The Ethics Of Leaks By Jerry Ceppos Essay - 2000 Words

On October 2006, Jerry Ceppos, a writer for the Santa Clara University newspaper, wrote an article called, â€Å"The Ethics of Leaks.† Within this article, the author defines what leakage of company information means and discusses when it is appropriate and unethical to leak company secrets and information. Ceppos states, â€Å"A good leak is the disclosure of information that expands public understanding of an issue of public interest - without harming anyone† (Ceppos). However, he lacked an important perceptive, and one major downside to his article is that the author only viewed the situation in terms of how the leaked information would benefit or affect the public. The author never explained in the article how severely a company is affected when its information is exposed to individuals outside of the organization. This is a key ethical issue all engineers need to grasp because the leaking of company secrets not only can affect the public, but can negatively affect a company. Companies such as Lockheed Martin, Apple, Microsoft, and Tesla have all encountered employees that released company information to the public. This company information can range from employee survey information to company trade secrets. Additionally, leaking company information is an ethical issue because it conflicts with engineering ethical benchmarks like the NSPE Code of Ethics, and can lead to major consequences for that company, and society as a whole. Lastly, I will demonstrate how a Kantian,