Spring 2008: Thursdays 7:00-9:30 pm, 25-EP Room 711
Text: The textbook will be CyberEthics, by Halbert & Ingulli, Thompson-West, 2005.
Spring 2025:
I am generally in my office on Mondays from 10:00 to noon, and from 1:45 to 3:45.
Sometimes I have meetings or come in late, so check first.
I am also available other times via Zoom, by appointment. Contact me via email for the Zoom meeting ID.
There will be several writing assignments during the semester, plus a midterm and final. The papers will count for about half your grade; the exams will each count for about a quarter. The final is Thursday, May 1, at our usual time and place. There will be 10 questions; you will have to answer 8 of them. It will not be open book; however, it should not be hard.
The final exam study guide is here.
My general course groundrules are here. Loyola's academic integrity rules are here.
| Week 1: Jan 17 | Week 2: Jan 24 | Week 3: Jan 31 |
| Week 4: Feb 7 | Week 5: Feb 14: read ch 2, RFID papers below | Week 6: Feb 21 |
| Week 7: Feb 28 | Break: Mar 6 | Week 8: Mar 13 |
| Maundy Thursday: Mar 20 | Week 9: Mar 27 | Week 10: Apr 3 |
| Week 11: Apr 10 | Week 12: Apr 17 | Week 13: Apr 24 |
Paper 2: due Friday, Mar 14, by email or blackboard
Paper 3: due Friday, Apr 18, by email or blackboard, pdf not preferred (but accepted)
Paper 4: due Friday, May 2, by email or blackboard, pdf not preferred (but accepted)
Here's a more Spring-2008-specific list of these topics.
Here's Richard Stallman's essay,
Can you trust your computer?.
Here's something on
browser plugins and security.
Don't forget StopBadWare.org.
Here's the Felten video on Diebold voting machines, with papers too.
Organizations
Association for Computing Machinery -- The professional organization for computer professionals (oriented towards programmers). See their USACM subgroup for public-policy issues. See also the ACM Code of Ethics.
Electronic Frontier Foundation -- Founded to fight for citizens' rights in the areas of privacy, cyberspace freedom (specifically, freedom of speech), copyrights, and encryption.
American Civil Liberties Union -- Not specifically concerned with cyberspace law, but nonetheless very involved in the fight against the Communications Decency Act. The ACLU has long fought against censorship in any form, and for personal liberties in general.
Electronic Privacy Information Center -- They are concerned with both government surveillance (directly and by searching your records), the scope of government databases, and encryption.
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility -- "CPSR is a public-interest alliance of computer scientists and others interested in the impact of computer technology on society." Includes privacy issues but also professional responsibilities of programmers and workplace empowerment issues.
Ethics Center for Engineering and Science A useful compendium of ethics case studies and other information pertaining to science and engineering.
US Copyright office home page All sorts of information on copyright legislation, including the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
2600, the Hacker Quarterly, leader in the fight for DeCSS.
Link farms
Individuals
Friends of Randal Schwartz -- Randal Schwartz is the author of the bestselling Perl reference book. As a consultant at Intel, he continued to perform some routine system administration duties after he was officially transferred to other tasks. These duties unfortunately were classified by a then-new Oregon law as "theft", and Schwartz was prosecuted and convicted.