Schedule

The schedule shown below will likely change as we see how many presentations and debates are chosen under each topic.

Assignments (& Related topics):

           The reading listed below is in addition to the chapters assigned from our text, which are listed in the table above. The contents below should be considered a working list and will likely change. As topics are selected by members of the class, they will be shown in itallics.

The listed topics should be viewed as a starting point, not a restrictive list. When you request a topic from me, you should be specific and give not just the general area you are selecting, but the specific aspects in which you are interested.See the course Resources page for links to more cases than are shown here.

Introduction:
          Syllabus, Intro.

Reading:

For Tuesday 1/8: (first day of class) In class after introductory remarks we will discuss this list of scenarios, ordering them in terms of best to worst in terms of morality/legality, and discussing why we order them the way we do.

For Thursday 1/10: Read Why the future doesn't need us, published in the April 2000 issue of Wired. The author is Bill Joy, cofounder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems. He was co-chair of the presidential commission on the future of IT research, and is coauthor of The Java Language Specification. Make an outline of the main points made and come prepared to discuss and answer questions in class. Also read the short story The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke. What are the advantages that technology give us? Would you rather live in a different time than now? If so, why? Think about how technology affects our view of the world. What is the basis in history of our technologically-oriented world view? See the notes.

For Tuesday 1/15: Read the September 2001 issue of PC Magazine articles Accelerated Living by Ray Kurzweil, and Second Coming by John Heilemann. See also Mathematician and Science Fiction writer Vernor Vinge's idea of the Singularity. See the notes.
Write your first position paper on "What the Future Holds," based on the readings up to this point.

Topics:

Mollecular Electronics patent

Definition of Computer Ethics
          Vacuum of Policies, Moral vs. Legal Issues

Reading:

For Thursday 1/17:
Read A Very Short History of Computer Ethics by Terrell Ward Bynum.
You should also have selected your discussion/debate/paper topic and sent me email about it. Your topic is not approved until I email you back. See the notes.
(Though not required, you can also take a look at Information Ethics: The Second Generation by Rogerson and Bynum)

For Tuesday 1/22: Read What is Computer Ethics by James H. Moor. Read also Is Computer Ethics Unique by Walter Maner. See the notes

For Thursday 1/24: You should read Ch 1 of our text. Also read Don Norman's Cyborgs of the New Millenium. See the notes

Topics:

 

Philosophical Ethics
          Descriptive & Normative claims, Relativism, Utilitarianism, Deontological Theories, Rights

Reading:

For Tuesday 1/29: Read Ch.2 in Johnson and also Jim Moor's article The Importance of Virtue in Teaching Computer Ethics. See also Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development, along with a comparison to a Wall Street Journal article. Write a position paper defining your own philosophical ethics.

Consider the John Wayne "I'll do it my way" attitude prevalent in American society. Why do you suppose this attitude is so widespread?

Consider the story of the Ring of Gyges referred to in Moor's article. What would you do if you had this ring?

Topics:

 

Ethics Online
          Hacking and Hacker Ethics, New species of old crimes, Netiquette

Reading:

For Thursday 1/31: Read the history of hacking, as well as methods of attack and defense. See also the Hacker's Code of Ethics. What's the difference between a "hacker" and a "cracker"? What are some of the most common ways for a system to be broken into?

Browse Virginia Tech's Hacking and Security page, which includes links to the tools hackers use (See In-Class Projects / Introduction to Hacking...) and hacking articles appearing in the news.

For Tuesday 2/5: On Tuesday we will discuss the We Know the Score case involving students modifying the scoreboard at the Rose Bowl, as well as the decision by Norway's Supreme Court that attempted breaking into a computer is different than actually breaking in. (See here and here for more CalTech pranks..)

For Thursday 2/7: Read Ch. 4 in Johnson.

For Tuesday 2/12: Write this position paper having to do with Steve Jackson Games.

