The 25 European Union (EU) Member States require that their residents' personal information not be transferred to countries that do not protect that information adequately. In 2000, the EU ruled that the United States (US), through its voluntary Safe Harbor program, met that requirement. Since that time, however, the EU has charged that many US companies that claim to be in compliance with Safe Harbor policies are not. In this article, I report on a study of the privacy-policy statements of 20 randomly selected US companies that claim to be in compliance. Of the 20, 19 are not in compliance. This study argues that as EU Member States begin to examine Safe Harbor carefully, they are likely to force US companies to adhere to more stringent privacy policies. The burden of this adherence will be borne by US IT professionals.

Information-technology managers at United States companies are likely to be affected by recent legislation in the European Union and in Canada that restricts the transfer of citizens' personal information to countries that do not protect that information adequately. We argue that, from both ethical and pragmatic perspectives, USA businesses should reject the voluntary, self-certifying approach to data protection currently in favor in the United States. USA businesses should advocate instead for a European approach that mandates stronger data protection and establishes a government agency charged with enforcing it. If the USA adopted a European approach to data privacy, USA businesses would attract more customers and avoid the legal problems that are likely to result when European and Canadian data-privacy authorities begin to enforce their new laws vigorously.

Deep linking, the practice of linking to a subsidiary page rather than the home page of another organization's Web site, is the subject of considerable controversy. In several recent lawsuits, plaintiffs have alleged violations of copyright, trademark, and commercial laws. I review the legal and ethical issues regarding deep linking and comment on how the ethical conflict between rights and utility motivates the controversy. I conclude that protecting site owners' rights to control deep linking to their sites is a stronger value than enhancing the utility of the Web for users by allowing completely unrestricted deep linking. Finally, I recommend a collection of resources for Web developers interested in staying current with the evolving controversy.

The article presents an overview of the topic of Web access for people with disabilities. First, we describe the four basic disabilities and explain the benefits of making sites accessible, as well as the reasons that more sites are not accessible. We review the relevant laws regarding Web access, and then discuss efforts being made by vendors and professional organizations, especially Microsoft and the World Wide Web Consortium, to encourage accessibility. Finally, we describe major resources that Web developers might consult to assist them in making their sites accessible to people with disabilities.

The study of ethics is important for technical communication students and professionals because as workers and as citizens they confront ethical dilemmas and must act. The article describes and contrasts several foundational and nonfoundational ethical approaches. Analyzing two well known ethics cases from the perspective of the different approaches, it is argued that although foundational approaches are limited, they provide better insights than do nonfoundational approaches. Finally, the article describes a problem solving technique, based on foundational approaches and communicative ethics, that can be used by technical communication students and professionals to analyze ethical dilemmas.

Utilitarianism, the ethical system of free-market capitalism, is limited in that it sanctions contingencies. Immanuel Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative-to treat ourselves and others not merely as means but also as ends-offers a clear and powerful ethic that enables technical communicators to subordinate contingencies to an understanding of people as rational entities possessed of full human dignity. John Rawls's (1971) model of an ideal society derives from and extends Kant's thinking on the primacy of human dignity in an ethical system.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>