Current Ethical Issue in Business
Big Ben or Big Brother is an article that discusses a major aspect of today's ethical issues in the business world. This ethical issue has to do with invasion of privacy. Each year, the national members and affiliated organizations of Privacy International present the "Big Brother" awards to the government and private sector organizations which have done the most to threaten personal privacy in their countries. "Big Brother" awards are presented to the government agencies, companies and initiatives which have done most to invade personal privacy (Privacy International, n. d.). There are numerous amounts of countries that participate in the ceremonies for these awards, England being one of them.
In this article, the writer is discussing that the small town of Newham, England has more than 240 surveillance cameras; every where citizens look, someone has cameras trained on them, watching his or her every move. That is 240 cameras in Newham alone, in all Britain there are over a million cameras zooming in on the population. A person could be caught on film around 300 times by the time a person gets to where he is going and back home again. The article's author, Underhill (2000), states "the closed-circuit television system may be intrusive?but its record blunts any public outrage; Figures suggest that a network of cameras in a town center can reduce crime by 70 percent" (p. 29).
The sheer magnitude of the snooping illuminates fears in the heart of society. The cameras are on parking lots, phone booths, elevators, public toilets, buses, and on all the roads that go into the center of the city. These cameras snap pictures of every citizen including drivers and their registration plates. Technology is so advanced that the ?face-rec ...