Most of these cases are based on real-life events. If you want to know whether a case is real or fictitious, ask your instructor.
A. The Case of Oliver Chong
Oliver, a journalism major,
has worked on the student newspaper all during his college career. He
has
also started an on-line version of the newspaper, in the form of a Web
page, where students can post comments and replies to articles. Since
the
SGA had no money for this project, Oliver established the Web page on
his
personal computer. Oliver also sells ads to local businesses; any money
received from the ads is turned over to the SGA.
One day two secret Service agents appear at Oliver's
dorm room. They claim a hacker broke into a local bank's accounting
system
and deleted data using Oliver's telephone line. They confiscate all the
computer equipment and search the room, finding a piece of paper with
an
access code for the bank on it.
Oliver admits breaking into the bank, but claims it
was just a prank. He objects strongly to the confiscation of his
computer
equipment, as do the rest of the
students.
B.1. Al bought an Internet name which he thought he might
resell
to a candidate running for President of the United States. The
candidate
set up his web site using another name. Al created a mirror site of the
candidate’s site on his page. The candidate accused Al of copyright
violations.
Al then removed the mirror material and posted items critical of the
candidate.
The candidate complains publicly that “there should be limits to
freedom”
and that Al should have to file as a political committee. Al posts
parodies
of the candidate’s remarks. The candidate charges Al with libel.
B.2. Bob, a professor involved in cryptography research, wants to
publish
his work on his web page. The U.S. has a rule that any encryption
research
must be reviewed by the Commerce Department before it is published or
disseminated,
and that the review must be conducted again before each
dissemination.
Bob claims his freedom of speech is being violated. The Justice
Department
claims Bob is exporting arms without a license.
B.3. Charlie runs a web site where sports event betting and casino-type
gambling occur. The Attorneys General of the states in the U.S. have
combined
to ask the U.S. Congress to pass a law against any and all gambling on
the Internet, and requiring ISPs to stop service to such sites on
receipt
of a state or federal court order. Charlie says if the law is passed,
he
will just move his site to the Bahamas.
C.1. Ann works for a large hardware company and is studying towards
a master’s degree in computer science at night. In one course, she
could
provide a good solution to the course project, but her non-disclosure
agreement
prevents her from doing so. The course instructor is not sympathetic,
and
tells her she has to invent some other answer if she wants to pass.
C.2. Barb is a private consultant. She wrote
a program for ABC Corp., for which she was paid. Later she sold the
same
program to other companies, among them competitors of ABC Corp.
C.3. Cathy is a private consultant who has been
hired by a textile company, Fabrics 'R' Us, to recommend a software
company
to supply accounting and inventory tracking software. She recommends
that
Fabrics 'R' Us accept the bid from Vaporware, Inc. She does not tell
Fabrics
'R' Us that she owns Vaporware, Inc.
D.1. Lori works for Archway, a computer company
that sells custom-designed computers. Lori knows that parts are
available
which minimize bad effects on the environment, ranging from waste
disposal
to power use. However, these parts cost more than the parts Archway
uses,
and Archway says its customers are more interested in low prices than
in
low environmental impact.
D.2. Martha teaches computer science. This year
she is trying out in one section a piece of software which is supposed
to help students learn C++ more easily. In another section she is not
using
the software, so she can compare results from the two sections. Partway
through the semester, the second section finds out about the software
and
asks to use it. Martha says no, even though the software appears to be
working as claimed.
D3. Nancy works for Miniware, Inc., a company
designing a new operating system. The product is very late, and Nancy
decides
to release it in spite of the fact that approximately 20,000 known bugs
remain.
E.1. Leo has been plagued by an imposter who
used his name, address, and social security number to establish charge
accounts, rent an apartment, and get a driver's license. The activity
resulted
in $3000 of bills and $8000 worth of forged checks. The imposter was
arrested
numerous times, each time giving Leo's identity. Leo himself has been
arrested
5 times in the last 14 months, despite trying to get police records
corrected.
