CSC 312 Cases for Ethics

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.

Cases on Professional Ethics

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.

Cases on Privacy

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.

Cases on Property Rights

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.

Cases on Liability, Responsibility, Crime, Abuse

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.