Ethical hackers will make the world a better place?
Ethical hackers will make the world a better place or — at the dawn of the digital age — the farmers who hack tractors will be ruthlessly punished?
Ethics VS amorality
It is not clear where the dividing line between “good” and “bad”hackers should be drawn, but citizens should start — now — to understand the Difference and discuss the various acts performed by hackers, morally and legally, precisely because they will — always — have to deal with them more and more often in this century and beyond.
They are the ones who created:
- #privacy tools
- #opensource software
- a decentralized #internet
- exposed the technical flaws in voting
- punished shady contractors by divulging information (HackingTeam, HBGary, and Stratfor)
- as well as #PanamaPapers, #WikiLeaks and #Xnet corruption
- and protested the boycott of WikiLeaks
- but unfortunately they also betrayed their governments by leaking state secrets #Manning, #Snowden and WikiLeaks and interfered with #geopolitics, #Anonymous, #JulianAssange
- but interfered with property rights in order to assert user #ownership, #selfdetermination, and free software’s 4 freedoms
- yet today they also sneak into systems to damage critical #infrastructures and even target banking systems, exchanges, power grids, telecommunications systems, air traffic, chemical plants, nuclear power plants, undermining democratic processes.
- …..
What is it all about? Is it civil disobedience or a harmless hoax? Intellectual property infringement, theft, fraud, conspiracy, extortion, espionage, terrorism and treason? OR freedom of speech, free association, legitimate protest?
Right or wrong the hacker — good to bad — will remain the only free person, thanks either to his/her altruism or to his/her ability to transgress. HE/SHE can harm or lead the world towards a more responsible government and informed citizens, less corrupt and unjust economic systems, wiser public uses of digital technology, more self-determination for the ordinary user, fairer commercial contracts, better conditions for #innovation and #creativity, more decentralized and robust infrastructure systems. Maybe they will be the ones to teach us that we shouldn’t use technology for everything, because this can have social consequences.
Must Read: Coding Democracy: How Hackers Are Disrupting Power, Surveillance, and Authoritarianism — #MaureenWebb