Can Hacking Ever be Ethical?
In today’s world, most of our personal information is being stored online. Technology has allowed for us to move on from paper-based storage to easily accessible and organized files online. However, with this ease of storage online also has greater risk of our information being stolen by people known as hackers. The term hacker is used to describe somebody who breaks into a computer system in an attempt to alter the system or steal information. With the fear that surrounds having our information stored online because of these hackers, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that all hacking is unethical without thinking much of it. However, even though hacking is generally used for harmful and unethical means, there can still be cases for ethical hacking.
With the increase in information being stored in an online space, companies that store this information are hiring hackers of their own. The “white hat” hackers that these companies employ are used to find weaknesses in the company’s security of stored information in order to prevent malicious “black hat” hackers from stealing information. Because these “white hat” hackers are breaking into a company’s system in order to protect the company from “black hat” hackers from breaking in, they are performing an ethical act. Coming to this conclusion that hacking in this sort of sense is ethical does depend on the ethical approach you take however. Some form of ethics like deontology would say that all kinds of hacking are unethical no matter how good the outcome would be because some acts are just always morally prohibited. But, an ethical approach such as utilitarianism shows that actions determined morally right or wrong based on the effects of those actions. A utilitarian would say that yes, because these “white hat” hackers are breaking into a computer system in order to prevent future theft would be considered morally right based on the outcome of the action making the act ethical. Another example from ethics that points towards “white hat” hacking being ethical is the theory of virtue ethics. The approach of virtue ethics is deciding if an act is ethical or not based on the moral character of a person. If someone has truly good morals with their decision then the act would be considered ethical.
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But why is it that utilitarianism and virtue ethics are the correct ethical evaluations to use for this circumstance and not an approach like deontology? The answer to an understandable question like this would be that different situations call for different approaches towards ethics. For the situation we are looking at of hacking, if we were to take a deontology approach and determine that hacking is always unethical, it would leave a lot of people in worse off situations. Without the actions of “white hat” hackers finding ways to make information stored online more secure there would be many more instances of cyber theft which would significantly decrease the amount good in the world. However, that’s not to say that other situations might require a deontology approach over a utility or virtue ethics one. Regardless of what the situation is, it’s always important to examine all the ethical approaches before determining which one is the right approach.
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