assignment1/a.tex

   1 %&a
   2 \begin{document}
   3 \maketitle
   4 Regarding the case of \JS{} I will bring out an advice for further action. In
   5 the first paragraph we dwell a little over the facts. Following we analyse the
   6 facts from different ethical frameworks. Lastly, the third paragraph will draw
   7 a conclusion and a verdict.
   8
   9 \paragraph{Facts}
  10 Surrounding the case of \JS{} we became aware of several facts.
  11 \Jo{} is a seasoned hacker and is thought of as such by his fellow students.
  12 Moreover, \Jo{} is admired for his hacking skills.
  13 \Jo{} was in his opinion challenged by a remark the teacher made about the
  14 superb security of the medical centre's system. \Jo{}'s fellow students did not
  15 thought so.
  16 \Jo{} immediately gave in and confessed
  17 while stating he did not meant to do harm with it.
  18 While the dean has a good idea of what hacking is in the eyes of computer
  19 science students. On the other hand, some others in the board see ``hacking''
  20 as deviant behaviour.
  21
  22 Not all information is relevant for the case. Factual information given about
  23 the location of the university and the courses \Jo{} currently takes are not
  24 relevant. On the other hand, some other information that would be useful is
  25 missing. Information about the curriculum concerning courses about hacking and
  26 security can shed a light on the motives of \Jo{} and what is common knowledge
  27 about, possibly ethical, hacking.
  28
  29 \paragraph{Ethical perspective}
  30 My gut reaction to this case is to not give Jon a heavy penalty
  31 but instead to let him go clear with just a stern lecture. The action was
  32 clearly thought through and but he did not seem to be able to understand the
  33 impact of his action. This intuition arises mainly from the fact that no data
  34 was touched and \Jo{} is a well-performing student. However, there is also a
  35 voice that says that because \Jo{} is a seasoned hacker he could have and
  36 should have known better.
  37
  38 Looking just at law one can conclude that it is justified to punish \Jo{} since
  39 breaching into unauthorized systems is against the law. However, laws form no
  40 absolute ethical wager and therefore we should test the case against several
  41 theories to form a conclusion. Law does acts as a kind of average of ethics in
  42 a society or at least the average of the lawmakers ethics.
  43
  44 The main two ethical theories are \emph{consequentialism} and
  45 \emph{deontologism}. I will analyze the case from both of the theories.
  46
  47 \emph{Consequentialism} is the view on ethics that dictates that an action is
  48 good or bad when the consequences are good or bad. From a purely
  49 consequentialists point of view \Jo{} should not need to be punished. This is
  50 because no files were read and thus no privacy has been infringed on and no
  51 negative consequences other than the time lost on this case have happened. One
  52 could even argue that the consequences were merely positive since the system
  53 administrators can improve the security of the system. This is of course a
  54 little short sighted because bad results have happened indirectly. If the hack
  55 becomes public the people will likely lose faith in the security of the system.
  56 Moreover, while the leak will be known to the administrators it might not be
  57 possible to fix it immediately due the nature of the breach or sheer resources.
  58 In short this means that in the eyes of \Jo{} his action had no negative
  59 effects but in contrary some members of the board will reason the other way
  60 around.
  61
  62 Another entirely different theory is the \emph{Deontological theory}.
  63 \emph{Deontologism} is the view on ethics that dictates that if an action is
  64 good or bad is only determined by the nature of the action. From the given
  65 facts it is clear that some members of the board think of hacking as an
  66 inherently bad behaviour. \Jo{} on the other hand thinks it is fun and does it
  67 for the sake of creativity and testing the limits of the system. The shift in
  68 normativity in cyberspace has been described by
  69 Nissenbaum~\cite{nissenbaum2004hackers}. This influences the deontological way
  70 of reasoning significantly since for one side the action is not inherently bad
  71 but for the other it is. This is a similar phenomenon that we see when we
  72 analyze the case with a \emph{consequentialistic} approach.
  73
  74 A sub in \emph{deontologism} is \emph{contractarianism}. In this
  75 framework the right or wrongness of an action is determined by what rational
  76 people would do.  This view on ethics poses the same problem as
  77 \emph{consequentialism} and \emph{deontologism} in the sense that there is no
  78 consensus about what rational people would do. The chasm between opinions about
  79 hacking results in a chasm between opinions about the sentence to \Jo{}.
  80
  81 To reason from a purely \emph{deontological} or \emph{consequentialistic} point
  82 of view can be considered dangerous since they are very absolute and allow
  83 strange loopholes. Therefore Ross~\cite{ross1930good} came up with a theory
  84 that combines the two systems in such a way that sometimes inherently bad
  85 actions may be taken as long as it serves a greater good. This theory can be
  86 projected on the case. \Jo{} committed an inherently bad action, in the eyes of
  87 some, for the sake of improving himself and the security of the system. Whether
  88 this is a greater good is again thought of very differently in the board.
  89
  90 \paragraph{Conclusion}
  91 It is not fair to punish \Jo{} severely, for example by expelling him, just to
  92 send a message. In this way \Jo{}, and therefore hackers, will be demonized.
  93 Also, one could argue that the university, as an academic organization should
  94 try to act in an objective rational way without setting a political statement.
  95 Hacking has more and more gotten a political connotation lately. Thus punishing
  96 \Jo{} very severely will send out a political message which a university should
  97 refrain from as much as possible.
  98
  99 A university is a progressive objective and scientific organization that must
 100 be aware of the change in normativity happening. Therefore my advice is to keep
 101 the original meaning of hacking in mind when giving a verdict. \Jo{} thinks of
 102 himself as an original hacker and acted as such. We  must not see hackers as
 103 deviants but as creative people. Together with the fact that \Jo{} handled
 104 accordingly by not looking at the data and wanting to report the leak to the
 105 system administrators makes me vouch for just giving \Jo{} a stern lecture.
 106 Moreover, to improve the view on hackers it might be fruitful to focus more on
 107 ethics in the curriculum. We can send a message much stronger than sheer
 108 punishment to the population by educating how to behave in cyberspace as a
 109 professional.
 110
 111 \bibliographystyle{ieeetr}
 112 \bibliography{a}
 113 \end{document}