Legal and Ethical: Issues and Benefits

Legal Issues and Benefits:

• Not only is protection necessary for the cybernetic infrastructure of American shopper information, but it is also crucial to protecting the lives and ideals of American citizens who rely on these retail stores for everyday living. Rhena Inocencio of Trend Micro states in an article from Progressive Digital Media Technology News (2014) that the BlackPOS malware "also contains links to media hostile to the US, including a cartoon of a matchbox emblazoned with the American flag stood alongside Molotov cocktails bearing the flags of Ukraine, Syria, Egypt and Libya" (Alleged Home Depot, 2014), which could prove to be dangerous for U.S. citizens who are affected by this virus since these terror groups are now in a position to potentially ruin the United States financially by tracing consumer credit card information to United States banks and possibly wiring deposits and savings of Americans back to their own countries, where they can use those funds to purchase weapons of mass destruction and terrorize their own governments if not the United States government.
  
  Fortunately, the data breaches have gotten the attention of Democratic senators "Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).advocates for data security and breach notification legislation" (Sarkar 2014), who have written letters to Home Depot requesting more information about the matter. This close involvement of the U.S. government officials can prove to be helpful to the government itself and its people, as there are many citizens who still feel betrayed by the government in wake of Edward Snowden's leaking of the National Security Association's accumulation of private communications data from millions of citizens. The government can regain the trust of its people, but at the same time, it can also turn more people away since this attack was something the NSA might have been able to apprehend early on, especially with the advancements in American technology in which many people take pride.

Ethical Issues and Benefits:

• Reviewing the evidence used earlier in the introduction to this paper will allow for a perspective on the morality of the data breach, and of computer science with youth as a whole. It is said by Antone Gonsalves (2014) that "BlackPOS was designed by a Russian teenager," which begs the question: how young is too young for children and teenagers to be given the freedom to program whatever codes and programs they desire? The potential that young people possess to do great and powerful things is often overlooked because of their inability to comprehend the hardships, whether financial or technical, that can result from abusing that power.
  
  But if authoritative figures, whether they be parents or teachers, do not take the time to teach their children that controlling their potential is for their own good and the benefit of the people around them, then those children have the same if not greater chances of succumbing to the type of behavior that this Russian teenager is partaking in, the type of behavior that can get him into trouble not only with his own government, but the governments of other countries he targets, thus compromising any future relations of his with the United States and other countries based on his decision to commit a federal. Using this Russian teenager as an example of what could happen to children and teenagers who are skilled at programming but lack direction could lead children in the United States and in other countries to partner with organizations that teach them about ways the government uses people who work in the IT and Computer Science field, and can provide educational opportunities for these students to be certified by their governments and apply their knowledge under legal circumstances.