The advances in information technology resulted in new ethical issues that needed to addressed and necessitating the creation of The United States Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the Children’s Internet Protection Act of 2000 are to be addressed in this paper. The advancement in information technology such as the world wide web, search engines, YouTube, and virtual databases have made it easily accessible to obtain personal information, but also grant anyone access to age-inappropriate sites.
The United States Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (referred to in this article as the "Act") was an amendment to the Counterfeit Access Device and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984 (the "1984 Act"). It was the first comprehensive legislation in the United States to identify and provide for the prosecution of crimes committed through and against computer systems (Zegarelli, 2002). The initial 1984 Act addressed crimes in a very limited circle involving the government computers, but also consumer credit and government data, but did not cover any areas outside the afore mentioned scopes.
Technology advancements made it necessary to protect everyone’s privacy since it had become much easier to store and access an individual’s personal data within a corporation’s database. According to our text: “privacy is the right to be left alone and to be free of unreasonable personal intrusions. Information privacy is the right to determine when, and to what extent, information about yourself can be gathered and/or communicated to others (Rainer & Cegielski, 2011, pg. 79). Identity theft has become a very serious issue since technology advancements have made it easier for criminals to commit Identity Theft or allow companies to track one’s habits and create a personal profile of a consumer within seconds. The Children’s Internet Protection Act of 2000 was created “To require the installation and use by schools and libraries of a technology for filtering or blocking material on the Internet on computers with Internet access to be eligible to receive or retain universal service assistance”: (McCain, 1999, p. #). Schools and libraries were to be certified that they were in compliance with the Children’s Internet Protection Act to ensure their under-aged minors could not receive age inappropriate content on the internet while using the computers available in schools and libraries. Many Schools and libraries are using the internet to conduct research or to teach their school grade’s curriculum. Prior to the Act, they were no laws to protect children against the ethical threat of accessing age-inappropriate content.