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Blog #5: Business Software Alliance (BSA) representative assumed

       In this journal, given the two choices to assume the following positions: (1) a representative of the Business Software Alliance, and (2) a computer science student in a developing country, let us assume the former one. 

Assuming this position, what is my position or say on ‘software piracy’?

Before we proceed, some terms are first defined:

BSA (Business Software Alliance) - now called The Software Alliance, is a trade group which aims to eliminate software piracy made by its members, including the major software makers such as Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Oracle, and others, including Microsoft who was the 1998 founder for this. This group runs many campaigns which has the primary objective of promoting legal use of copyrighted software and encouraging people to report to them who or what businesses use pirated software. 

Software piracy - unauthorized usage, copying or distributing of a copyrighted software

       BSA being defined above, is really an anti- when it comes to software piracy because piracy is already a form of crime, particularly a theft, as a software pirate does not have proper permission from the software owner to take or use the software. Also, software piracy have a very negative impact to the economy especially in the software industry, as it is really unfair for some customers who legally purchase a software compared to those who obtained it illegally.

Software piracy against ethics

       Some people who agree software piracy may say that they pirate software because it is too expensive for people to buy so they pirate it and resell at a lower price. But earlier, we said that piracy is like a theft, so if we compared it to a stolen car and do the same thing, it is unethical and illegal, and its committing a crime. Next is that when it comes to developers, it is not easy developing a software product as it requires a lot of time and effort, and as for the finished product they deserved to be compensated for their work by purchasing that product legally rather than just pirating it for free which is really unfair to their side.

Software piracy causes less development in the economy

       In software industry, when it comes to research and product’s further development, less money will be invested because piracy decreases profits that provides investment, which in turn results to decrease in sales where customers face higher prices to gain the profits lost from piracy. Also, developers lose their motivation and determination to give their best especially in enhancing the software.

Software piracy goes against our moral rights

       We were thought since we were young that stealing is wrong, it’s one of the moral lessons that we have learned. With piracy being a form of theft, we can say that it’s wrong because it’s against morality.

       From Kantianism, taking the developers as an example, we know that they should be treated as they deserved to be respected of their Intellectual Property works. Developers develop software and sells it. The profit that they will earn is the reward for their efforts and contribution and they deserved it. But some people who commit software piracy does not seem to think like that. Developers are not robots who just provide us software and then not get something in return. With this kind of mindset, developers will lose motivation and interest in developing software or further pursue their passion and might end up quitting their job. 

       Some people defends that they pirated it but will never buy it in the first place. This may be due to they are unsure if they will be satisfied with the software or it’s just that it sucks so spending money will be a waste. Well, this may make sense, as the person never really intends to buy it and its not that a loss to the developer if he will not earn if the software is not good at all. But still with Kantianism being applied here, we will have to see if everyone thinks the same way mentioned in the first sentence in this paragraph, then the developer will really earn nothing. But if many people downloaded and uses it, which means the software is popular, then the developer should earn from it. This situation is a contradiction because if people don’t have the intention to buy the software in the first place, then they are not allowed or have no right to use the software or even download it for free.

Conclusion

       Software piracy is an illegal doing and that it is already a crime punishable by law. My stand is that I am against software piracy because BSA’s job is to eliminate software piracy which means piracy is really not good. I have provided several arguments about anti-piracy either when it comes to economy impact, ethics, and morality, which all came from different references. So if we want to further improve in technology taking into consideration the people behind those, we should do what is ethical, legal, and morally right, as it just does benefit the contributors, but to the user experience as well.

References:

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/6275/bsa-the-software-alliance-bsa

https://www.ptc.com/en/documents/software-piracy/faq#considered-a-crime

Abu-Arafah, A. (n.d.).  The Ethical and Economical Arguments Against Software Piracy (PDF)

http://blog.nus.edu.sg/jgbbg/2012/04/06/arguments-for-and-against-piracy-valid-or-not/

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Romans 15:13 NKJV

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Blog #4: “If I am a computer security consultant...”

Image Source: https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/ca/news/breaking-news/edc-bungles-it-security-consultant-announcement-45156.aspx

To start, a computer security consultant, according to Cyber Degrees website, has a role in designing and implementing the best security solutions for the needs of an organization. He/she gives advises and guides firm/s about the security level of their computer system. 

Now, assuming that I am a computer security consultant, though I may not be good at this since I am only assuming, I will be giving advises about security measures to four (4) customers, with different types of organizations and business activities they have, listed below.

