CS103F: Ethical Foundations of Computer Science

Blog Post 10

Due Friday, April 5, 2019, by 11:59p

For this blog post, we would like you to consider hacktivism---the idea of hacking for a cause. "Hacktivism" was initially coined by the Cult of the Dead Cow, of which Beto O'Rourke is a former member. (For more information, listen to Why Hackers are Stoked The Beto O'Rourke Was One Of Them, a podcast from Motherboard.)

Consider:

What are the effects of hacktivism on society? Is it beneficial? Or harmful?
What are the effects of hactivism on an individual? Is it beneficial? or harmful?
When is hacktivism ethical? unethical?
When faced with a particular action of a hactivist group, how do we decide whether it is harmful or beneficial? ethical or unethical?

In considering these questions, you may consider a specific example from the news or suggested sources, or you may consider these ideas more generally.

These resources may be useful to you:

Lohrmann, Dan. The Dramatic Rise in Hactivism, Tech Crunch, February 22, 2017.
Estes, Adam Clark. The Hacks that Mattered in the Year of the Hack, The Atlantic, December 28, 2011.
Johnson, Ben and Danielle Stephens. Founder of Hacker Group LulzSec Explains the Chaos of Hacktivism, Marketplace, April 28, 2017.

Zetter, Kim. Hackers Finally Post Stolen Ashley Madison Data, Wired, August, 18, 2015.

Ryan, Yasmine. Anonymous and the Arab Uprisings, Al Jazeera, May 19, 2011.

Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations, The Guardian, June 9, 2013.
Carlson, Andrew. Edward Snowden: Traitor or Hero?. Ethics Unwrapped, The University of Teaxs at Austin.

Please construct your response so that it has a main idea, supporting arguments, and a conclusion. Your response should be approximately 300 words and you are welcome to link to relevant media (articles, videos, etc.).

We do expect professional presentation: your spelling and grammar should be correct---you should not be using text shorthand or emojis.

Once you have created your blog post, submit a URL to the relevant assignment on Canvas. When you submit your URL, Canvas will take a snapshot of that URL, so be sure to submit once you are finished with your blog post.

Finally, the Ethics Centre has blog posts that may be useful as examples--they are often longer than your requirement, though. One of the recent good examples is "Why Victims Remain Silent... and Then Find Their Voice".