Social Issues
A popular feature of many networks are newsgroups or bulletin boards through which people can exchange messages with individuals of the same interests.Provided that the cases were restricted to technical issues or hobbies like gardening Not too many problems arise.
The problem comes when news groups focus on issues that people actually played with care, like politics, religion or sex.
The views submitted to such groups could be offensive to some people.
Worse, they may not be politically correct. Also, messages need not be limited to text.
Today can be sent High-resolution photos and even short video clips via computer networks.
Some people practice the philosophy of live and let live, but others feel that sending a material (for example, attacks on countries or religions in particular, pornography, etc.) is simply unacceptable and should be censored.
Different countries have different and conflicting appropriate laws.
People have sued the network operators, claiming they are responsible, as in the case of newspapers and magazines, the content they transmit.
The answer is inevitable that a network is like a telephone company or the post office, so can not be expected to monitor what users say.
Moreover, if network operators censor messages, erased any content that contains even the slightest possibility of being sued, but this would violate the rights of its users to freedom of expression.
Probably the safest thing would be to say that this debate will continue for some time.
Another fun area is the rights of employees compared with those of employers.
Many people read and write email on the job.
Many employers have demanded the right to read and possibly censor messages from employees, including Envoys from a home computer after work hours. Not all employees agree with this.
Even if employers have power over employees, “this relationship also applies to universities and students? What about high schools and students? In 1994, the Carnegie-Mellon University decided to suspend the flow of incoming messages from several newsgroups dealing college sex because she felt the material was inappropriate for minors ( under 18 years). It took years to recover from this event.
Another important issue is the rights of government and citizens.
The FBI system has been installed in many Internet service providers to browse among all emails in search of pieces that interest you (Blaze and Bellovin, 2000, Sobel 2001; Zacks, 2001).
The system was originally called Carnivore, but the bad publicity caused them to change the name to something less aggressive sounding as DCS1000.
But his objective remains to spy on millions of people hoping to find information about illegal activities.
Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government to conduct investigations without a warrant.
Decide whether These words, written in the eighteenth century, are still valid in the XXI century is a matter that could keep the courts busy until XXII century.
The government has no monopoly on the threats against a person’s privacy.
The private sector also plays its part. For example, small files called cookies that Web browsers store on users’ computers allow companies to track their activities in cyberspace, and could allow card numbers credit, social security and other sensitive information is disseminated across the Internet (Berghel, 2001).
Computer networks offer the possibility of sending anonymous messages.
In some situations, this capability may be desirable.For example, students, soldiers, employees and Citizens may report the misconduct of some teachers, officials, top and politicians without fear of reprisal.
Moreover, in the United States and in most democracies, the law specifically grants an accused person the right to confront and challenge his accuser in court. The anonymous allegations can not be used as evidence.
In short, computer networks, such as printing 500 years ago, allow ordinary citizens to distribute their views in various ways and at different audiences, which was not possible before.
This new release provides background about many social, political and moral unresolved.
Along with the good comes the bad. This appears to be the life.
Internet makes it possible to find information quickly, but a lot of it is poorly documented, is false or completely wrong.
The medical advice was obtained on the Internet could have come from a winner Nobel Prize or a high school dropout.
Computer networks have also introduced new types of antisocial and criminal behavior.
(Spam) has become commonplace because some people involved in collecting millions of email addresses and CD-ROMs sold to merchants.
E-mail messages that contain active elements (basically programs or macros running on the host machine) may contain potentially destructive virus.
Identity theft has become a serious problem, as thieves together now information on a person to obtain credit cards and other documents on behalf of it.
Finally, the ability to stream music and video digitally has opened the door massive violations of copyright, which are difficult to detect and punish.
Many of these problems could be solved if the computer industry took the computer security seriously.
If all messages were coded and authenticated, would be more difficult to commit crimes.
The problem is that the hardware and software providers know that security features to cost money and that their customers do not request.
In addition, a large number of problems from a faulty software, because the providers of functions saturate their programs, which means more code and, inevitably, more failures.
A tax on new features could help, but that would be like selling an issue cents.
Replace the defective software might be good, but that would bankrupt the entire software industry in the first year.