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Topic area |
Hacking/Security |
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Target audience |
Undergraduates |
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Activity type |
Reading assignment, worksheet, argument reconstruction, class discussion. |
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Time required |
Out of class time: 2 hours. In class time: 1 hour. |
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Attachments |
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Additional materials |
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Background needed to complete the assignment |
Students should have a general familiarity with hacker culture and recent hacker exploits. There are several websites listed below which provide good overviews. Carolyn Meinel's "Happy Hacker" website is a good place to start. Students should also know how to reconstruct arguments. This assignment would be a good one to use as a follow-up to a course module on critical thinking. A useful website that provides basic critical thinking tutorial instruction is provided below. |
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References |
Hacker "Ethical Codes": Links to hacker websites: Carolyn Meinel's "Happy Hacker" website: Richard Thieme's "ThiemeWorks" website contains several interesting essays that defend hacking: Chapter 6 of Paul Taylor's book, Hackers: Crime and Digital Sublime (Routledge, 1999) exposes weaknesses in arguments that try to establish the immorality of hacking based upon the analogy of hacking with certain physical activities, e.g. hacking is like breaking and entering a private residence; hacking is like theft of personal property: |
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Last modified |
August 1999 |
Abstract:
Students read the transcript of an interview conducted on CNN with a hacker, Emmanuel Goldstein (the editor of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly), and a computer security expert for IBM, Charles Palmer. They then reconstruct and evaluate Goldstein's argument in favor of hacking and Palmer's argument against hacking. For the purposes of this assignment, "hacking" is stipulated to have the following characteristics: (a) hackers gain access to an organization's computer system, (b) the access is unauthorized, (c) the motive behind the unauthorized infiltration is not financial gain, (d) the hackers report any security weaknesses discovered during the hack to the hacked organization, although they don't divulge their own identities, and (e) the hackers sometimes leave behind an electronic calling card.
Goals for the activity:
The principal goal is to train students in techniques of critical thinking about ethical disagreements. Secondarily, students will learn about the culture and the exploits of hackers.
Knowledge / skills / attitudes to be developed (behavioral objectives):
Students should (a) acquire knowledge about hacking activities, (b) hone skills of identifying, reconstructing, and evaluating moral arguments, (c) become cognizant about the complex relationships between moral and legal categories, and (d) refine their abilities to recognize and to respond appropriately to moral ambiguity.
Procedure:
The procedure is to divide the class into teams of two students each. Half of the teams are instructed to list the premises of Goldstein's argument that hacking is morally permissible, and the other half of the class is instructed to do the same with Palmer's argument that hacking is not morally permissible. No more than five premises may be listed. The teams are given ten minutes for this task. Then, all the teams that reconstructed Goldstein's argument are gathered together as a single group, and instructed to select the one reconstruction of Goldstein's argument just constructed by one of their group members that they regard as the best. They can make this selection by reaching consensus, or by a majority vote in case consensus is not reached. The other half of the class should follow the same procedure with respect to Palmer's argument. Another ten minutes is allowed for this task. Each of the two groups is now instructed to reproduce their choice of best reconstruction on the chalkboard. In the time remaining, the class as a whole is to evaluate the two arguments that have been put on the chalkboard. Argument evaluation divides into two stages. The class should first decide whether the argument in question is valid, and then consider the believability of each premise in turn. If an argument is not valid, the class should try to turn it into a valid argument either by modifying one or more premises or by supplying additional premises.
Assessing outcomes:
The class activity itself is not expected to be graded. A grade for student participation could be given to the worksheet answers -- perhaps a 0 for careless answers, a 1 for competent answers, and a 2 for probing and well-developed answers.
Additional remarks:
(1) Many students have a difficult time understanding how an action can be against the law and yet morally permissible. This is no doubt because it is generally morally wrong to disobey the law. But not always. And so, instructors might consider giving students some relatively non-controversial examples of illegal but morally permissible actions, drawing from areas other than information technology, in order to help break the common mindset which sees an analytic tie between what’s moral and what’s legal.
(2) The technique of adding tacit premises in an attempt to turn an invalid argument into a valid one frequently reveals highly general moral principles that function as tacit premises in an author's argument, and such tacit moral principles frequently constitute a major (but hidden) source of the moral disagreement at issue. The underlying moral principles (about privacy, intellectual property, etc.) that are discovered in this way will, no doubt, be the center of attention in other classes. For this reason, the arguments for and against hacking that are considered in this class can be usefully reconsidered later on the course after the underlying sources of moral disagreement have been studied in their own right.
Author contact information:
Bill Richards
Department of Philosophy
University of Dayton
Dayton, OH 45469
richards@udayton.edu
937-229-2838
Page maintained by:
kwb@csee.usf.edu