63 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
63 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
File: NEWSWEEK - TEACHING HACKERS ETHICS
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Read 6 times
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= Teaching Hackers Ethics = Newsweek/January 14, 1985 by Dennis A. Williams =
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= with Richard Sandza = [Word Processed by BIOC Agent 003] =
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The parents of "Echo Man," 16, "Thr ee Rocks," 15, and "Uncle Sam," 17,
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probably thought they were in their rooms doing homework. Instead, the
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Burlingame, Calif., teen-agers were programming their Apples to scan the
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Sprint telephone-service computers for valid access numbers, which they used
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to make free calls. The hackers then posted the numbers on an electronic
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bulletin board, so others could share in the spoils. That was their undoing.
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Local police, who had been monitoring the bulletin board, raided each of the
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hackers' homes last month and found enough evidence to charge them with felony
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theft and wire fraud. But the police chose not to prosecute if the youngsters
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agreed to pay Sprint for the calls and write 10-page papers -- on typewriters,
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no less -- on the evils of computer hacking.
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Several years after the introducti on of computers into the nation's
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classrooms, teachers are realizing they have a twofold lesson to teach:
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computer use and computer abuse. But few schools have initiated the second
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part of the program. "Many schools are trying to focus on the issue of
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ethnics," says Jeff Levinsky of the Stanford Institute on Microcomputers in
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Education. "Still, there's nowhere near enough of that." One reason is that
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most schools are still trying to catch up with the changing technology, which
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leaves little time for thinking about its moral implications. But some
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teachers try to emphasize high-tech ethics in their computer classes. David
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Daniels, a seventh-grade teacher in Houston, devoted a week to discussing the
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movie "WarGames," which illustrates both the allure and the dangers of
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computer trespassing. Others point out the potential consequences of computer
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mischief, such as expulsion from school, incurring lawsuits or causing
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personal harm, say, by tampering with a hospital's computer.
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Many hackers are already proficient users by the time they get computer courses
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in school, and some teachers may feel it's too late to keep them from
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tampering. "We have lots of kids who are way ahead of the teachers," says
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Larry Hawkinson, a retired Silicon Valley teacher. Some schools, in fact,
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seek to exploit that expertise by challenging students to break into the
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school's computer; the process helps the school design better safeguards for
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its own system but leaves students more capable of breaking into others.
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Teachers themselves are often guilty of software piracy, and frequently convey
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only the most pragmatic notions of computer propriety. "Computer instructors
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don't teach lofty things like the difference between right and wrong," charges
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Jeanne Dietsch of Talmist, Inc., a Chicago computer-consulting firm. "They
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just teach technical things like how to program in codes to protect your own
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privacy."
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Power: One soulution may be to give hackers the responsibility for monitoring
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electronic snooping. At Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School in Massachusetts,
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five student "superusers" control the school's computer system. "The group has
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been very strict about policing its own actions," says adviser Paul Goldenberg.
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"They are almost nauseatingly moral." Senior superuser Toby Mintz admits that
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members used to peruse the records "just to see what our grades were." But he
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says they never changed anything. "We knew we weren't doing anything harmful,"
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he says, "but we realized we were doing something wrong."
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[Courtesy of Sherwood Forest ][ -- (914) 359-1517]
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-----End of File
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