CS 305
Social, Ethical, and Legal
Implications of Computing
Chapter 3
WWW to Wireless Communication
Herbert G. Mayer, PSU CS
Status 7/29/2012
Slides derived from prof. Wu-Chang Feng
1
Syllabus
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Spam
Electronic Mail
Why Spam?
How Done?
Spam and Ethics
CAN Spam
Class Exercise
Solutions to Spam
World-Wide Web
Censorship
Freedom of Expression
Discussions in Class
2
Spam
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SPAM? No: Spam! Spam is not an acronym
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Spam is unsolicited bulk information sent indiscriminately
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Possibly derived as a second meaning of derided product:
Spam from Hormel Corp. known as SPiced hAM
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Spam is one of email’s not so  desired side-effects
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SPIT is Spam over Internet Telephony
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In 2000 Spam accounted for 8% of all email
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In 2003 Spam accounted for 40% of all email
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In 2009 Spam accounted for 90% of all email
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In 2011 Spam is estimated to account for ~7 Trillion emails
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In my last year working at Intel, I received ~200 emails a day
on average; a week of vacation turned into an email disaster;
I treated some like SPAM: Delete! Delete! Delete!
3
Electronic Mail
outgoing
message queue
user mailbox
Three major components:
user agents
mail servers
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol:
SMTP
user
agent
mail
server
SMTP
User Agent
SMTP
a.k.a. “mail reader”
composing, editing, reading
mail messages
mail
server
e.g., Eudora, Outlook, elm,
Mozilla Thunderbird
outgoing, incoming messages
stored on server
user
agent
4
SMTP
user
agent
user
agent
mail
server
user
agent
user
agent
Electronic Mail: Mail Servers
Mail Servers
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user
agent
mailbox contains incoming
messages for user
mail
server
message queue of outgoing
(to be sent) mail messages
SMTP
e.g. sendmail, postfix,
Exchange
SMTP
SMTP protocol
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Between mail servers to send
email messages
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Mail servers are both clients
and servers
mail
server
user
agent
5
SMTP
user
agent
user
agent
mail
server
user
agent
user
agent
Electronic Mail: SMTP [RFC 821]
Uses Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) to reliably
transfer message from client to server, port 25
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User agent to sending server (sometimes)
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Sending server to receiving server (always)
Command-Response interaction
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commands: composing, reading, sending, sending with
acknowledgment, replying, replying to all …
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response: status code and phrase
6
Alice emails Bob
4) SMTP client sends Alice’s
message over the TCP
connection
5) Bob’s mail server places
the message in Bob’s
mailbox
6) Bob invokes his user agent
to read message
7) More complex scenarios
with ACK possible
1) Alice uses UA to compose
message, “to”
bob@someschool.edu
2) Alice’s UA sends message
to her mail server;
message placed in
message queue
3) Client side of SMTP opens
TCP connection with Bob’s
mail server
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user
agent
2
mail
server
3
mail
server
4
7
5
6
user
agent
Spam Today
By the end of 2011, the majority of all email received is unwanted
Unwanted email can mean
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Informative for our genuine interests, and thus be enjoyed
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A bother, since the subject is not of interest
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Some topics even can be strongly offensive
First level protection:
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Have tools to re-direct spam to junk mail boxes
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Error-prone, and places some good mail into junk boxes
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Happened to this instructor with this CS class’s homework; but
also due to computer change: MS->Apple
How do we achieve real protection?
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Through laws? Then they need enforcement
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By tools? They need to be strongly refined
spammers will find ways around the tools, and around the laws 
8
Why Spam?
Let’s say I want to send an advertisement to
1,000,000 “targeted” people
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To send by regular bulk mail, this will cost ~$200-300 k
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To send by email, it will cost ~$1 k, i.e. the cost to buy a list of
email addresses from an Internet company
 email addresses harvested from web sites, mailing lists, chat
rooms, and newsgroups, then sold to Spammers
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Dictionary attacks
 trying lots of plausible address combinations
 keeping the ones not bouncing back
 Thus putting added strain (bandwidth) to the network
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How Done?
Run their own server farms for sending Spam
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Typically located off-shore
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Use ISPs that do not care about Spam
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Less effective now
 with proliferation of blacklists
 With efforts to shut down rogue ISPs
Locate open mail proxies and bounce Spam through them
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Less effective
Use networks of compromised machines (botnets)
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Single, most popular use for a botnet
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Monetization of botnet to send Spam drives malware effort
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Some steps taken to prevent (i.e. ISPs allowing direct port 25
access only to their own mail servers)
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How Done?
Definition: Phishing is fraudulent acquisition of
sensitive (e.g. confidential) information thru internet
Phishing accounts
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Trick legitimate user to give up username/password
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Send as the user (reputation hijacking) to avoid blacklisting
based on IP addresses
Creating bogus webmail accounts
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Rely on good reputation of popular webmail services such as
Gmail and Yahoo! Mail, to avoid blacklisting based on IP
