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Computer Ethics Essay

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 dont 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 didnt 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 wont 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 thats where a descent and ethical person is reveled. Software theft is a very commune type of crime. Crimes that all off us commit, but dont feel neither wrong in committing it nor will stop doing it for several reasons. Software companies charge unrealistically high for software packages.

Users personally wont 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 dont 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 wouldnt.

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 Im smarter than most people.

Most of those attacks where not malicious, now hackers have become malicious and most of them dont 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 dont agree with laws that punish hackers that do innocent penetrations into systems.

I think thats a god thing since those penetrations make the system operators aware of their vulnerability of attack by a malicious hacker. If no malicious penetrations wouldnt 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 dont 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 dont 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 lifes 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 its 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 cant 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 doesnt 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.

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