Back in college I took a course called ‘Professional Responsibilities’. We discussed ethics and codes of conduct pertaining to software engineering. For my final paper, I took on discussing to ethical implications of building software to provide security and privacy to online communities.
This evening I watched Citizenfour. It got me thinking I should put this paper up online. Though it’s 10 years old, it certainly still seems quite relevant.
Some observations after more than 10 years of technology development?
- The worst government overreach we knew about was Carnivore. I even said,
The Carnivore system allows the FBI to be stricter about what they see so as not to accidentally violate the privacy of others.
Adorable.
- This was unfortunately really accurate:
As technology continues to spread and develop, infringing on privacy will become easier[ACLU, 1993]. The temptation to violate privacy by automated monitoring of all domestic electronic communication may at some point be too great.
- This sounds about right:
with the use of anonymous digital cash [Chaum, 1992], entire underground economies could flourish.”
It’s a hefty 4k words and includes such college paper mainstays as a bibliography (but I did at least drop the double spacing).
Please enjoy, Ethics of Creating Secure Anonymous Communities.