addresses
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Spam and Ethics
Kantian evaluation of Spam
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Act guided by moral principles that can at the same time be
used as base for a universal code of law
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A simple legal way of saying this: Act in good faith!
 However, every simple phrase invites mis-interpreters!
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Another way of saying this: Act so that you treat yourself as
well as others as ends in themselves; never purely as means
to another end
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Scenario: Suppose I have a great new product I wish to
advertise. I send an unsolicited email to a large group of
people knowing that only a tiny fraction is interested
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Is that ethical under Kant’s CI?
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Students discuss in class 7/17/2012
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Spam and Ethics
Act Utilitarian evaluation of Spam
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An action is right (or wrong) to the extent that it increases (or
decreases) the total happiness of the affected parties.
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Scenario: A product that costs $10 to make, is sold for $25,
purchasers value at $30 (i.e. their derived happiness)
 100 million bulk messages being sent costs lost time and
bandwidth for those, who receive it and are not interested
 As a result each of those has $0.01 of unhappiness (time wasted)
 10,000 customers purchase product and get full happiness
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Is that ethical under Act Utilitarianism?
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Students discuss … and compute amount of satisfaction,
here AKA happiness
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Spam and Ethics
Rule Utilitarian evaluation of Spam
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We should adopt moral rules which, if followed by everyone,
will lead to greatest increase in overall happiness
Scenario: Products being advertised, where only a small
fraction of targets is known to be interested
What if only 1% of all small businesses in the US email
you 1 Spam advertisement per year?
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There are 24,000,000 small businesses in America
1% => 240,000 emails per year
240,000 / 365 = 657 emails per day for each person
You are one of these persons! Do you feel happy about 657
unwanted emails every day?
Is sending Spam ethical under Rule Utilitarianism?
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Students discuss … and assess overall happiness again!
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Spam and Ethics
Social Contract Theory evaluation of Spam
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Morality is the set of rules, governing how people are to
treat one another, rules that rational people will agree to
accept, for their mutual benefit, on the condition that others
follow those rules as well
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Right to free speech as applied to mass communication
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Is sending Spam ethical under Social Contract Theory?
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Students discuss … also think of enforcement! And why we
have Spam in our current society?
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CAN Spam of 2003 Federal Law
Controlling Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography & Marketing
Largely unenforced
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Difficult, time-consuming, and resource intensive to track the
sources of Spam
Some successes
 Greco (2/2004), Goodin (1/2006)
 JumpStart (3/2006) $900k judgment
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But largely ignored
 Spam 75% of all messages in 2006, more AND larger percentage today
in 2012
 0.27% of Spam was compliant with guidelines for Spam
Divides email into 3 categories; Spam should adhere to guidelines
of these 3 categories, to be:
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1. Transactional, 2. commercial, 3. unsolicited advertisement
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CAN Spam
1. Transactional
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Sender and receiver have an established business or personal
relationship
Header, sender, and organization must be correct
Can’t disguise identity of the sender from which message was sent
2. Commercial
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Commercial email messages to which user has consented to receive
Same as above and must provide option to remove from list
 Mechanism to opt-out must include an Internet based method
 i.e. not an 800 number of the kind: “Your call is important to us!”
 Unsubscribe must be effective almost immediately, not in weeks
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Must contain the postal address of sender
3. Unsolicited Advertisement
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Must meet requirements of category 1 and 2 and:
Must include clear and conspicuous evidence that the message is an
advertisement
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CAN Spam
Critics call this the “You can” Spam Act
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You get one free shot at a user’s Inbox
Does not prevent sending of Spam, but forces such messages into
complying with defined rules
Unsolicited messages must comply with all 3 types of rules
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Unsubscribe compliance
 Visible, operable opt-out (unsubscribe) mechanism for all types of
messages with requests honored within 10 days
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Content compliance
 Accurate “From:” lines with relevant “Subject:” lines
 Legitimate physical address of publisher/advertiser
 If applicable, a label is present for adult content
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Sending behavior compliance
 No sending through open relays –i.e. server that blindly pass on/through
email messages
 No sending via harvested email
 No deceiving, false headers
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CAN Spam
Exemptions
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Religious messages
Political messages
Content that complies with lawful marketing mechanisms
National security messages
Transactional or relationship messages from companies to
existing customers
Overrides state law
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Rushed passage to supercede a tougher California law
Prohibits recipients from suing senders directly!!
Penalties
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Misdemeanor to send with falsified header
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CAN Spam
Problems with the “opt out” provision in CAN Spam?
