I think ethics play a huge role in the software engineering industry. You have to think about what you are creating and how that creation will be used in the world. If you don’t understand the kind of power that we, as programmers, have then you may end up making programs that you will regret or will negatively impact others. I think ethics helps us realize that there are good and bad things in this world and it governs our choices in how our actions impact others.
There are many different examples of ethics in software engineering but a specific one I will go into detail on is privacy. I read a reading on Google’s StreetView feature. The feature’s capabilities were interesting in that it could see pictures from the view of a street but there were many concerns on this feature. The fact that it could see things from the street gave the users of the feature the ability to invade on the privacy of others. The photos showed various things that were not meant for the public eye. The feature also helped criminals target places that they could rob from. Was Google wrong for creating this feature? No I don’t think the feature itself was a bad thing but instead I think that the developers of the feature should have thought ahead of what the outcome would be if the public was given a tool such as this. If we all take a moment to reflect on our ethics and what is morally good for the community, we can be programmers that can prevent such breaches of morality like what happened in this case.