He was told that the easiest solution would be for him to change his
name
and social security number.
E.2. Mark has been hired by a Montessori pre-school/kindergarten
to select computers and software for the children to use. He reads a
newspaper
article which claims that extensive computer use before age 7 can
permanently
damage a child's ability to learn and to get along with other people.
He
investigates other sources and finds some evidence that the article may
be right.
E.3. Ned's family is on welfare. He sues the
state where they live for depriving his children of equal educational
opportunity
because the state will not supply funds to buy them a home computer.
F.1.Deb is a computer science student working at the University
Computer
Center. During the course of her work, she discovers that a dean has
pornographic
material on his University-owned computer at his private house. She
tells
her supervisor, who tells the President. The Dean is forced to resign.
F.2. Ellie works for a police department and is active in an
anti-abortion
group. She uses her work access to driver's license records to find the
home addresses of people working for and operating abortion clinics and
passes these addresses along to the anti-abortion group.
F.3. Fran works for the state of NC. She pioneered the use of prison
inmates to type in personal data from questionnaires, vehicle
registrations,
unemployment claims, and property records. Some of the inmates are in
maximum-security
prisons. One prisoner, incarcerated for rape and assault and due for
release
in 2 years, writes a letter to Alma, using personal facts about her
gleaned
from such data entry and sending the letter to her home address.
G.1. Joan works for an ISP which has recently merged with a
cable-television
company. Subscribers to the company’s Coyote Internet service are
provided
a document which outlines in very small type the basic agreement
between
the subscriber and the company. The document states that the company
and
the local cable service provider have the right but not the obligation
to monitor all content on the Coyote service which resides on its
computers,
including chat rooms, forums, home pages, and e-mail messages, without
additional notification to the subscriber. The company also has the
right
to remove or edit any objectionable material.
G.2. Kathy manages a computer network at a hospital. She seems to be
always getting complaints about not enough disk space from the people
using
computers. She checks several accounts and decides the trouble is
people
are down-loading games and playing them. She buys and uses two
programs:
the first searches through disks and removes any gam software it finds,
and the second prevents employees from using the Internet to get sports
scores or news.
G.3. Liz works for the SBI in NC. She puts together a Web page which
lists the names, addresses, date of convictions, date of birth, height,
weight, eye and hair color, and photographs of people convicted of rape
or child sexual abuse. The information will stay on the page for 10
years
from the date of the latest conviction, or forever in the case of
people
the SBI judges incorrigible.
H.1. Jack is Webmaster for an advertising e-business which collects
personal data as well as information about which web sites people visit
(and information they contribute to them) from many web sites supported
by advertising. Because it is collecting from other sites, it does not
tell web-surfers how the information will be used. In fact, many of the
web sites do not even know such information is being collected.
Recently
Jack has noticed that many people are contributing false information.
H.2. Kurt works for a start-up firm which is developing 24/7 wireless
Internet access. This involves tracking customers constantly to know
where
they are at any instant. To increase their profits, the company plans
to
sell information about employees to employers: where they are and what
web sites they are visiting.
H.3. Mitch works for a software company that develops software (for
example, web interfaces) which the end-user can personalize (customize)
to meet their needs and wants (for example, by choosing which stocks
and
which TV shows to list, and the appearance of the screen). Mitch is
working
on interfaces which can “learn” about the user by capturing keystrokes
and mouse clicks, tracking which sites the user visits, storing
personal
information in a database, and using data mining techniques to draw
conclusions
about the user. The company decides it will not use encryption nor
other
security measures on the personal data stored.
H.4. Ned’s ex-wife has downloaded a spy program that records keystrokes
onto his computer. He found the program and deleted it; he doesn’t know
that an invisible stealth logger also downloaded by his ex-wife is
still
operating, storing 50 keystrokes at a time to an encrypted log file.