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For illegal email sender, your opting out means they know you
exist; so they can and will send you more email
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May unsubscribe you, and send Spam from a different entity!
 Time provisions on length of unsubscription
 Allowable delay in unsubscription
 Create many LLCs to keep user receiving Spam??
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What about a legitimate company? Is there a potential
problem with opting out?
 Can they then sell your email address to another company?
 Is your email address your possession or theirs to use?
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What about non-US Spammers?
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Class Exercise
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Step 1: Select a discussion leader in class room!
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How do you suggest to solve the problem of Spam in an
ethical manner?
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Students propose a practical, legal method of curbing Spam,
in a way that the Internet remains usable!
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Discuss Pros
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Discuss Cons
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Enforceable?
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Would this be an improvement over current situation?
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Solutions to Spam
1.
Require explicit opt-in to email lists
2.
Require labeling of email advertising, e.g. “AAA
subscription” in the subject line
3.
Add a cost to every email that is sent
4.
Ban all unsolicited email
5.
1991 – Telephone consumer protection act, included a
provision against junk faxes
6.
Provide fast method of unsubscribing: not 10 days!
Do you see problems with these methods? All? Any?
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Ethics & World-Wide Web
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World-Wide Web
Invented by Timothy Berners-Lee
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Proposed 1989, published 1991
Co-invented with Robert Cailliau
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee
Hypertext system that is
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Decentralized
Uniquely addressable (via URLs)
Ubiquitous, internet based
Applications
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E-commerce
Social networks
Content creation (wikis, blogs)
News, Advertise
Distance learning
Pay taxes, shop at Amazon, Gamble, …
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WWW & Censorship
Should the Internet be filtered/censored?
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In our times, access to the internet is tightly controlled in some
countries: e.g. North Korea, Cuba, China, Myanmar
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In others the content is tightly controlled, e.g.:
 Saudi Arabia (centralized control center in Riyadh blocks pornography,
gambling, and sites offensive to Islam, government, royal family)
 China’s Great Firewall (human censors who perform similar functions)
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Special interesting cases of censorship:
 Germany:
» Bans neo-Nazi web sites
» Bans message denying Holocaust; denial illegal in 16 EU countries
 USA:
» Controls pornography (Children’s Internet Protection Act)
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Censorship During History
Direct censorship
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Since the 4th century, the Catholic Church banned reading and
possession of certain books
 List of books named Index, short for “Index Librorum Prohibitorum”
 List officially maintained by the Vatican, later by those cardinals who were
“Inquisition Officials”
 Maintained until the mid 20th century --NOT a typo!!
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum
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During history: State execution, Church control, University
responsibility for “Index” enforcement
 Catholic church did not have the executive arm in most countries to
enforce that all books on “Index” be collected and burnt
 Was the duty of catholic states, delegated generally to the universities
 Last issue of “Index” was in the 1960s! Seriously, the 20th century!
 Today the Caßtholic church has no such official list
Autocratic states like Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Myanmar, etc. today
maintain similar prohibited lists of select Internet sites
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Censorship
Direct censorship
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Government information monopoly enables censorship
 Government controls all means of communication
 e.g. Soviet television stations, radio, etc.
 Hard to do with Internet; but being attempted!
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Prepublication review
 Sensitive classified documents must go through process to become
declassified and publishable
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Licensing and registration
 Controlling who gets access (i.e. television stations being granted
electromagnetic spectrum in exchange for something)
 Note that “selling frequencies” is a huge source of tax/income potential
Self censorship
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Suppressing information as a means to an end
 CNN suppressed negative government info in Iraq to retain its office in
Baghdad
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Voluntary rating systems so users can avoid certain content
What is “voluntary?”
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Practical Censorship Issues
Many-to-many communication
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Prevents governments from controlling the content
Gutenberg’s printing press invention raised difficulty of controlling books
Note: printing was known in China before Gutenberg
Dynamic
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New web sites opened and content continuously published
New site-names created and deleted constantly
Size
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Millions of sites, numerous pieces of information, mirror sites
See WikiLeaks: shows Department of State content: ¼ million files, 1 event
Global
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Limited authority for any government to restrict activities around the world
Many countries have server farms; impossible to shut all down!
Identity
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Difficult to distinguish children from adults, criminals from bona-fide users
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Censorship & Ethics
Where does censorship leave “freedom of expression”?
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Kant
 Censorship is clearly a backwards step
 Prevents people from getting information they need to make their
own decisions