1) An online company who accepts credit card details wants to secure its customers’ details, and safeguard against damage

       In this kind of company, since it is online, this company is vulnerable of hacking of credit card details where details gathered by the hackers may be used illegally and destroy the company. Also, credit card fraud, where fraudsters stole cardholder’s information and illegally use it even without the card’s physical presence (Bounaguidi, B., 2017).

       These threats came from the hackers external to the company who are technically challenged and wanted to explore even in illegal ways, some likes to expose the vulnerability of the security levels of companies. The internal threats are those spies who worked inside the company that may secretly gather credit card information and other company details relevant to the competitors, or those employees who are assigned to secure information but are tempted to secretly use them illegally, as some employees cannot be trusted verily.

      The technical security measures for these crimes are first for the company - they should encrypt the credit card and customer’s data to further secure, they must have a program where they can continuously monitor cardholder expenditure and information, and have a tight security department which monitors, investigates, and protects the company business. As for the customers, the company should give guidelines on how to protect themselves against credit card hacking, on what they should do and not do for them to be knowledgeable and aware.

2) A communications company employing a lot of young, technically able people, wants to ensure its online facilities are not being abused

       In this company, since most employees are still young, the crimes that are likely to be committed are abuse of company’s time and resources which affects business’s productivity and profit to decline by doing things that are unrelated to their job, downloading a software or inappropriate material from the Internet illegally which is still not related to the company, and hacking company’s restricted areas. (Duquenoy, P.,et.al., 2008)

       The internal threats would be from the young employees who have adventurous minds and likes to explore when curiousity comes in, and also they’re technically able which means they can do things technically to the point that its beyond the company policies about employees. The external threats would be outsiders like hackers who tries to invade the communication networks of the company and plant malware if security is not strong enough. (Duquenoy, P.,et.al., 2008)

       The security measures that fit for these are workplace monitoring and auditing software installation so that young employees can be monitored of their activities real-time. To limit employees from accessing the Internet abusively inside the company, use firewalls, and increase the security level of Internet so outsiders cannot easily invade the network communication. The company must also increase their level of security in network communication against outsiders.  (Duquenoy, P.,et.al., 2008)

3) A high-security establishment needs to ensure that only authorized users can access certain parts of the system

       The likely crimes to be committed here according to  Duquenoy, P.,et.al. (2008) are security breaches where no matter how high the security, invaders will always try to find a way to get through it with advanced computing or hacking. Next is hacking into restricted parts of the network or system.

       The internal threat is that the people who worked inside the establishment who are unauthorized to access certain parts of the system are likely to commit those crimes, and external threat is the same here also where they are unauthorized personnel outside the establishment. (Duquenoy, P.,et.al., 2008)

       For this case, the security measures are first, to set access rights and privileges across the network, they must have an access control software. Next is an highly thorough enforced password system that ensures that only authorized users can have an access to some system parts. For the most sensitive parts of the system, it is recommended to use high security system which is biometric identification.  (Duquenoy, P.,et.al., 2008)

4) A private consultant has a contract with a research organization working on highly sensitive issues. He needs to be sure his communications are secure, and some of the documents he sends might be used as legal proof of his recommendations

       In this case, it involves documents with highly sensitive information. The likely threats here are document theft with the purpose of corporate espionage or spying, fraud, and blackmail.  (Duquenoy, P.,et.al., 2008)

       The threat internally may be disloyal employees who are being secretly paid much from external people to spy inside the organization. But mostly are external threats which includes rivals and competitors who finds ways to get ‘not releasable’ information from the company.  (Duquenoy, P.,et.al., 2008)

       For this case, the appropriate security measures are strong encryption and digital signatures which adds strong additional security to transferring and authenticating files.  (Duquenoy, P.,et.al., 2008)

References:

Cyber Degrees (2018). Becoming a Security Consultant. Retrieved from https://www.cyberdegrees.org/jobs/security-consultant/. Accessed 26 October 2018

Bounaguidi, Bruno (2017, July 10).  Credit card fraud: what you need to know. Retrieved from http://theconversation.com/credit-card-fraud-what-you-need-to-know-78542. Accessed 26 October 2018.

Leviticus, Jill. "How Do Employees Steal Time While at Work?" Small Business - Chron.com, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/employees-steal-time-work-38624.html. Accessed 28 October 2018.

Duquenoy, P., Jones, S., et.al. (2008).  Ethical, Legal and Professional Issues in Computing. Australia, USA: Thomson.

