application.
2b) Explain the relationship between the IT system and the social/ethical concern described in Criterion A.
When the location services are turned on, the mobile device is constantly syncing information to Google's cloud. This means that a hacker could acquire this information as it is live and constantly being transferred and because the information being transferred is not encrypted, which is highly dangerous and could threaten the user's privacy. Furthermore, all of the user's information is saved on Google's cloud. This cloud may be accessed by Google which means that the user's information at stake, since there is no measure to prevent corruption. This information can also be sold to 3rd party organisations.
3) Evaluate the impact of the social and ethical concerns on the stakeholder.
This IT system has many positive and negative impacts on the stakeholders.
The main stakeholder is the owner of the mobile device. The advantages of this service is that the user can enjoy all of the benefits of Google maps and your timeline. They can find points of interest on their map whenever they require. Or perhaps they want to revisit a store which they visited before, yet have forgotten its exact location. Your timeline allows them to revisit that place with ease. Furthermore, this software can be beneficial to someone who wants to track all their journey's, or the kilometres they have walked, etc. It can also be a digital photo album, since it syncs with Google Photos.
However there are several disadvantages as well. The main one is that the privacy of the user is at stake. Since the information is not encrypted, it would be possible for a hacker to illegally acquire this information, which could be used for malicious purposes. Furthermore, this information could be sold by Google to 3rd party organisations, which would ultimately have control over the user as they could monitor their movements. This information could be used for data mining/data matching purpose to create a fact file about a specific person. Although this is beneficial to the Police Department or the government (as it eases catching criminals), it is a breach of the user's privacy. Furthermore, other social and ethical concerns include reliability and security. If Google's "your timeline" has no security measure, any person could illegally access the user's information and use it for malicious purposes (blackmailing, etc.). In addition to that, this system uses location services and the GPS, which are not necessarily the most reliable system as they do not work inside buildings. Therefore Google's system could be incorrectly logging the information of the user, which may bring great problems to the user in the future. What if the GPS software incorrectly logged the user's information and thought that he was in a gun shop instead of a restaurant? That would raise suspicion in the police department if a murder occurs, which may have serious implications.
Another main stakeholder is Google. The advantage of Your timeline to Google is that, through this software, they can make revenue by advertising other companies such as restaurants and businesses. They can also make money by selling information related to some businesses, like "how many people visited the restaurant, at which time of the day" which would be beneficial for the businesses as they can predict when most customers will come.
The disadvantage to Google however is that this system may increase the chance of corruption, which could tarnish the companies reputation if it is found that information is sold to 3rd parties. Furthermore, if Google's security is not of a high standard and a hacking organisation manages to steal this vital information, Google will lose its customer's trust and may lose lots of money.
Overall, I believe that this IT system has a negative impact on the mobile device user, as it endangers the user's privacy, and does not provide a reliable system. The disadvantages outweigh the advantages.
4) Identify a solution for the problem.
There is one solution to this problem that could potentially fix this device's privacy issues. If Google improved the security of their cloud system, and encrypted the data that the cloud acquires from the mobile device, then the problem of hacking would be completely eradicated. It would make sure that the user's data is safe from anyone who does not work in Google. This is why it is a good solution. However the disadvantage to this solution is that it does not decrease the possibility of corruption within Google and the fact that the user's data can be illegally accessed from within Google. This could be reduced by implementing policies to prevent that. In addition to that, the disadvantage of using encryption is that it would take a lot of time to sync and would require a strong internet connection and would drain battery life.