John Stuart Mill, 1806 – 1873, British philosopher:
 None of us is infallible and knows the whole truth. Censorship
may be silencing the voice of truth
 Majority opinion is not necessarily the whole truth
 Must allow others to express their opinions to get a better sense
of truth
 Majority opinion must be tested and validated. Otherwise it is
prejudice
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Censorship & Ethics
Is censorship of books, films, internet, posters practiced
in the USA?
Aside from limiting a.) pornography at internet sites, b.)
offensive language, and c.) libel, there seems to be no
censorship; see freedom of expression below!
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Freedom of Expression
Mill’s Principle of Harm
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The only ground on which intervention is justified is to
prevent harm to others; the individual’s own good is not a
sufficient condition
 Students: How does this apply to drug users who destroy
themselves?
 How applicable to people, who wish to commit suicide?
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What ethical framework does Mill’s principle follow?
Explains positions of most western democratic governments
with regard to pornography
 Adults viewing hurt mostly themselves by doing so. as opposed
to harming others
 But, what is your position, regarding the creators and publishers
of pornography? Do they hurt themselves? Others?
 Note exception for children
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Freedom of Expression in US
Not an absolute right in eyes of the US Supreme Court
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See Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissentions
Right is balanced against the public good
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Abuse of such freedom when harming the public can be
punishable
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Libel, reckless or calculated lies, slander, misrepresentation,
perjury, false advertising, obscenity and profanity, solicitation
of crime, and personal abuse
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Example: Cigarette advertising on television
 How many cigarette ads have you seen recently?
 Ethical argument for why it should not be allowed:
 Student opinons?
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FCC v. Pacifica Foundation
Radio broadcast of George Carlin’s performance “Filthy
Words” in 1973, preceded by warning of sensitive
language
A man had heard “filthy words” on car radio while
driving with his young son; he complained to FCC
FCC informed Pacifica Foundation: further complaints
would lead to sanctions
Pacifica sued FCC, but FCC won in a 5/4 Supreme Court
decision of 1978
Note: limitations only for public radio and TV, not for
cable and other subscriber programs
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_dirty_words
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FCC vs. Pacifica Foundation
Broadcast media are uniquely pervasive and invasive
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Indecent material broadcast into privacy of homes
People can turn it on-off at any time, making the warning
ineffective
Damage is done as soon as it is heard, i.e. can not undo its
harm by turning off devices retroactively
Uniquely accessible to children
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Can restrict access in bookstores and movie theaters
Time of day is an important consideration, however, for
broadcast radio/television
Students debate and exercise: Ethics analysis!
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Kant’s CI, Act U., Rule U., Social Contract
34
Censorship and Children
Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA)

