Ethics and Secrets

Reading about ethics for this class made me think about part of an interview that I caught on NPR recently. It was probably a rerun of this one: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4568035

The interview was with Frank Warren, who has created a blog where he posts other people's secrets, http://postsecret.blogspot.com/. The one that I remember hearing on the radio was "all the people who knew me before 9/11 think I'm dead." Deontologically (can the word be constructed that way?), that person is behaving unethically. It's a lie, it harms the insurance companies, probably family and friends...but, who knows? Maybe with a consequentialistic point of view, that person feels that he or she has done the right thing because of some hard-to-understand situation.

Ok, so what does this have to do with IT? Unfortunately...nothing, really. I thought it would be an interesting read for you, and I had planned to search the postcards for computer or IT related secrets that I could use as ethical or unethical examples...but, it looks like the posts aren't really searchable...and now I have to go back to work (which is the ethical thing to do, and, just in case anyone is wondering, I wrote this post on my lunch break, and not on work time, because I try to be ethical with that kind of thing).