Mahwish Cheema
7 April 2012
Legal & Ethical Issues
Legal and Ethical Issues
There are numerous legal issues involved with hacking national security information. According to Cooney (2009), “Hackers sometimes crack into networks for the thrill of the challenge or for bragging rights in the hacker community.” Some hackers do not even hack for their own monetary gain like expected, but simply break the law just to get “bragging rights”. Stealing national intelligence and personal information is illegal. If the hackers were caught, severe consequences would follow. According to Klimburg (2011), “Chinese and Russian hackers have been behind a significant number of high-profile and hostile cyber attacks on a number of countries.” Because these hackers are so inconspicuous it is hard to pinpoint the exact people who did the hacking. If countries were to make laws and punishments greater for hackers perhaps less hacking would take place.
Hackers also break ethics. It is morally unjustified to steal information. According to Rubin (2012), “Now, after roughly 10 decades of actual physical fighting between Palestinian Arabs (and their brethren) and Jews, the struggle has moved to the electronic battlefield. In fact, in recent weeks there have been a host of serious clashes that have threatened not just soldiers, but every single citizen in the Middle East.” In this situation we can see that both sides have fallen short of being ethical and now it is just full on cyber attacking for both the Jews and Palestinians. Next, it is vital to observe security concerns.