I. (May 11, 2000) Undeterred by the failure of the Clipper Chip/Skipjack plan in the US, Britain has started procedures to pass a law allowing the government to set up a multi-million-dollar spy center capable of tracking every e-mail and Internet hit in the country to fight cybercrime. As part of the deal, ISPs will have to establish secure channels to transmit information about Internet traffic to the government. Law enforcement authorities also have the power to demand that Internet users hand over the keys required to decode encrypted messages. Opponents claim that this procedure establishes a new crime, failure to report information to the government, and is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights in terms of self-incrimination and burden of proof. Unlike the current situation, where only a judge can issue a warrant to search for material, the new law would allow Cabinet Ministers (government officials) to approve warrants. ISPs complain about the cost of compliance, and industry says Britain’s future as an e-commerce site is threatened by the encryption requirements. The government argues the procedure sets out strict conditions under which law enforcement agencies can demand encryption keys, and that innocent people will not suffer.
J.1. Don and his wife each have a home computer.
They routinely buy one copy of software and install it on both
computers.
J.2. Ed routinely downloads shareware programs
and uses them without registering.
J.3. Freddie routinely takes home office software
and installs it on his personal computer so he can work at home.
J.4. George, a 14-year-old, really loves South
Park Kids, a commercial cable TV show. His Web site includes
digitized
copies of all the shows.
K.1 Gina works for a software company that
is pushing hard for the UCITA (Uniform Computer Information Transaction
Act) to be passed nationwide. UCITA says that be default, software
developers
and /or distributors are completely liable for flaws in a program, but
allows them to disclaim this liability on the (shrink-wrapped) license.
Free-software distributors, because they do not use “shrink-wrapped”
licenses,
would not be able to disclaim liability. In addition, UCITA would allow
developers/distributors of shrink-wrapped software to prohibit reverse
engineering, thus restricting the ability of free software providers to
provide reading and writing of proprietary file formats. UCITA applies
to any computer-readable information. It allows developers and/or
distributors
of articles or database information to change the license under which
it
is used retroactively at any time. UCITA would allow
developers/distributors
to disable your software by remote control if they decide the license
terms
have been violated, which could lead to denial-of-service attacks.
K.2. Heidi manages software development at Miniware,
Inc.. Her employees have just written a fancy new piece of software
which
works better than any existing software for voice input. The legal
department
wants to patent the idea of voice input software along with the code.
This
would give their company a monopoly on voice input software. Heidi is
afraid
that this move will lead not to new and original software, but to
software
that is just different enough from the competition’s to get a patent.
Furthermore,
since patents last for 20 years, she questions whether any public
benefit
is conferred by the patent.
K.3. Inez works for the DEF Software Company
on the grammar checker for a new word processor. She signed a
non-disclosure
agreement when she was hired. She quits DEF and moves to Vaporware,
Inc.
She is originally assigned to other work, but within 9 months, she is
assigned
to the team working on the "Easy as ABC" word processor. She develops a
grammar checker based on her work at DEF.
L.1. Gus runs a web site which allows people
to share digital copies of their CDs.
L.2. John needs money for Christmas, He decides
to sell copies of his CD of a popular word processor at an on-line
auction
site.
L.3. Kevin writes a very useful extension to
a proprietary piece of software. He makes copies of the proprietary
software
and sells it online with his extension for the price of the original.
(Source: ASEE Prism, May-June, 2000)
M. 1. Dr. Jones is approached by a large multimedia
company to develop a course on the French Revolution based on his
best-selling
book. He will be paid for the development and will receive royalties
from
users of the course. Dr. Jones will be identified as the author and a
member
of the faculty at his university. He plans to develop the course during
an unpaid leave of absence.