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Blog #3: Biometrics: Facial Recognition Technology Pros and Cons

https://searchenterpriseai.techtarget.com/definition/facial-recognition

face icon taken from: https://icones8.fr/icon/51593/%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5-%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0

In this technology-oriented era, security technologies are advancing that made person identification more advanced and secure, and one of those that will be further discussed here is biometrics, which according to WhatIs.com, is the measurement and analysis of unique physical or behavioral characteristics of a person. One of the biometrics systems that would be the focus here is the facial recognition technology.

Facial recognition technology is one of the tools for unique identification. It detects human faces, collects, extracts, and stores the gathered data pattern in the database and that data will be used for access control of the user. It is also used in commercial, investigation, and other purposes that enhances the security. It has been said in various researches that it is the fastest biometrics technology because it performs matching of faces to thousands or even millions of face data stored in database in just a matter of seconds! So it’s quite a very demanding technology. Below are the following pros/strength of this technology.

PROS/STRENGTHS:    I referenced upwork.com and biometrics.pbworks.com in this section.

This biometric system improves security measures. This is really an effective tool for identifying faces known and unknown to a business establishment, the system would make an immediate alert as soon as it identifies a person who is unknown, wanted, and/or others. Easily integrated. An establishment doesn’t have to spend additional money in integrating this system with their security software because facial technology is easily adaptable to security systems. Its rate is accurately high! Detecting faces with this technology have never been easier than before because of 3D facial tracking technologies and infrared cameras that makes the identification process more accurate and shows great results. Fully automated and non-intrusive. This technology identifies faces automately not making the person to stop for a while to be scanned, thus making it less hassle and convenient. Sometimes people won’t even notice they’re being scanned because of blind spots of the camera. Time fraud prevention. This applies to companies where it prevents workers from fooling the system by asking favors from security staffs because it uses your FACE to get you signed in. It is cheap. This technology is not that expensive to think of. As long as you have a clear camera and face tracking software, then you’re good to go. Face tracking applications are even available in smart phone app stores, so you just search, install, read the instructions, and face tracking time!

CONS/WEAKNESSES:    This section is referenced in upwork.com, biometrics.pbworks.com, and quora.com.

Processing and storing. Since it extracts and collects face data among thousands of people, then it is a must to have big enough storage on the companies’ database or in your mobile phones. Image size and quality. Since face recognition is an advanced technology, it would also require an advanced camera with an HD quality for it to be more accurate in detecting and matching faces. It would be a problem with those with low quality cameras using face recognition as their password, it may cause matching problems. Also, the person captured afar from the camera may be difficult for the face tracking system to match its data since it would be not clear enough especially if it is zoomed in, losing its clarity. All about the angle! This is also a problem in face tracking techs. The system must make the person face the camera upfront in order to analyze it. Facing on the side or on a different angle makes it difficult for the face tracking system to extract full data about the person. One research suggests that in companies, surveillance cameras must be put in blind spots where people often face upfront without realizing there is the camera. Physical and environmental factors matter. This is also one of the problems in cameras. Face recognition is affected by lighting changes which affects also the skin color and image clarity, the person’s hairstyle, age, presence of pimples, wearing of eyeglass, or makeup, facial expression variations, the person wearing the hat vs. not wearing, and others that would cause the technology be confused. Presence of hackers! Some people who has bad intentions would really find a way to get access by scanning an image through a printed picture covering the person’s face or illegally accessing the database of people’s faces by hacking it thus invading the privacy and lowering the security.

   To conclude, face recognition technology have a very big impact in the economy in terms of security and in its technological advancement evolution. The difficulty in its implementation is I think would be found in the CONS section, which must be given solution and further improve the face tracking technology addressing the disadvantages as possible. With this addressed, it would result to a greater security, more advanced society and further improve the economy.

References:

https://www.upwork.com/hiring/for-clients/pros-cons-facial-recognition-technology-business/

https://searchenterpriseai.techtarget.com/definition/facial-recognition

http://biometrics.pbworks.com/w/page/14811349/Advantages%20and%20disadvantages%20of%20technologies

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-important-problems-in-face-recognition

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Blog #2: Hacking Case Research(Raphael Gray)

(photo from https://factrepublic.com/facts/7039/)

1) What was this case about?

