Assignment:
Case study one:
Sexting Now Almost Commonplace
Sexting is the sending of sexually explicit messages and/or photos, primarily between mobile phones. Adult sexting is sexting between two consenting adults. In short, you take a suggestive (and perhaps sexually explicit) photo of yourself with your phone, attach a message to it, and send it to someone else's phone. The message itself is called a sext. Sexting first caught the public's attention in 2007 or so when numerous reports and stories began to surface about teen sexting. In a few instances, a teen took a sexually explicit photo of friends while in the school's shower facility and then texted it to numerous friends. Some teens have even been charged with child pornography for participating in sexting.
Adult sexting really grabbed the public's attention in mid-2011 when U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York sent sexually explicit photos of himself via Page 251Twitter to a 21-year-old woman in Washington. At first, Weiner denied the allegations, stating that his Twitter account had been hacked and someone was attempting to slur his good name. Later, it came out that Weiner had sexted six women over a three-year period, both before and during his marriage. Not long after, Weiner admitted that the sexting was his own and he resigned from Congress.
Earlier that year, U.S. Representative (also of New York) Chris Lee had performed a similar type of sexting. He had used Craigslist to solicit a relationship. Eventually he used his Gmail account to send a shirtless photo of himself to a woman. When the Gawker broke the story, Lee resigned from his political position.
Below are some statistics related to teen and young adult sexting.
• Teens who have sent sexually suggestive messages:
° 39 percent overall
° 37 percent of teen girls
° 40 percent of teen boys
° 48 percent-teens reporting having received sexts
• Teens who have posted/sent sexually explicit photos/videos of themselves:
° 20 percent overall
° 22 percent of teen girls
° 18 percent of teen boys
° 11 percent of young teen girls ages 13-16
• 71 percent of teen girls and 67 percent of teen boys who have sexted have done so to a boyfriend/girlfriend.
• 21 percent of teen girls and 39 percent of teen boys who have sexted have done so to someone they wanted to date or to hook up with.
Sexting statistics among adults have been much harder to gather and have not yet been published. However, psychologist Susan Lipkins performed an online survey of people ages 13 to 72. She found that 66 percent had sent sexually explicit messages. Her published study went on to identify that individuals in a position of power or those who thirsted for power were more likely to sext than those who were not in a position of power or did not crave power. According to Gary Lewandowski, both men and women in power are more likely to cheat, flirt, and participate in sexting. As Lewandowski explains, "I am this great, powerful person. Who's going to question me?" (He was of course paraphrasing what a powerful person might say.) To many people, the statistics are absolutely alarming. Further, consider that many teens-for fear of reprisal-probably did not answer the survey honestly.
However, some people see the use of technology to support sexting as just another communication medium. If you have a phone conversation with your partner and say something suggestive regarding sex, have you committed sexting by telephone? What about a face-to-face communication? If you bare part of your body (something sexual obviously), have you committed a form of sexting without using technology?
Questions
1. Adult sexting is perfectly legal, as it is the sharing of sexually explicit content between two consenting adults. But what about teen sexting-should that be legal? If a 16-year-old boy sends a sext to his 16-year-old partner, should that be considered child pornography? Why or why not?
2. Consider the whole notion of power being tied to sexting, flirting, and cheating. From a psychological point of view why might this be true? Do some research into Tiger Woods's troubles with extra-marital affairs. Could his cheating be tied to his position of power? Is "power" and the temptations that go with it an excuse for such behavior?
3. What role can and should employers play in limiting (perhaps eliminating) sexting in the workplace? What about employee-to-employee sexting? What about employee-to-customer sexting? Regarding the latter, what sort of legal liability does an organization have if an employee sends an unwanted and unwelcome sext to another employee or to a customer?
Case study 2:
Sony Reels from Multiple Hacker Attacks
This may very well be a story with which you are personally familiar. Between April 17, 2011, and April 19, 2011, the Sony PlayStation Network (PSN) was hacked. Personally identifiable information (PII) on some 77 million users was compromised. On April 20, Sony announced that it was taking down the PSN site, preventing owners of PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable consoles from participating in any online activities on the PSN network. What followed is a story you cannot make up.
The outage lasted for approximately 23 days, until May 15, when Sony began bringing some gaming services back online on a country-by-country basis starting with North America. During the 23-day outage, Sony postured, hoping to downplay the significance of the breach. At first, Sony understated the number of user records compromised. Periodically, Sony stated that it had the situation under control, that it had developed a clear and concise strategy for bringing services back online, and that things would be up and running within a few days.
In the end, Sony admitted that its PlayStation Network had been the target of one of the largest data breaches ever. It offered free game time for returning customers and other perks. It even announced that it was paying for $1 million in identity theft insurance for each of its compromised users. The insurance was to last for 12 months and include Internet surveillance and complete identity repair in the event of identity theft and fraudulent use. Sony estimated that the cost of the PSN outage would be $177 million.
Lawsuits quickly followed. On April 27, 2011, Kristopher Johns filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all PlayStation users. His lawsuit alleged many things including: (1) Sony failed to encrypt data, (2) Sony failed to provide prompt and adequate warnings of a security breach to users, and (3) Sony created unreasonable delays in bringing PSN services back online. A similar lawsuit was filed in Canada by Natasha Maksimovic. She sought $1 billion (Canadian dollars) in damages which included free credit monitoring and identity theft insurance. The lawsuit contained the following quote: "If you can't trust a huge multinational corporation like Sony to protect your private information, who can you trust? It appears to me that Sony focuses more on protecting its games than its PlayStation users."
But Sony's hacker troubles didn't end there. On May 3, 2011, in the middle of attempting to bring its PSN services back online, Sony Online Entertainment was hacked. With this breach, another 24.6 million user records were compromised. Sony stated that it believed the two hacks were related. Then, on June 2, 2011, the SonyPictures.com Web site was hacked, further compromising unencrypted password and personally identifiable information.
Questions
1. Do some research on the Sony PSN debacle. What are the new cost estimates for the incident? How many customers have left Sony because of the incident? Have there been any reports of fraudulent use of identities obtained from the hack? Has Sony's PlayStation Network been hacked again?
2. Gaming and virtual services on the Internet, like Sony's PSN, World of Warcraft, and Second Life, boast millions of users. For each user, the service must store credit card information and personally identifiable information. What must these organizations do to protect the private information of their customers? Is it even reasonable to assume that any organization can have protection measures in place to stop the world's best hackers?
3. If an extremely intelligent hacker is caught by a law enforcement agency, should that hacker be prosecuted and sent to jail? Is there perhaps a way that the hacker might be "turned" for the good of the digital world? What would that be?
4. Every survey taken of businesses regarding data breaches has found that many businesses are reluctant to publicly announce a data breach. Further, most businesses will Page 253 downplay the significance of the breach. Why do organizations behave like this? What is there to gain by not operating in a transparent fashion? Is this an ethical issue, a legal issue, or both?
Keyterms :
• Adware
• Anonymous Web browsing (AWB)
• Anti-virus software
• Biometrics
• Clickstream
• Computer virus (virus)
• Cookie
• Copyright
• Denial-of-service attack (DoS)
• Encryption