Topics:

• How hackers do their stuff; (How do viruses work, SSH, port theft, packet sniffers,...). paper: Kurtis Schmidt
• Is there such a thing as a beneficial virus? Discussion: Michael Burk, Scott Propst.
• Should a university teach a course on hacking? See for example http://unhca.com/ Debate: Sweta Patel, Nipa Patel, Arun Binaykia, Suresh Kurra
• If a hacker breaks into a system and obtains material that is also available for free, is it theft? See this case, as well as this one.
• Hackers & security issues related to mobile computing.
• Hackers can be a modern Robin Hood, such as in the Something's Fishy in Lower Tse-Tse or the You're Not Getting My Micro-Cents cases.
• Is it a prank or a crime? See the We Know the Score case.
• The case involving Steve Jackson Games (SJG) and the Secret Service gave rise to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a staunch defender of electronic privacy and free speech. (If you're interested, you can read John Perry Barlow's account of this.) Read about this case, either at the SJG site, or by looking at a summary taken from Bruce Sterling's online book The Hacker Crackdown.
• For a bit of fun, scroll down to the "Simulations" section on Fred Cohen's site http://www.all.net and try "The Cracking Game." See also his Featured article "The 50 Ways Series".
  

Privacy & Cryptography
          Privacy laws, History of Cryptography, PGP

Reading:

For Thursday 2/14: Read Chapter 5 on Privacy in our text.

For Tuesday 2/19: Read this Identity Theft testimony before congress. Read this article by Laura P. Hartman, particularly sections II on "Ethics In Information Technology and Workplace Privacy" and section III on "The Law." Note the description of Milgram's experiment (near the end). Read Big Brother Bart.

For Thursday 2/21: Read about Backscatter Radar's uses at the AS&E site. Select the "Technology" tab, and then select on the left both the "Backscatter Technology" as well as the "Image Library" options. Also look at the "Products" tab, at the "BodySearch" product, then see the "In the News" tab and read the top article from Nov 15, 2001, USA Today. Also read this overview of Carnivore.
Write this position paper on Privacy Issues.

For Tuesday 2/26: Read CNN's July 17 article on facial-recognition technology called "FaceIt" from Visionics Corp. See also IDG's collection of biometrics articles, in particular the "e-tooth", and "Are the days of the password numbered?", and "In blink of an eye " articles. If you are interested check out the links to sample systems on the biometrics consortium page.

Other image analysis programs include MIT's "content" based search in Photobook (using the "vistex" database, click on an image to show related images). Compare this to Google's photosearch using a keyword (e.g. "leaves").

For Thursday 2/28:
Follow the links on this page for an overview on encryption. Use what you find there to decipher the text: "NTBNG LDPJB LL" (A B C). Also read this slightly dated overview on encryption. On Matt Blaze's site read his Sept. 12 essay. Do you agree with his views? What are the key issues involved here, particularly for the long term? Also read this spyware overview.(If you're interested in spyware, also see here.)

Topics:

• Check out the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, with its stories of identity theft. See Hacker charged with heist using Internet and Forbes' richest list, posted Tuesday, March 20, 2001 by The Associated Press.
• Invasion of privacy by the credit card - how much people can find out about you every time you use your credit card (marketing)
• Credit-card skimming, credit-card fraud.. See also Hypercom's attempts to deal with this. Paper: Wojciech Biskup
• RFIDs, Radio Frequency Identification devices: uses and abuses. Article on this.
• Digital Angel: GPS monitoring of an individual person.
• How much personal information is available on the Internet? For myself I was able to find (for free): where I went to high school, real-estate transaction, address & phone number, research papers and research programs, other institutions where I've worked.
• Privacy Tools. Take a look at these Privacy Tools, including secure email, anonymous remailers & surfing, html & cookie filters, encryption, & firewalls; how to "sanitize" your browsing. Paper: Sanket Baralay
• Spyware - software surreptitiously reporting on your behavior. Debate: Eliezer Rolon, Kyle Houlihan, Himanshu Mehta
• Carnivore: (FBI "online" wiretapping, threats to society vs. the threat to privacy). Paper: Jeremy Scranton
• Physical Scanning technology used in law enforcement. Links related to this:
  Backscatter images used by border guards to see through vehicles, BodySearch by AS&E used at airports to replace full-body search (see also here), New radar is used to see people through walls (and also this "millivision" version), IKONOS satellite images with up to 1m. of resolution can be purchased online, a paranoid account of several of these technologies.
• Should institutions of the government be allowed unlimited access of citizen profiles through "facial recognition" technology?
• Workplace Monitoring (what sort of rights do employees/employers have?) E.g. Big Brother Bart. Shivani Danak, Dipal Patel, Nilay Shah, Tanvir Shaikh
• History of development of Cryptography. Paper: Alina Gierzban
• Cryptography (PGP, DES, details on how they work, adding PGP to pine)
  Presentation: How encryption works, how to break it. Frequently asked questions about cryptography can be found at RSA's site. Also see this encryption tutorial (with specific hot-to's). Paper: Nana Gilbert-Baffoe
• See the case of the Harvard dean and pornography.
• Digital Cash options, an page with links to digital cash background & technology, possible economic consequences of digital cash, private non-governmental digital cash. See also a description on two of the main digital cash companies and how they work. Paper: Goran Josic.

