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Case Study About Moral of Hacking

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Contemporary Practices in Information Technology 7WCM0005/7WCM0006 (SDL)
Case Study - Coursework 1
The morality of hacking - Gary McKinnon – Did he break the British Computer Society Code of Conduct?

Gary McKinnon was a Scottish Systems Administrator who in 2002 was accused of carrying out the “biggest military computer hack of all time”. McKinnon claimed that he was merely looking for evidence of a cover-up of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) activities.
The US authorities claimed that McKinnon deleted files from US military operating systems which led to a shut-down of military computers. Some sources claim that what McKinnon did was a harmless incident whereas others regard it as a serious attack on US computer systems.
Coursework
Research the case of Garry McKinnon and present your arguments for and against the hacking activities of Gary McKinnon following the three sections below. Give your own conclusion as to whether Gary McKinnon acted ethically or not and whether he broke the BCS code of conduct.
Our methodology for the evaluation of moral problems in Unit One of the module was to evaluate a moral problem from the point of view of Kantianism, Act Utilitarianism, Rule Utilitarianism, and Social Contract theory. (For example in the Case Study from page 78-79.) Another way to evaluate information technology-related moral problems is to make use of a software code of ethics and professional practice as dealt with in Unit 2 in the module. From page 363 in the recommended text book a three step process is put forward as a way of evaluating a moral problem using a professional code of ethics, the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). For this coursework you are asked to use the BCS code of conduct to analyse the Gary McKinnon case (as he is a British Citizen). For the coursework you are required to:-
Section One – 20%
Evaluate the actions

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