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How will governments and courts protect civil liberties in this new era of hacktivism? Ethical Hacking discusses the attendant moral and legal issues. The first part of the 21st century will likely go down in history as the era when ethical hackers opened governments and the line of transparency moved by force. One need only read the motto "we open governments" on the Twitter page for Wikileaks to gain a sense of the sea change that has occurred.
Ethical hacking is the non-violent use of a technology in pursuit of a cause-political or otherwise-which is often legally and morally ambiguous. Hacktivists believe in two general but spirited principles: respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of expression and personal privacy; and the responsibility of government to be open, transparent and fully accountable to the public.
How courts and governments will deal with hacking attempts which operate in a grey zone of the law and where different ethical views collide remains to be seen. What is undisputed is that Ethical Hacking presents a fundamental discussion of key societal questions.
A fundamental discussion of key societal questions.
About the author
Alana Maurushat is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, The University of New South Wales, Key Researcher on the CRC Data to Decisions - Big Data in National Security and Senior Fellow with the Australian CyberSecurity Centre for Research and Education at ADFA /UNSW. She is also on the Board of Directors for the cybercrime investigation firm IFW Global.
