The remarkable popularity of social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and alike, create new challenges specific to the digital communication sphere. As these websites engage physical and juridical users who share various information for the purpose of informing their followers or keeping in touch with peers, the activity of sharing implies the threat of confidentiality breach. Confidentiality is a major ethical issue that organizations are vulnerable to nowadays, in the advent of social media explosion (Lachman, 2013). I chose to focus on the violation of confidentiality due to social media activity, because many organizations are not aware that their digital communication may disclose confidential data, rising serious security threats. This is the case of Armed Forces, whose members have violated the privacy clauses, by communicating confidential information, such as their location or equipment used in secret missions (Farmer, 2014).
Confidentiality refers to the ethical and legal responsibility of organizations to maintain undisclosed information about their clients, which might otherwise jeopardize their safety, releasing clients’ personal information solely with their agreement (Fischer, 2013; Lachman, 2013). Confidentiality is both a matter of ethics and legal conduct. It concerns the ethical conduct, because it implies a connection between client and company based on respect and confidence and it refers to a legal duty, because the violation of confidentiality is subjected to many laws that protect it (Fisher, 2013).
The case of the Armed Forces violates both the ethical and the legal conduct, in different ways. Primarily, as the Farmer (2014) reports, members of Armed Forces have used their personal devices, tablets or smartphones for posting photos or videos of the Britain’s submarines and other equipment in the secret missions in Afghanistan and Libya. This is an ethical violation, because the members of the Armed Forces have breached the confidentiality of their employer and in doing this, they have also jeopardized their mission and implicitly, the stakeholders of Armed Forces. This consequence implies a legal violation, because the members of Armed Forces have disclosed restricted information without the permission of their employer. In the nowadays employment environment, companies ask employees to sign confidentiality clauses in order to prevent such situations of licking important information. Therefore, the posting of photos and videos on the social media platforms from the mission in Afghanistan or Libya is a case of legal violation of confidentiality.
In order to avoid such situations, it is recommended to provide trainings to employees on how to avoid confidentiality leakages and to permanently analyze the impact of social media on organizations’ ethical statements (Friedel, 2014). Preparing guidelines for specific professions informing the employees how to respect ethical parameters of the company is also a solution (Lachman, 2013). Finally, another solution to avoid confidentiality violation is to make the employees accountable for their actions.
The rapid evolution of social media networks takes by surprise the legal enforcements to protect the confidentiality or other aspects that have an ethical nature that must be extended to the legal spectrum (Fisher, 2014). Therefore, this topic is important for enhancing the transparency on how social media can affect, directly, or indirectly, the confidentiality or other ethical or legal aspects that pertain to business environment. It is worth studying because it can provide solutions for dealing with situations wherein ethical issue, such as confidentiality, are violated due to the corporate and legal environment unpreparedness to react to technological advancement.
References
Farmer, B. (2014) Troops leaked confidential data on Twitter and Facebook. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10948490/Troops-leaked-confidential-data-on-Twitter-and-Facebook.html.
Fisher, M.A. (2013) The ethics of conditional confidentiality. New York: Oxford University Press.
Friedel, L. (2014) Social media poses grave danger to companies’ confidential information. Retrieved from http://www.insidecounsel.com/2014/05/08/social-media-poses-grave-danger-to-companies-confi.
Lachman, V.D. (2013) Social media: Managing the ethical issues. Ethics, Law, and Policy. 22(5):236-329.
