Ethical Reasoning 2: Honor Confidentially

Problem Definition

The second ethical issue concerns the confidentiality of data collected from the users. According to ACM Code of Ethics Principle 1.7 "A computing professional should honor Confidentiality" and ACM Code Of Ethics Principle 2.9 "A computing professional should design and Implement Systems that are robustly and usably secure", computing professional is often entrusted with clients' data and breaches of data may cause harm. Although we shall never share the data with any third party, there is still a possibility of a breach which could be due to hackers or accidental data leaks. Therefore, we shall implement further measures to ensure the security and confidentiality of the data.

Gathering Information

Stakeholders

Developers:

Be aware of potential security breaches, threats and vulnerabilities, and implement measures to prevent them.
Detailed testing of the app's security features before launch.
Encrypt all communication and data in the database.
Maintain and update the security measures implemented.

Counselors:

Never disclose personal information of the users obtained during counseling

Public:

Understand their rights to data protection and confidentiality

Government:

Should utilize the data shared to them only for mental health-oriented study and research.
Set regulations to prevent mental health app data sharing to third parties or for marketing and other purposes
Enforce laws for cyber-crime

Applying Guiding Principles

The Deontology/Rights Approach

Follow the privacy law and set user’s privacy right as a priority when making decisions. Besides, a privacy policy is a legal binding agreement, the developers can be sued for violating the privacy agreement (Grauschopf, 2020).

The Virtue Approach

We, as developers, should be responsible for protecting users' data. Extra care must be done to protect the confidentiality of data collected. Furthermore, we take the responsibility of making sure that the AI system performs professionally and the result obtained after the process of data collection and wrangling must be private.

Utilitarian Approach

The only instance of users benefiting from their data being shared is if it prevents suicide, or part of a larger campaign to improve the nation's mental health as a whole. Therefore, we have taken liberties to disclose data only under these circumstances, but still with great caution.

Generating, evaluating and taking action:

Data will not be shared with any third-party, with the exception of emergency services or the government, with the purpose of improving the mental health of the nation.
The data will be anonymized before being shared to the government, preventing the data from being traced back to any specific user.
In times of emergency (e.g. impending suicide) the user's relevant information will be shared only to the emergency services, emergency contacts, or counselors, and only with the user's prior consent.

Our reflection on this ethical issue

Personal data collected by the app should always remain private and confidential. Users’ personal data will never be disclosed unless for reasons beneficial to the user’s mental health, e.g. suicide watch services. Building trust between users and the app is important so that the users feel safe and comfortable to open up, thus only can they benefit from the app's services.