Ethical Dilemma in ICT

Selected News article- “Hackers Steal More Than 100 Hi-tech Cars and Jeeps, Transport Them to Mexico – Caught on Surveillance Tapes” (Jacobo, 2016)

Short Summary of the Ethical Scenario

According to latest news article, hackers have stolen over hundred cars and jeeps using innovative technology. The hackers used modern technology for getting into the system of those high tech vehicles and exported them after stealing. Michael Arce and Jesse Zelaya have focused on stealing branded and high tech dodge vehicles and jeeps, as these vehicles are in high demand in black market (Jacobo, 2016). They have used pirated software for duplicating the keys of these vehicles. The vehicles had common software that was hacked by using a laptop. The hackers got access to its database and hacked it for acquiring key passes of the vehicles.

List of Stakeholders

The instigators to this ethical issue are the hackers who had used modern technologies for hacking into the vehicle’s system. Jim Woods, who is a Police officer in Houston, understood the ethical and financial issues caused by this technological theft (Jacobo, 2016). The victims, whose cars have been stolen are the people involved directly. There are lots of people who are indirectly affected by this ethical crime in a broader way. They are law makers of the state, officers of police force, technology developers who developed, and even car manufacturers and technician.

Ideals and Rights.

This ethical issue have affected and broken trust of the victims. The government law and society ethics have also been affected. This ethical issue has shown the mistreatment of policies of honesty and lawsuit. The hackers have got into the database and stole their cars.

It had violated two rights right of property acquisition and right of privacy (Moore, 2012). The hackers have stolen the cars of victims and defied their property rights. The hackers have got into the database system of car’s company to access information about vehicle’s keys and defied the company from the right of privacy of information.

Obligations and Laws

The ethical issue has defied the laws and ethical conduct of the state (Melden, 2013). It has raised obligations in development and manufacturing of vehicles. The car company had faced major issues because the hackers have infiltrated their database for getting information of vehicle’s keys. The vehicle owner had to go through various situational problems because of his/her loss. Hacking technologies should be used by government to keep an eye on criminal activities and prevent terrorist attacks (Kim, 2015). However, these thugs misuse the hacking technologies for their personal gain. It results in developing hatred among common people against the hacking profession.

Consequences for Each Stakeholders

The hackers are benefited by this ethical misuse. They had stolen victim’s vehicles and had transported them to the black market of Mexico. Hence, they would be benefited by selling the cars in the black market.

 The vehicle owner and manufacturer would be harmed from this ethical issue. They would have to face losses for the stolen vehicle respectively.

Ethical Theories

Act Utilitarianism: The ethical issue had raised negative impact on the overall happiness of the affected parties (Melden, 2013). The victims and vehicle companies have been suffered loss because of this ethical issue. Hence, Utilitarianism act would help in modifying the personal perception of hackers and would stop this ethically misuse of technology.

Act Kantianism: Applying Kantianism for rectifying the logical and moral contradiction to ethical activities would result in solving these types of ethical issues. According to Hay (2013), the Kantianism would uplift morality of hackers for making sure that these ethical issues would not be prevalent in future.

Rule Utilitarianism: This action would help in solving problems of hacking and uplift the total happiness of people.

Social contract theory: Yes, according to social contract theory, all the countries and communities would be willing to support this cause of stopping non ethical hacking.

Solution Summaries

The companies can use strong encryption for protecting their database (Biham & Shamir, 2012). It would obstruct the hackers from getting into their network system for stealing information. The authentication process would enable protection of data and disallow unauthorized access into the system. The primary motive for solving this issue would be uplifting the morals of these hackers. Hence, the hackers would not try to hack into the system or steal any vehicle. However, there is no single solution for this ethical issue of hacking (Kim, 2015). Lack of self-realization and de-motivation are the main reasons that would have negative effect on humans and would increase these ethical issues.

Conclusion

The doing ethics technique have been used for understanding the news article “Hackers Steal More Than 100 Hi-tech Cars and Jeeps, Transport Them to Mexico – Caught on Surveillance Tapes”. It has shown ethical and moral aspects of this issue. The hackers have utilized modern technologies like timing attack and man-in-the-middle attack for hacking into database. However, database security measures should be taken for protecting the information and data of customers. These types of ethical issues have negative impact on the society. The code database was national and its theft had shown lack of national security. The ethical issues have been tested on the four ethical theories for understanding its effect of ethics and morality.

References

Biham, E., & Shamir, A. (2012). Differential cryptanalysis of the data encryption standard. Springer Science & Business Media.

Hansson, S. O. (2016). The Ethics of Doing Ethics. Science and engineering ethics, 1-16.

Hay, C. (2013). Kantianism, Liberalism, and Feminism: Resisting Oppression. Springer.

Jacobo, J. (2016). More Than 100 Cars Stolen by High-Tech Thieves: Police. ABC News. Retrieved 9 August 2016, from https://abcnews.go.com/US/houston-police-100-cars-stolen-high-tech-thieves/story?id=41124433

Kim, J. (2015). A Study on the Development of the Emergent System Recovery in an Effective Way from Hacking Attacks or Security Incidents.International Journal of Security and Its Applications, 9(8), 187-194.

Melden, A. (2013). Ethical theories. Read Books Ltd.

Moore, A. D. (2012). Owning genetic information and gene enhancement techniques: why privacy and property rights may undermine social control of the human genome. Bioethics, 14(2).

Vaishnavi, V. K., & Kuechler, W. (2015). Design science research methods and patterns: innovating information and communication technology. Crc Press.