Property Rights
          Current Legal Protection, Philosophical Basis

Reading:

For Tuesday 3/5:
Write this position paper. This topic still touches on some privacy issues. Related to this see a description of how scientists have slowed or stopped light.

For Thursday 3/7: Read about the Harvard dean and pornography.
Read Johnson, Ch. 6 on Property Rights and be prepared to discuss it in class.

For Tuesday 3/12: See the discussion board to know what we'll be doing today...

For Thursday 3/14: Read Julian Dibbell's account of the LambdaMOO case, knowing the arguments on various sides of the issue. (This scenario is also presented in the To toad or not to toad case.) Also read Pamela Gilbert's account of being stalked online (this overlaps with privacy issues).

Topics:

• Copying Software: shareware, freeware, abandonware, site licenses, the impact of licensing (e.g. if I use site licensed software on a laptop, what happens when I take it off-site?).
• Open Source Software vs Proprietary software. See this article on Lego Mindstorms and hackers that have "enhanced" it. Debate by Lalita Tantipathananandh, Alex de Vera, Amy Yang, Ryan Aviles
• Software Piracy (historical background, extent of the problem, solutions). Paper by Pawel Czarnota
• Peer-to-peer technologies allowing you to download and share applications, music, movies, etc. Morpheus, Kazaa, Napster, Gnutella. Consider the legal vs. ethical issues. Paper: Wut Cheng
• DeCSS (DVD decoding, see this article ). Paper: Vinh Phu Giang
• What is "fair use" on the Internet? (legal basis, caching, copying web pages/sites).
  Can I copy someone's web page and change the content? See the plagiarism case. Related to this: Changing someone else's web pages: Third Voice, IMarkup, SwingScape
• The Adobe eBook format can be converted to PDF using software written by Dimitri Sklarov. Check out this summary article, the Free Dmitry Sklyarov site, and these various letters (by ACM, EFF,...)

Accountability
          Different senses of responsibility, Buying and selling software, Y2K, Diffusion of Accountability, Internet Issues, ISP Liability, Virtual Action

Reading:

For Tuesday 3/26: From our text read chapter 7 on Accountability.

For Thursday 3/28: Read Blay Whitby's paper "The Virtual Sky is not the Limit: Ethics in Virtual Reality."

For Tuesday 4/2: catch-up discussion of past topics: Software copying & Intellectual property, Pamela Gilbert on-line stalking case, "To Toad or not to Toad" case.

For Thursday 4/4: See the case of the London ambulance fiasco. See also the case of the killer robot.
Start preparation for this position paper, due next Tuesday 4/9, having to do with the Therac-25 case. This paper is longer than some of the others we've read, so plan ahead.

