Minor point: While I do agree that ethics course should be a part of CS curricula, wouldn’t managers be the ones who likely pushed for the pattern you’re remarking upon? (Ie ethics classes would be more useful for them?)
A friend of mine is currently studying to be a civil engineer. As part of his program, he's required to take multiple courses in engineering ethics and business ethics, as well as economics and law.
He's relayed to me numerous anecdotes from lectures all about engineers who caved to pressure from non-engineer business and political stakeholders. When the bridge collapsed or the building fell over, it was the engineers who were to blame. Again and again it was drilled into the class that you, as an engineer, are the last word when it comes to defending sound engineering principles.
They went on to learn about how this is the basis for the structure of engineering firms and that it's not allowed for civil engineers to work in a subordinate role at a company run by non-engineers, in order to prevent a non-engineer from ordering an employee to affix their seal to a building plan.
Perhaps we need something similar for software developers (seems a little absurd to call them engineers in light of the above, doesn't it?) I don't see how we'd enforce it though, since any kid can take a laptop into their bedroom and write a program with potentially millions of users.
I would agree that that’s not really the case here (since grading Siri using people means hiring people and that’s immediately a bigger fish), but in general everyone should keep ethics on their mind.
In the end I would say that everyone has to be made aware of and always keep in mind ethical issues since they can crop up everywhere, also places where a certain person has the most insight and others might overlook the ethical issue. It’s a shared responsibility.
I’m sometimes shocked about how careless developers approach ethical issues and since they are the one actually writing the code they can do a lot of harm.
Since we live in this capitalist hellscape all of this is unlikely to have any effect anyway …
The only other option, still risking the job, is whistleblowing. That potentially also breaks NDA and employment contracts.
We have no power over deadlines (cutting privacy features), budget, priorities or vetoing unethical ideas of product owners or marketing.
Silicon Valley, where the ethos is to get rich quick by accepting personal degradation and eschewing morality?
If you choose to work on such features, remember it's a choice you have made. You may come to the conclusion that your personal gains outweigh the damage you create to other people but it's still your responsibility. You can't delegate that away to sleep better at night.
There are more effective ways to fight it, they're not by refusing orders. You're not deciding someone's life here nor playing God and decisions get reversed with damage being mitigated if any.
I'm not seeing any of that. Just shrugs at being a mere pawn in a large game and trying to gain as much personal benefit out of it as possible.
But don’t just assume that bringing up ethical issues others might not even be aware of isn’t a fruitful endeavor at all. You sketched out the extreme case, not every case.
The reason: after World War 2, the university was located in the British-controlled sector, and their administration made philosophy mandatory for all students.
Because never again should young people be given the power of an engineering/science education without any regard to the ethical implications of the possibilities.
So what? Philosophy has barely anything to do with ethics. You can study philosophers that can argue for complete opposite sides of the same point at hand, so it does not give you any indication as to what is right or wrong.
And Germany has a pretty poor record so far in terms of privacy protections/provisions, so I am not sure there is any indication that post-WW2 or post-RDA experiences have had much impact.
Besides, nothing outside of dogma can "give you" a value system, but philosophy does present candidates. It's up to you to choose your own, the hope being that this is better than unquestioned inheritance of values.
As to your objection: differences of opinion do not render the discussion worthless. Otherwise, non-philosophers would have just as little legitimisation to argue ethics as they do, considering religion, politics, and kindergarten kids similarly have people arguing opposing points of view.
The argument is also selling philosophy somewhat short: Because while there are completely different paradigms of how to investigate ethics, they happen to agree on a surprisingly large canon, i. e. "don't kill too many innocents" (and, to incorporate the Greeks: "...and try looking good while doing so").
Many ideas of moral philosophy have become so widely accepted that we no longer notice them, sort of like the fish that don't have a concept of "water". "All men are created equal" came from those ivory tower talking heads at a time where it was a rather radical idea and got about as much ridicule as animal rights or the trolley problem are getting today in some quarters.
Programmers on the other hand, just like engineers or doctors or any other craftsperson, are only conflicted because ethics can get in the way of job security.
If businesses were the military, managers are the officers giving orders, programmers are the soldiers pulling the trigger. If your officer tells you to do something extremely immoral, it's your ethical duty to object even if it means you will be punished. Even if it will only be recognised as the right thing to do when your officers are brought before a court by another nation.
EDIT: As HN has ratelimited me again, I'll reply here instead: Yes, in the case of doctors the moral duty is in part enforced through licensing. But anyone thinking an absence of a legal duty means the ethical duties are entirely down to personal preferences seems to have a very short memory of history.
There's a reason in my military example I explicitly said "even if it will only be recognised by another nation": laws are arbitrary, fundamental ethics are not. The Nuremberg trials are an oft-quoted example because it was a case of people being tried for blatantly unethical acts that were perfectly legal in their own microcosm (mostly because the people supporting those acts were also the ones writing the laws).
If you're a soldier and your commanding officer orders you to perform massive human rights violations (even if your country does not consider the UN Human Rights legally binding) it's your duty to refuse, even if you suffer drastic consequences for that refusal. "Just following orders" has become a cliche for non-excuses thanks to people using exactly that justification for committing unspeakable atrocities.
Also, fun fact: the German military distinguishes between binding orders, orders you can refuse and orders you must refuse. A typical example of the second category seems to be "go and wash my (private) car". An example of the third category would be a criminal act. But even despite those distinctions a soldier might be legally punished for refusing to do something unethical. Extremely immoral orders are generally also orders to do something illegal (and thus illegitimate in this case) but that mapping is neither guaranteed nor necessary.
My point is that "doing the right thing" doesn't mean doing something that'll benefit you and "doing the wrong thing" doesn't mean something you'll suffer direct consequences for. Whether the consequences are legal, personal or financial (e.g. by being fired from your job), sometimes following your ethical duty comes with a cost. Nobody said any of this was fair.
In military, your duty is to obey orders of superior. If you break that, you will get removed. In business, your duty is to yourself and to business (shareholders) or to superiors. See above. You will get fired or forced to quit.
As a counterexample, medical practitioners have a duty to intervene when it's not endangering their lives, in medical emergencies. (At least in Poland, probably other countries too.)
Do not conflate duty with moral choice or moral obligation. Former is external, later is internal.