Lec 9 - LEGAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES IN COMPUTER SECURITY

Legal & Ethical
*Law
*imply imposition by the obligation of obedience on the part of all subject to that authority
*Ethics
*a set of moral main beliefs or values

Categories of Law
*Tort law enables individuals to seek recourse against others in the event of physical, or financial injury.
*Civil law: represents a broad variety of laws that govern a nation or state
*Criminal law: addresses violations hurtful to society and is actively enforced through prosecution by the state

Differences between Laws and Ethics
LAW
*Interpreted by courts
*Enforceable by police and courts
ETHIC
*Personal choice
*Priority determined by individual if two principles conflict

Ethics Concept in Information Security
*Software License Infringement
*The lack of legal disincentives, the lack of punitive measures.
*criminal Use
*The low overall degree of tolerance for illicit system use may be a function of the easy association between the common crimes of breaking and entering of property to their computer-related counterparts.
*Three general categories of unethical and illegal behavior:
*Ignorance
*Accident
*Intent

Protecting Programs and Data
*Copyrights
*to cover works in the arts, literature and written scholarship
*Patents
*can protect a “new and useful process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter”
*Trade Secret
*must be kept a secret, trade secret protection can also vanish through reverse engineering

Open-source software affected by copyright protection. How?
*Subject to fair use
*Ease of filing

Information and The Law
*Legal Issues Related to Information
*electronic publishing
*Problem: How to ensure that the publisher receives fair compensation for the work?
*Database
*Problem: Difficult to determine that a set of data came from a particular database so that the database can claim compensation
*electronic commerce
*Problem: How to prove conditions of delivery

Rights of Employees and Employers
*ownership of a patent
* The person who owns under patent and copyright law is inventor (producer)
* ownership of a copyright
*Similar to ownership of a patent

Computer Crime
*A computer can be :
*Attacked, used as a means to commit crime
*Computer crime is hard to prosecute because:
*low computer literacy (lack of understanding), Lack of political impact

Ethical Issues in Computer Security
- Ethics & Religion
Distinguish ethics from religion, analyze a situation from an ethical perspective.
- Ethics is Not Universal
Ethics values is not universal, it varies by society within a society.
- Ethics Does Not Provide Answer
Ethical pluralism is recognizing that more than one position may be ethically justifiable.

Examining a Case for Ethical Issues
1. Understand the situation. Determine the issues involved.
2. Know several theories of ethical reasoning
3. List the ethical principles involved
4. Determine which principles outweigh others.