Topics:

• See the Bound to Fail case. Failure of medical equipment (the Therac-25 case here and in more detail here and here).
• Artificial Intelligence (definition, current & possible future problems). See the paper by Attila Narin defining AI and discussing the Turing Test. Also note the description of the Chinese room. A more optimistic system is WebMind. In a study done of college students, 83% attributed aspects of decision-making and/or intentions to computers, and 21% consistently held computers morally responsible for error. Read about a future timeline development of an AI called J. Statue. Paper: Junho Park
• Behavior in a virtual world: see the To toad or not to toad case
• Risks and what can go wrong, see here for a well indexed site
• Y2K: who is (was) accountable for the software problems? Debate: Lu Bai, Chinh Do, Duyen Do

 

Social Issues, Freedom of Speech
          Legal Background, Filtering: E-rate funding and the CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act)

Reading:

For Tuesday 4/9: We will discuss the Therac-25 case. You should have started working on the position paper for this last week.

For Thursday 4/11: Read Don Norman's paper Being Analog. Come prepared to answer questions and discuss this paper.

For Tuesday 4/16: From our text read chapter 8 on Social Implications and Social Values, and write this position paper. Also read the brief description of the Matt Drudge vs. Sidney Blumenthal case.

For Thursday 4/18: Read the section and follow the links listed below on Military uses of computer technology. Pay particular attention to the article on software problems from the CSPSR site. What is the state of computer technology in the military? How has this changed the impact of the military on society in the last century? What are the key problems presented? What counter-arguments might you present to these problems?

Topics:

• Filtering software (kids & the internet, public library access). See online article on different filtering options for schools. Paper: Shawn Philips.
• Should racial hatred & pornography be accessible to anyone? Discussion: Lorena & Hera.
• Libel (Matt Drudge vs. Sidney Blumenthal case in the courts, see also here.). See the Spread the Word case.
• Can/should the government prohibit government employees from accessing sexually explicit material on work computers? See the Academic Freedom case.
• Can a university limit the uses of its computers? See the Politicking on the WWW case.
• The Singaporean government has tried to establish Control of the Internet for its citizens. Debate by Nirali Shah, Jalpan Patel, Daxa Dhanani, Nishant Thakrar
• Junk mail ( should it be allowed, what to do about it). See the spambot case
• Microsoft (are they a monopoly? History of the case)
• Computer technology & other fields (law, biotech, nanotech, ...)
  Article on "Designer Baby" has Alzheimer-free egg selected.
• Voting using the Internet.
  See Peter Neumann's site to the section on Computer-Related Elections.
• Military uses of computer technology: Browse through the account of false alerts (and these related quotes) by the early-warning radar systems, particularly in light of the limited time to respond to an attack (3 - 18 minutes), and the discussion of eliminating the human using launch-on-warning (LOW). See the RISKS catalog of 80's computer-related problems. The Computer Science Professionals for Social Responsibility (CSPSR) site describes the software problems with a missile defense system (if interested there are other views expressed here); NORAD software being unusable slow and $207 million over budget.
• Are we being responsible as a society in our dependence on technology? There is a strong argument presented at Larry Hind's site that there is no "free lunch" when it comes to using technology. Quoting Newsweek's Steven Levy, Hind writes "...as with cars and telephones, the benefits way overwhelm the abuses. How can this be measured? See also the page on financial markets, and take a look at program trading. If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, then where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger? (T.H. Huxley)
• Will it be better in the future with regards to living with technology, or do we have it better now? Paper: DiDi Guang
• Freedom of Speech and Internet Publishing: Paper, Kwong-Leung Kong
  

Professional Ethics
          Professionalism, Codes of Ethics

Reading:

For Tuesday, 4/23: Read Ch. 3 from our text on Professional Ethics. Consider ACM's code of ethics (see link below). Does it seem overly broad or overly narrow to you? What would you add/delete/change in it? Also read this story. Does Captain Kirk's code of ethics make sense to you?
Write this position paper, summarizing what we have discussed this semester.

For Thursday, 4/25: Read this short article "It's the Computer's Fault" -- Reasoning About Computers as Moral Agents", having to do with accountability.

Topics:


• Codes of Ethics:
  • ACM code of ethics
  • IEEE code of ethics
  • Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics and this commentary
• What are valid uses of workplace computers? (personal use, pornography, web hosting...).
• See the Quid Pro Quo case of personal use of work resources
• Minority/gender equal representation: see the Diverse Board case
• Cultural communication issues, inviting friendship using email. See this case.