Ethics And Legal Issues In Computing

Computing has law and ethics that ensures that internet and computer are not used to perpetrate crime. However, analysis have shown that legal issues in computing are not always straightforward because the computer and internet are continuously evolving hence throwing up new ethics and legal dilemmas. It is important to understand that ethics and legal issue in computing include the computing environment, hacking, sharing and privacy of the information(Nedhal, 2015). All computer crimes are described as intellectual white-collar crime since the perpetrators of the crime possess certain level of intelligence to penetrate into the computer system and alter the information. If the person stealing the information is an employee of an organization, they are normally asked to return the funds and fired. Such actions does not deter perpetrators from committing the crime because no legal action was taken against him/her.

Studies have shown that unauthorized computer entry through hacking are promoted by computer science professors by asking their students to hack into the university system as a means of proving their knowledge and skill of computer. This is a serious ethical and legal dilemma since professors perceives that students are not causing any harm to the computer system. But the questions remains whether this action is morally acceptable or reprehensible. The information stored in the computer are normally shared by many people. However, there are information that requires specific people to access. Such information requires high level of privacy(Ness, 2007). Small errors occurs during sharing process and confidential information ends up being accessed by unauthorized persons. Another important issue related to ethics and legal in computing is the environment in which peoples interacts with computer. The environment should be friendly and easy to use. However, some computers have difficult user interface due to lack of clear legal requirement that govern user interface.

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