Whistleblowing

After doing research, it seems whistleblowing is a common theme in businesses but may not be brought to light so easily. Whistleblowing is a person who is viewed as a threat to a company or per say organization. Their behavior is seen as wrongdoing and can be categorized as misconduct.

A series of cases of academic medicine failing to respond properly to unethical behaviour in clinical research that have been discussed in the literature illustrate the scope and seriousness of the problem. The Olivieri/Apotex affair is just another instance of academic medicine's ethical failure in cases of scientific fraud and misconduct. This case involves funding from a private pharmaceutical company, other cases do not. Yet the significant similarity is that in each instance, instead of supporting the individual who reported a serious ethical problem relating to research, the institution responded with the punishment of the whistleblowers. Recent history, as is illustrated by a series of cases that ultimately reached public attention, makes it unmistakably clear that there can be grave consequences for faculty, students, and staff who report discrepancies and concerns about unethical research behaviour. On 30 October 1995 a report from the Research Triangle Institute on "Consequences of Whistleblowing for the Whistleblower in Misconduct in Science Cases" (1) reported some of the personal costs of whistleblowing, as did the 5 January 1996 issue of Science, (2) as well as a 1999 issue of Science and Engineering Ethics. (3) Whistleblowers are ostracised, pressured to drop allegations, and threatened with counterallegations. They lose desirable assignments, have their research support reduced and their promotions and raises denied. Their contracts are not renewed, and they are fired. (4) Whistleblowers are obvious targets, especially in a time of financial cutbacks, re-engineering and downsizing, and everyone knows it (Strain,2004).

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-114007434/whistleblowing-academic-medicine-olivieri.html

Sends consumer incorrect billing

I feel this problem, occur often where companies get things mixed up and tend to send information to wrong person. In my opinion, yes I do feel the company should compensate the consumer for the time and effort it took to straighten out the mistake. But in reality does it really happen? No I don’t think so, companies are too big to go in and make every customer happy, I think the smaller companies may but bigger ones like for example; American Express who caused problems for a customer I don’t think they took time to compensate him.

“The nightmare begun when American Express sent me a letter saying that they made an error and sent a charge to another cardmember when it was supposed to be mine. Even in the same copies that they sent me, it wasn't my account number or my name or my signature; it was a charge of $1770.00. I called almost weekly for one year, they opened 4 different investigations and nothing. What they did to help me? Nothing! Everytime that I called the operator they only did one of two thing: open an investigation and tell me to wait the outcome; or pay the amount. But in each investigation they only write a letter without any explanation, just saying I have to pay.”

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/credit_cards/amex_incorrect.html#ixzz14dHxFvSd

Denial-of-Service attack (peer-to-peer)

“Attackers have found a way to exploit a number of bugs in peer-to-peer servers to initiate DoS attacks. The most aggressive of these peer-to-peer-DoS attacks exploits DC++. Peer-to-peer attacks are different from regular botnet-based attacks. With peer-to-peer there is no botnet and the attacker does not have to communicate with the clients it subverts. Instead, the attacker acts as a 'puppet master,' instructing clients of large peer-to-peer file sharing hubs to disconnect from their peer-to-peer network and to connect to the victim's website instead. As a result, several thousand computers may aggressively try to connect to a target website. While a typical web server can handle a few hundred connections/sec before performance begins to degrade, most web servers fail almost instantly under five or six thousand connections/sec. With a moderately big peer-to-peer attack a site could potentially be hit with up to 750,000 connections in a short order. This method of attack can be prevented by specifying in the p2p protocol which ports are allowed or not. If port 80 is not allowed, the possibilities for attack on websites can be very limited.” (Wikipedia)
When I think of peer to peer it brings me back to the illegal music downloading and that whole aspect. It’s crazy to think, that they refer to this DOS as a “puppet master” and you really have no idea of who is behind this scheme. And to make matters worse they are able to connect to over thousands of computers at once. What brings me to my question is what does the virus protections actually do for us that we pay for? Don’t they help? Obviously they don’t, because results shows thousands of computers are still being hacked daily.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack

Fourth Amendment

“The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures. The amendment specifically also requires search and arrest warrants be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause. It was adopted as a response to the abuse of the writ of assistance, which is a type of general search warrant, in the American Revolution. Search and arrest should be limited in scope according to specific information supplied to the issuing court, usually by a law enforcement officer, who has sworn by it (1).”

The government can collect information on a person, if they suspect they are criminals or danger to national security. The government is allowed to go after the people with search and seizure without alerting the person before it happens.

“MINNESOTA v. OLSON (495 U.S. 91) : April 18, 1990 (7-2)
A decision finding that guests in homes have constitutional privacy protections. In this case the defendant was staying with a friend when the police arrived and surrounded the home on a Sunday afternoon. The police phoned the home and the resident told the police the defendant wasn't there after which the police burst into the home to find the defendant hiding in a closet. The Supreme Court ruled that breaking into the home without a warrant was unlawful (2).”

1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

2. http://www.erowid.org/freedom/courts/courts_decisions_privacy.shtml

Relativism

“Relativism is sometimes (though not always) interpreted as saying that all points of view are equally valid, in contrast to an absolutism which argues there is but one true and correct view( Relativism).” A common phrase that can be used to explain any scenario is; What’s right for you may not be right for me. For instance, when i go to the gym to work out i use an iPod where most of my music is from Limewire. Is that legal? “Limewire is a peer-to-peer program that allows users to share music over the Internet. Although the program hosts files that are legal to download, it also hosts music that is protected by copyright law. Copyrighted music not purchased from the Limewire Store is illegal to download. When you install the program, Limewire requires you to agree not to download copyrighted music” (Is It Legal to Download Music from Limewire?).”
I along with millions of others do not pay for my music; my best friend who goes on iTunes to purchase all her songs doesn’t understand my reasoning. But yet, if she shares her downloads, isn’t she still taking part in illegal downloading because of p2p. My attitude is we paid so much money for the iPod now we have to pay .99 cents for each song. Apple gets you for everything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativism
http://www.ehow.com/facts_5007659_legal-download-music-limewire.html

Its Erica

Hey my name is Erica Pitrack. I am a senior here at LR, studying public relations. I am hoping to graduate in May. This fall, I will be interning at the art museum here in Hickory which I am excited about. Originally from Florida; transferred to LR 2 years ago, I was a member of swim team here but decided not to swim this year wanted to focus on school!

I love dogs… I have four- 2 labs, a beagle, and a chingle.

In hopes of graduating, I would love to be an event planner