FREE ESSAY ON COMPUTER ETHICS

COMPUTER ETHICS

Computer Ethics 
Computer crime has increased in resent years. The book gives several examples of past
computer crimes. Before reading chapter 2 I thought that computer crimes only involved
crimes that where associated with hacks. But I learned that a computer crime is a crime
that involved a computer in any way. Even if it was just to close a bank account. This
chapter gave me a good understanding of what a computer crime is, it also made me think
how could I make some money. By reading this chapter I was surprised to learn that most
computer crimes are committed by people that don't have an extensive understanding of
computers, but by opportunist. In one of the cases I read about, a group of hackers
figured out a way to intrude into the bank system but didn't do any damage to the bank.
Then they tried to sell their knowledge to the bank and got arrested. It seemed unfair to
me that for trying to help the bank they got arrested. In many cases the people accused
of computer crime do it without know what they do. As in the example of the 8 year old
boy that transferred 1,000,000 dollars to his account "by inserting a envelope with a
cartoon of cereal in it and pressing 1 many times". I thought the book made a good point
in saying that most computer crimes are kept secret from the public by the victims
especially banks so people won't loose their trust in them. I think all people come to a
point in their life that they have the opportunity to enrich them self illegally without
getting caught and that's where a descent and ethical person is reveled. Software theft
is a very commune type of crime. Crimes that all off us commit, but don't feel neither
wrong in committing it nor will stop doing it for several reasons. Software companies
charge unrealistically high for software packages. Users personally won't be penalized
for doing so. Nobody wants to pay for something they can get for free. But at the same
time programmers want to be compensated for their work. To tell you the truth I don't
understand the point of software developers that want for all software to be free. If
software was free, who will pay our salaries and who is going to work for free. Their
point is that, if the source code would be free that programmers could improve existing
programs, but who is going to work for free in improving those programs, I wouldn't. Its
easy to say for programmers like Stallman that are financially sponsored by others, that
"software should be for free" he is getting paid, who is going to pay us? I agree with
Pamela Samuelson "The existing system of patent laws is still the best vehicle for
protecting software". I agree with the opinion that hacking has changed in recent years.
Before hacking used to be a demonstration of knowledge of a system or of making a
statement that I'm smarter than most people. Most of those attacks where not malicious,
now hackers have become malicious and most of them don't demonstrate that they are smart
nor demonstrate knowledge of a system. Most hacks are people that have nothing to do and
go through the trashcans of corporations in hopes of finding manuals or passwords of
systems or going to Tec fairs to peek over someone shoulder to see if they are dialing in
into a remote system and try to get they password and username. I don't agree with laws
that punish hackers that do innocent penetrations into systems. I think that's a god
thing since those penetrations make the system operators aware of their vulnerability of
attack by a malicious hacker. If no malicious penetrations wouldn't be punished and
companies would pay for finding loopholes in their systems the number of malicious attack
would drastically descend. I agree with the point of view of IBM. I think that the best
way of eliminating viruses is by educating programmers about the damage those viruses
cause and that they are wrong and don't demonstrate anything except the maliciousness and
stupidity of they authors. It is amazing the amount of money spent each year on useless
software that will never would be used or never work properly. As in the example in
chapter 5 in which 22 US service men died because of a radio interference in its
computer-based fly-by wire control system. In the first section of chapter 6 is about
Database Disasters. I don't think those are Database Disasters I think those are Data
entry disasters. In the past years I have heard a lot of cases of people which have had
their identities stolen or people and later on in their life's have experienced problems
do to crimes committed by the identities thieves. Even dough government is aware of that
officials fail to completely remove the erroneous information from databases. One of the
examples I found terrifying in this chapter was the one of the three young men that
filled their car with gas and the owner became suspicious and reported them to the police
so they could check on them. When police checked on their tag number a record came up
that the car was stolen a few years earlier. As a result one of the young men got shot
under his nose disfiguring his face for the rest of his life. In the first example in
chapter 7 where the woman died because a miss calculation of a computerized dispensing
machine miscalculated the required dosage of a pain relieving drug and as a consequence
the woman went into comma a died later on. Despite this error by there is more
probability for a human to make a mistake that for this machine to have made the mistake.
In the section where it discusses whether computers are intelligent I agree with the
people that say that computers are intelligent. As the example given by the authors where
computers beat 99% off all chess players still it is not intelligent because it figures
out it's plays by brute computational power and not by observation and recognition of
past situations. In the section of the chapter discussing id AI is a proper goal? Of
course it is! Not to the extend as Donald Mishie believes since it is too dangerous. AI
can't replace government and judicial systems. What if such a system would rule to kill
every one that makes a traffic violation and no human could overrule that law? Every
human in his life makes a traffic violation without even noticing. What would happen? The
human race would get extinct and machine would prevail. I find amusing some of the
predictions made by scientists at the end of the chapter since they are so unrealistic,
dangerous and crazy. I think the American work environment is the perfect one since it is
not that laid back but at the same time doesn't go to the extreme of the Japanese who
create stress so workers produce more or even push their workers until they break. I
think there has to be some kind of stress or no work would be done. By stress I mean
pressure to do the job or no work would be done at all. Programmers are often subjected
to a lot of stress during their careers since programmers always have a deadline and a
problem to solve in front of them. In my opinion companies should provide counseling to
workers on how to deal with stress and how to make it work in your favor.