             The case was all about computer hacking, where a 19 year old British hacker, Raphael Gray from rural of Wales, was guilty for illegally accessing credit card details from thousands of people from sites with unreliable security and disclosing it in ecrackers.com and freecreditcards.com including the Microsoft founder Bill Gates' account details and notably sent a consignment of Viagra to him. He was also guilty of eight counts of unauthorized access to customer databases of his ‘targeted’ companies in the US, Britain, and Canada, which he then called himself the 'Saint of e-Commerce', and obtained computer equipment by deception. One of the reasons why he hacked when he was interviewed was that he had been concerned of the security weakness in one particular software, the Microsoft Internet Information Server.

2) Who were the protagonists and parties involved?

             There were no protagonists involved. He only relied to his computer at home. The parties involved were the law enforcers, owners of the credit card information, e-commerce sites, and other organizations who were concerned.

3) Did any prosecutions result?

            There were no results done by the prosecutors because on March 2000, he was arrested after tracing him to a computer in his bedroom by FBI agents and the local Dyfed Powys Police officers. Raphael reasoned that he did it to inform the people and users of e-commerce sites to be careful in trusting or should not trust their credit card details to any e-commerce retailers sites. He wanted to expose that e-commerce sites has a low security and is very vulnerable to hacking like what he did. Raphael faced a ten count indictment where each count is under Section 2 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 which has an intent to use the computer to perform a function to secure unauthorized access .

4) If so, what were their outcomes?

             Raphael Gray was given two year rehabilitation for his case after proven guilty of the ten counts alleging an offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 but was later reduced the first six counts to section 1 charges of simple unauthorized access if the defendant pleaded guilty to the remaining four counts which are obtaining services by deception on two separate occasions, by using a credit card number to set up two separate websites to where the credit card information is displayed, and the related offences under the Computer Misuse Act section 2(1). In other words, unauthorized access.

              He had lived an unremarkable school life until he was 14 when he fell and banged his head, resulting in serious physical and mental side effects and becoming interested in computers, said by the defense. The court heard that Gray, who has "massive promise" and "intellectual gift", was unemployed when he committed the offences but later on worked in a computer software company where his talents were finally being appreciated.

5) What ethical issues are raised by this case?

             The ethical issues raised by this case was that of Raphael Gray’s intention, as it was stated in the previous part, to make the individuals and e-commerce users be aware that their credit card or personal information they posted to e-commerce sites are very prone to hacking, and may be used for bad purposes. It may sound reasonable enough and the intention was good he since it made the industry improve their system security but we must not forget that there is a law that we should abide. In Gray’s case, he violated the UK Computer Misuse acts, when he publicly exposed the credit card numbers and information, and as for the e-commerce sites and credit card owners, he had committed unauthorized access to their data which is a violation for their rights of privacy and security.

References:

Staff and agencies (2001, July 6). Welsh teen hacker sentenced.  Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2001/jul/06/security.internetcrime

Leyden, John (2001, July 6). ‘Bill Gates’ hacker escapes jail. Retrieved from https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/07/06/bill_gates_hacker_escapes_jail/

Jadefactura (2010, December 9). IT16 Case Study No. 4 Research Hacking Cases (Raphael Gray). Retrieved from https://jadefactura.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/research-hacking-cases-raphael-gray/

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Why is it important to follow computer ethics?

Spam. Virus. Theft. Hack. Device Abuse. Blackmail. Unauthorized Access.

Those were just some of the bad things a person can do using a computer, the cyber crime issues. Today we are living in a technological age, so things became high tech and advanced, computers have made a significant impact in the individual, society, and economy. 

But looking on the other side, it made committing of crimes or illegal doings more high tech and advanced too, since advantages are always paired with disadvantages, this is quite alarming for people who are not familiar or aware in any of these where they can be easily victimized. 

So for us to be aware of the things we should and shouldn’t do with computers, and why we should care about it, we should consider COMPUTER ETHICS, which means the moral behavior and principles in using a computer, knowing the right and wrong things in utilizing a computer. 

So why is it important to follow computer ethics? 

Since cyber crime issues are increasing nowadays, lots of people’s privacy have been invaded without consent or for public interest. This causes a person to be seriously hurt physically, emotionally, and psychologically. It sometimes may lead into trauma for serious cases. Having computer ethics helps lessen these situation and promote a proper and healthy computing lifestyle. Having a computer does not mean one can do anything even bad, it was created for us to do things easier and comfortable which helps the economy and society grow and be more productive, it wasn’t made for bad purposes in the first place, so we must think twice before we act on the things we do in computer, or, well, God and the law justifies the action, the bad persons may think it’s satisfying, but let them think again if they have enough conscience.