Cyberstalking
The Growing Prevalence of Cyberstalking
The prevalence of stalking is increasing. The Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates that 3.4 million persons over 18 were victims of stalking in a one-year period. Baum et al, Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, National Crime Victimization Survey, Stalking Victimization in the United States (January 2009).
More than 1 in 4 stalking victims reported some form of cyberstalking was used, such as e-mail (83%) or instant messaging (35%). In response to the growing prevalence of cyberstalking, the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence provides training and written articles (See STOP Newsletter, Summer 2009) to demonstrate how technology is misused to stalk victims.
If you have any questions or training needs on stalking and technology, you can visit the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence’s website at http://www.pcadv.org.
Sources: Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence. STOP Newsletter, Summer 2009. Baum et al, Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, National Crime Victimization Survey, Stalking Victimization in the United States (January 2009).
Photo Credit: Microsoft Clip Art
Nichelle Mitchem Shares Information on the Ethics Roundtable: Information Rights as Human Rights
Event Date: 15 to 16 April 2011
Place: Tucson, Arizona
Website: http://sites.google.com/site/informationethicsroundtable/
Contact Person: Kay Mathiesen
We live in an “information society.” Information and information technologies are increasingly essential to our social, economic, and political interactions. Given this, serious reflection on information ethics imperative.
“Information ethics” studies the value questions that arise in the creation, control, and access to information. The Information Ethics Roundtable is a yearly conference, which brings together researchers from disciplines such as philosophy, information science, communications, public administration, anthropology and law to discuss the ethical issues such as information privacy, intellectual property, intellectual freedom, and censorship.
The focus of this year’s roundtable is the relation between human rights and information ethics. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights lists a number of rights related to information (e.g., Articles 18, 19, 25, and 26). Such “information rights” include the rights to create and communicate information (e.g., freedom of expression, freedom of association), to control other’s access to information (e.g., privacy and intellectual property), and rights to access information (e.g., freedom of thought, the right to read). This conference will address several conceptual, empirical, and ethical issues:
■What theoretical approaches to human rights could be most fruitfully applied to questions in information ethics?
■What are the human rights related to information?
■Are information rights best conceived merely as liberties, which obligate states to refrain from restricting freedoms, or as welfare rights, which obligate states to provide resources?
■Are information rights instrumental rights, that is, do they promote the fulfillment of other human rights?
■What challenges does cultural diversity pose to a human rights approach to information ethics?
■Is there empirical research (e.g., case studies, statistical analyses) relevant to understanding the relation between information ethics and human rights?
■What are the relationships and possible conflicts between information human rights (e.g., the right to intellectual property and the right to access information)?
■Do we have human rights to access particular information technologies, such as computers, cellphones, or the Internet?
■What are the drawbacks of taking a human rights approach to information ethics?The roundtable is free and open to the public. –Information Ethics Roundtable
Organized by: SIRLS, University of Arizona
Source:Website: http://sites.google.com/site/informationethicsroundtable/
Photo Credit: Microsoft Clip Art