Scenarios

Scenario 1: Protecting Personal Data

• Your customer is a community clinic that works with families
with problems of family violence. It has three sites in the
same city, including a shelter for battered women and
children. The director wants a computerized record and
appointment system, networked for the three sites. She
wants a few laptop computers on which staffers can carry
records when they visit clients at home and stay in touch with
clients by email. She asked about an app for staffers’
smartphones by which they could access records at social
service agencies. At the shelter, staffers use only first names
for clients, but the records contain last names and forwarding
addresses of women who have recently left.

• 412-414
 Scenarios
Scenario 2: Email System With Targeted Ads
• Your company is developing a free email service that will
include targeted advertising based on the content of the
email messages (similar to Google’s Gmail). You are part of
the team designing the system. What are your ethical
responsibilities?

• 414-415
 Scenarios
Scenario 3: Webcams in School Laptops
• As part of your responsibilities, you oversee the installation of
software packages for large orders. A recent order of laptops
for a local school district requires webcam software to be
loaded. You know that this software allows for remote
activation of the webcam.

• 415-416
 Scenarios
Scenario 4: Publishing Security Vulnerabilities
• Three MIT students planned to present a paper at a security
conference describing security vulnerabilities in Boston’s
transit fare system. At the request of the transit authority, a
judge ordered the students to cancel the presentation and
not to distribute their research. The students are debating
whether they should circulate their paper on the Web.
Imagine that you are one of the students.

• 416-417
 Scenarios
Scenario 5: Specifications
• You are a relatively junior programmer working on modules
that collect data from loan application forms and convert
them to formats required by the parts of the program that
evaluate the applications. You find that some demographic
data are missing from some forms, particularly race and age.
What should your program do? What should you do?

• 417-418
 Scenarios
Scenario 6: Schedule Pressures – Safety-critical
• Your team is working on a computer-controlled device for
treating cancerous tumors. The computer controls direction,
intensity, and timing of a beam that destroys the tumor.
Various delays have put the project behind schedule, and the
deadline is approaching. There will not be time to complete
all the planned testing. The system has been functioning
properly in the routine treatment scenarios tested so far. You
are the project manager, and you are considering whether to
deliver the system on time, while continuing testing and
making patches if the team finds bugs.

• 418-420
 Scenarios
Scenario 7: Schedule Pressures – Product to market
• You are a programmer working for a very small start-up
company. The company has a modest product line and is now
developing a truly innovative new product. Everyone is
working 60-hour weeks and the target release date is nine
months away. The bulk of the programming and testing is
done. You are about to begin the beta testing. (See Section
8.3.1 for an explanation of beta testing.) The owner of the
company (who is not a programmer) has learned about an
annual industry show that would be ideal for introducing the
new product. The show is in two months. The owner talks
with the project manager. They decide to skip the beta testing
and start making plans for an early release.

• 420-421
 Scenarios
Scenario 8: Software License Violation
• Your company has 25 licenses for a computer program, but
you discover that it has been copied onto 80 computers.

• 421-422
 Scenarios
Scenario 9: Going Public
• Suppose you are a member of a team working on a
computer-controlled crash avoidance system for automobiles.
You think the system has a flaw that could endanger people.
The project manager does not seem concerned and expects
to announce completion of the project soon. Do you have an
ethical obligation to do something?

• 422-423
 Scenarios
Scenario 10: Release of Personal Information
• You work for the IRS, the Social Security Administration, a
movie-rental company, or an Internet service provider.
Someone asks you to get a copy of records about a particular
person. He will pay you $500.
• You know another employee sells records with people’s
personal information.

• 423-424
 Scenarios
Scenario 11: Conflict of Interest
• You have a small consulting business. The CyberStuff
company plans to buy software to run a cloud data-storage
business. CyberStuff wants to hire you to evaluate bids from
vendors. Your spouse works for NetWorkx and did most of
the work in writing the bid that NetWorkx plans to submit.
You read the bid while your spouse was working on it and you
think it is excellent. Do you tell CyberStuff about your
spouse’s connection with NetWorkx?

• 424-425
 Scenarios
Scenario 12: Kickbacks and Disclosure
• You are an administrator at a major university. Your
department selects a few brands of security software to
recommend to students for their desktop computers, laptops,
tablets, and other devices. One of the companies whose
software you will evaluate takes you out to dinner, gives you
free software (in addition to the security software), offers to
pay your expenses to attend a professional conference on
computer security, and offers to give the university a
percentage of the price for every student who buys its
security package.

• 426-417
 Scenarios
Scenario 13: A Test Plan
• A team of programmers is developing a communications
system for firefighters to use when fighting a fire. Firefighters
will be able to communicate with each other, with supervisors
near the scene, and with other emergency personnel. The
programmers will test the system in a field near the company
office.

• 427
 Scenarios
Scenario 14: Artificial Intelligence and Sentencing
• You are part of a team developing a sophisticated program
using artificial intelligence techniques to help judges make
sentencing decisions for convicted criminals.

• 427-429
 Scenarios
Scenario 14: Artificial Intelligence and Sentencing
(cont.)
• Suppose judges in your state use a sentencing decision system
that displays similar cases for the judge to view. You are a
programmer working for your state government. Your state
has just made it a criminal offense to use a cellphone while
taking a college exam. Your boss, a justice department
administrator, tells you to modify the program to add this
new category of crime and assign the same relevancy weights
to cases as the program currently does for using a cellphone
while driving a car (already illegal in your state).

• 427-429
 Scenarios
Scenario 15: A Gracious Host
• You are the computer system administrator for a mid-sized
company. You can monitor the company network from home,
and you frequently work from home. Your niece, a college
student, is visiting for a week. She asks to use your computer
to check her email. Sure, you say.

• 430