M.2. King University decides to offer an on-line
course in electrical engineering. It approaches a world-famous
electrical
engineer who is also an exceptional teacher and a member of the faculty
at Very Famous University to create the course. The course will be
created
using King resources and staff, but King does not propose to share any
revenues generated by the course with Very Famous U. The course creator
will do most of the work on the course during the summer, when he is
not
paid by Very Famous U., and will receive part of the royalties from the
users of the course.
M. 3. Dr. Smith, a history faculty member at
Very Famous University, has developed a video course on Machiavelli
under
an individual contract with a major publishing company. The quality of
the course is excellent, since Dr. Smith has tested it in a large
number
of his classes and has a reputation as an excellent teacher. The terms
of the contract allow the publisher to suggest that the course is being
sponsored by Very Famous University, but the university itself has no
contract
with the publisher allowing its name to be used.
N.1. Helen has discovered how to change the Start
button label on all the computers in the computer labs to any label she
wants. She changes it to an obscenity. She says because everything
still
works properly, she hasn't done any harm.
N.2. Jenny has an account on a machine without
shadowed passwords. She breaks into the system and logs into the
accounts
of other users. When she is caught, she claims she did it to convince
the
system administrator that the passwords should be shadowed.
N.3. Robert invents a virus which is distributed
through e-mail attachments. When the attachment is opened, the virus is
resent to all the addresses in the address book of the opener. The
virus
also changes the word processor defaults so that the virus in included
in all future documents typed using the word processor and destroys
other
computer files. It is estimated that companies with 12 computers
lose about $30,000 in lost work time and recovery; larger companies
lose
correspondingly more.
O.1. Oren works for a company which develops
software used to fly airplanes. His company knows that the goal is
0.000000001
accidents per hour, but their software testing process cannot deliver
anything
near that number in terms of software reliability. The company does not
want this information to be made public.
O.2. Patrick modifies his bank's accounting system
to hide his overdrawn account and avoid the overdraft charges. After
making
a deposit, he undoes his modification.
O.3. Ralph orders game software from an on-line
company. The package Ralph receives contains the software he ordered
plus
software for another game he really wants. He is not charged for the
extra
software.
O.4. A North Carolina public school district
sponsors two programs to teach students about technology and
creativity.
Part of each program is teaching the students how to construct their
own
Web pages and then posting them on the Internet. The lawyer for the
school
board for the distract has looked at the pages and is afraid that the
school
district could be sued for the various defamatory names students call
each
other and outsiders on the Web pages. The school board itself is
appalled
by the grammatical and spelling errors on some of the pages. The school
board passes a policy requiring parental permission before the student
can design a Web page and teacher approval of content, which must now
be
curriculum-related, before it is posted on the Internet. The policy
would
apply to sites created at schools in the district and to any sites
accessible
from the school’s Web site. The policy states that sites students
create
at school are official publications of the school and not an open
public
forum for the student’s free expression of ideas. The University
professor
who helps coordinate the program says he has seen only a few cases of
inappropriate
material posted and has never seen any threats or libelous remarks.
P.1. Sam owns a small computer company. He hires
many student programmers. His company gets into financial trouble and
goes
bankrupt. He claims the students were contractors, not employees, and
hence
are last on the list of people who should be paid from the assets.
P.2. Bill owns a large software house. His company's
policy is that they are neither responsible nor liable for errors
(bugs),
but that their intellectual property rights should be strongly
protected.
The company's Web page offers down-loadable demo programs which
stealthily
search the hard disk for illegal copies of their software. When illegal
copies are found, the program invites the user to send an e-mail
message
asking for a free handbook. Sending the e-mail request results in a
letter
from the company's lawyers billing the user for the software and
threatening
collection activities if the user does not pay promptly.
