Classical Theism, Philosophy, and Religion Forum / Ethics of Hacking

**Posted by EarthlingMortal** 7/25/2016 6:03 am

Lately I have been seeing many of the difficulties that arise in applying ethics to digital and internet things because notions of property, privacy, and justice tend to conflict or are blurred in some way. For example:

I recently saw a photo of myself on facebook from a long time ago that was a little silly and out of context to the point where I wanted it to be taken down just in case someone else should see it. I asked my friend if she would remove the photo for me (because it was uploaded by her) and I anticipate that she will oblige me.

Thought experiment alert:

Let's say I'm not so lucky and the person who uploaded the photo is unfriendly to me and I have reason to believe they would not comply in any event. Furthermore, upon learning that I didn't like the photo, this person decides not only to not help me, but also to use this information (that I dislike the photo) against me and make sure the photo gets preserved just in case the opportunity for blackmail should arise.

It seems then I'm at a dilemma.

If I take no action, the photo may or may not come up ever again to haunt me, but will nevertheless be hosted on the internet.

If I ask for the photo to be removed, the chances that this photo will endanger my reputation increases (albeit with the slim chance that my request will be honored).

Do suspicions against the photo-host warrant hacking their account to remove the photo yourself?

Before we try to answer I think there are acouple factors at play.

Hacking is itself morally neutral. It's just a skill, and I think this much we can agree on.
The intention of the hacker in this scenario is to prevent possible calumny against himself. He's not hacking the account in order to obtain sensitive information, to blackmail the person, for identity theft, or for monetary gain.

Even though from my sympathetic point of view, I can phrase it as "prevent calumny," it might also just be plain old stealing. So which is it?

I don't know nearly enough about IP, but it seems to me that facebook owns the photos (please correct me if you know better), and has decided to give the up-loader authority over their content in ordinary situations. So, does this mean to go deleting the photos would be stealing from facebook? To own a photo you need to either have it copy written, or to possess it in such a way that it is part of something which belongs to you (camera, usb, computer, cloud etc.)***. In a way, deleting the photo would entail undermining the trust that that particular person has for facebook in terms of protecting the content he uploads, which harms their reputation as a company.

If that is correct, then we must ask if a person's reputation is more important than the reputation of facebook as a company. I obviously want to say that hacker can be justified in carrying on, but I think I'm alittle biased, and my knowledge of this areas of ethics is really poor.

Would anyone care to comment on this situation or give me some sources to read up on the cross section between natural law and the internet?

***I suspect I am somewhat in error here, because there could be a real way in which the photos actually do belong to the person who uploaded them regardless of the physical considerations of where they're stored, but I'm not prepared to define these terms.

Last edited by EarthlingMortal (7/25/2016 6:23 am)

**Posted by iwpoe** 7/25/2016 8:10 am

Digital photos and digital space are akin to property and "hacking" them as you mean to risks overstepping your rights. Hacking is not somehow *special* just because the environment is digital and your tying ownership to physical possession is specious and doesn't really hold up for the vast majority of wealth in existence (just consider the money in my bank account, a loan contract, a lease, any form of security especially something like futures, etc etc). Difference in pragmatics does not usually change the moral landscape very much.

There are of course questions here about the protections due to your reputation, but this has little to do with hacking as such. Most things I could say about the scenario would apply 100 years ago. However, I know of no regime wherein one is permitted to premptorily protect one's rights by unauthorized actions against hypothetical "blackmail".

**Posted by Last Rites** 7/25/2016 5:16 pm

Does the moral problem change is the Uploader posted the photo with malicious intent after the Hacker asked the Uploader not to?

I'm apt to side with the Uploader as long as the photo is his property, though when I think of potentially analogous situations it may be more gray than that. When the private property of one becomes threatening to another, it is sometimes legal for "another" to destroy it. When the neighbor's dog runs into my yard and behaves menacingly towards me, for example. A court would likely not fault me for shooting it.

**Posted by iwpoe** 7/25/2016 6:03 pm

Sure, but a bad picture of you uploaded on the other person's page isn't in your yard.

I'd say that the closest analog would be something like a news outlet having a photo of you.

The applicable questions would be your public rights over your image and questions of libel and slander. Of course, if the guy is just posting it and not lying about you, it's real hard to make the case that he's wronging your reputation. That seems to be just how one gets a reputation and you don't like the results.

**Posted by Jeremy Taylor** 7/26/2016 7:16 pm

iwpoe wrote:
Digital photos and digital space are akin to property and "hacking" them as you mean to risks overstepping your rights. Hacking is not somehow *special* just because the environment is digital and your tying ownership to physical possession is specious and doesn't really hold up for the vast majority of wealth in existence (just consider the money in my bank account, a loan contract, a lease, any form of security especially something like futures, etc etc). Difference in pragmatics does not usually change the moral landscape very much.

There are of course questions here about the protections due to your reputation, but this has little to do with hacking as such. Most things I could say about the scenario would apply 100 years ago. However, I know of no regime wherein one is permitted to premptorily protect one's rights by unauthorized actions against hypothetical "blackmail".

Well, it is open to question whether one should have property in something like a digital photo, or indeed anything of that sort. I'm personally suspicious of the whole idea of intellectual property, especially when it is not very limited (I scoff at the idea of facebook owning its users photos; I generally don't think it is okay to disobey silly or wrong laws, but calling them out for such is fine).

**Posted by iwpoe** 7/26/2016 8:34 pm

I mean, ultimately deep down I'm some kind of leftist so I have a lot of skepticism about the economic system, but it's hard for me to see why property isn't sufficiently flexible to cover something like a digital photograph. That's a very episodic creation that requires a certain kind of work in a certain kind of medium. I would say the same thing about programs and other digital items. I'm more hesitant about more General intellectual property, like the idea of a home button on a phone, but I understand why you might want to protect that for a limited time with patents.

But I don't think we really need to get into a dispute about the status of intellectual items as property. Even if the digital photo isn't theirs ( it's not yours anyway for that matter ) somebody owns the servers that the photos sit on and hacking is usually unauthorized tampering. If I don't get to go into your house and change the paint color because of your property rights I don't see why you get to go into the server and delete data, whatever the property status of that data.