COMP7004 Class 05.4

This was an extra class.

But only one student turned up so I called it off.

COMP7004 Class 05.2 & 05.3

We watched the Arkangel episode of Black Mirror.

We discussed a number of issues raised in the episodes: the con flight between child protection and privacy, tracking, filtering.

I asked students to look at the activity Google had recorded for them using myactivity.google.com

COMP7004 Class 05.1

We discussed the DDR and how people in different countries can have different levels of sensitivity to potential abuses of surveillance technology.

We continued our look at privacy and began our examination of the GRPR.

COMP7004 Class 04.3.& 04.4

We watched Das Leben Der Anderen (The Lives of Others). This movie depicts life in the final years of the DDR (East Germany).  We will discuss this in the next class.

Students might also find Deutschland '83 interesting. Although some people have criticised this for presenting too light hearted a view of life in the DDR. It is available to steam for free at Channel4.com

COMP7004 Class 04.2

We looked at data protection principles very briefly. We will look at data protection again.

We looked at the sources of law in Ireland. In particular we saw the difference between a Directive and a Regulation.

COMP7004 Class 04.1 (extra class)

We looked some more at privacy and discussed whether we value yo it for its intrinsic or extrinsic properties.  We settled on extrinsic.

We discussed the video we watch last week about credit rating agencies and proposed some solutions to the problems raised in the video. Most of the solutions look a lot like the rules we have in Europe.

COMP7004 Class 03.2 & 03.3

We discussed codes of ethics some more and talked about the computer profession's obligations to society at large.

We discussed whistle blowing and considered some criteria for when it would be acceptable.


I asked students to define privacy.

We watched a video about Credit Scores.

COMP7004 Class 03.1

Students got into small groups and each was given a professional ethical problem to resolve. We discussed the possible solutions.

I was surprised by the level of agreement.

COMP7004 Class 02.3

We looked at the Professional Codes of Conduct for the IEEE, ACM, and ICS.

Students broke into groups and examined one of the case studies in the ACM code.

COMP7004 Class 02.1 & 02.2

We discussed the issues raised in the Would You Kill the Big Guy radio programmes.  Most students listened to it like I asked. But there were one or two spoofers who pretended that they did.

I asked the students to do the Moral Machine in groups.

We looked at other sources of morlaity.

We looked at logical arguments and common fallacies.