P.3. Dick receives an e-mail from a hotmail account
telling him that his web site sucks and he is a stupid idiot. Dick
decides
to see what he can find out about the sender (Hank, for short). Hank
has
listed his hotmail address on his home page, which, along with his
resume,
gives Dick home and work addresses and telephone numbers. Hank also
discusses
his volunteer work with a youth group at his church, allowing Dick to
find
out the church address and telephone number. Dick does a search of
USENET
and finds out Hank has posted lots of messages to a large number of
adult
newsgroups. Dick sends Hank a message saying that unless he adds to his
home page a big flashing banner saying “I am stupid”, Dick will send
copies
of Hank’s USENET postings to Hank’s wife, employer, clergyman, and the
prosecutor’s office of his county.
Q.1. Jim’s company is advertising and selling
a new accounting and tax computation program. What they do not say is
that
the program works very well on some operating systems, but has a large
number of problems resulting in errors in the computations on other
operating
systems. The company has been trying to fix them, but so far has not
succeeded.
When an independent test company verifies these problems, Jim is told
by
his boss to deny the company knew anything about the problems.
Q.2. Tom runs a software company which has won
a contract to provide elections software for the state of NC. The
software
will maintain a list of registered voters in the state (with their
county
of registration), a list of contributors and amounts for each
candidate,
and voting data to provide election returns on election night. County
Boards
of Elections will provide data to the State Board of Elections and
receive
the results on election night and lists of registered voters, by
precinct.
Tom's company is very much behind schedule on the software; they have
missed
several deadlines for installing working versions. Tom decides (without
informing his clients) the company will be better off simply to start
over
again on the software.
Q.3. Terry is a private consultant working under
a contract with several branches of the military to develop an expert
system
which will reliably recognize friendly and enemy aircraft, tanks, and
other
military vehicles. After several months of work and using all the
expert
knowledge on vehicle identification Terry can find, the program is
recognizing
70% of the vehicles correctly. The military agencies say they are
satisfied
with this recognition rate, but they do not want any of the
accompanying
training materials to mention the rate.
R. 1. Sara, who lives in Connecticut, downloads
from a Web site in California some sexually explicit material which is
legal in California but illegal in Connecticut. The state of
Connecticut
charges the Web site operators with disseminating pornographic material.
R.2. An international ISP is told by Germany
that if it wants to sell access in Germany, it must block access by
German
citizens to material considered pornographic in Germany. The ISP simply
blocks access to such material for all its customers.
R.3. Tina has invented a new way of paying for
her college education: she sends mass e-mails which cause a message to
pop up on the computer screen saying, “Your order has been accepted and
your credit card will be charged $375.00 unless you call this number to
cancel the order.” The number is an international call to a
pornographic
site, with very high charges. The site pays some of its profits to Tina.
R.4. Terry works as Webmaster at a community
college. To show off his knowledge, he posts a photograph of a nude
model
on a pornography site on the Web, with the statement that the person
wants
to engage in rough sexual activity. He includes the actual name,
address,
telephone number, and map of how to get to her house of a female
student
at the community college, without her knowledge. He is arrested and
fired
from his job. The only crime he can be charged with is “aiding and
abetting
harassing telephone calls”, a misdemeanor which carries a maximum
sentence
of 11 days in jail.
S.1. Ophelia thinks homosexuality is both a sin
and a crime. She uses a remailing service to send anonymous hate e-mail
to other students she knows or suspects are homosexual.
S.2. Phyllis runs a Web site where customers
are told they can download free computer games. Unknown to the
customers,
the first thing the download does is disconnect them from their local
ISP
and connect them long-distance to another country. They end up being
charged
$3 a minute while the they are connected. The telephone company in the
other country kicks back some of the charges to Phyllis.
S.3. Rita uses sex chat rooms to make contact
with men. She sends them pictures of her 15-year-old daughter and
arranges
meetings at hotels where she sends her daughter to prostitute herself.
On her daughter's return, Rita asks for details of what went on.
S.4. Sally works for a company that send $3.50
“rebate checks” to people. When the checks are cashed, the people are
unwittingly
agreeing to allow the company to be their ISP and to add the charges
for
this service to their telephone bills.