Government requirement for installing anti-pornography
filters before receiving federal funds for Internet access
 Argument for: Libraries do already abstain from offering X-rated
magazines or movies
 So they should not be obliged to filter Internet pornography
 Argument against: Filters restrict freedom of speech

Upheld by U.S. Supreme Court in 2003
 It is not the role and function of libraries to provide a public
forum for free speech; can be exercised elsewhere
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Is CIPA Ethical?
Kantian evaluation of protecting children from harm using filters

Assumption is that some non-pornographic web pages are filtered

Filters treat creators of non-offensive, blocked pages as a means to the
end for restricting children’s access to pornographic materials
Act utilitarian evaluation

Up to each of us

Enacting CIPA results in fewer children being exposed

Some legitimate sites will be filtered accidentally

Stigma, discomfort for legitimate users getting sites unfiltered
Social contract theory evaluation
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Private viewing of pornography does not make social living impossible

Public libraries offer arguments on both sides (assumption is that filters
block some useful sites)
36
Catch Chat-Room Predators
Police sting operations to lure pedophiles


Ethical?
Kantian analysis
 Is the will leading to the sting action OK?
 Yes and no: Overall goal is good; but that is not of prime interest to CI
 Deceptiveness is always wrong to a Kantian!

Utilitarian analysis
 Result is public benefit (OK to harm one pedophile so society benefits)
 Publicity may deter other pedophiles
 What is the impact on chat rooms as an effective medium for
communication if one knows one is being “watched”?

Social contract theory analysis
 Misrepresentation by pedophile should be punished
 Police are also misrepresenting themselves
 Not a clear cut argument  under Social Contract theory
37
Discussions
Suppose 99% of all email from country X is Spam
Discuss the ethics behind blacklisting all email from
country X:

Kantian

Act Utilitarianism

Rule Utilitarianism

Social Contract
38
Discussions
Definition MMORPG: Massively Multiplayer Online RolePlaying Game
Discuss the ethics behind a rule in China, mandating a
time-limit for playing MMORPGs. Is this law moral?
What would the judgment depend upon?

Kantian

Act Utilitarianism

Rule Utilitarianism

Social contract theory
39
Discussions
Discuss the ethics of posting photos on-line without the
permission of those who appear in them

Are there situations when it would be unethical? If so, what
are they?

Kantian

Act Utilitarianism

Rule Utilitarianism

Social contract theory
40
References
 Spam:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=spam&searchmode=none
 File Transfer Protocol: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc821
 SMTP: http://www.smtp2go.com/articles/smtp-protocol.html
 Mill’s utilitarianism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill
 Clarence Thomas supreme court dissentions:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/watchwomanonthewall/2011/06/court-rulesagainst-parents-justice-thomas%E2%80%99-dissent-protects-children-bysteve-birn.html
 MMORGPG:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_multiplayer_online_roleplaying_game
 FCC vs. Pacifica:
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free_speech/pacifica.html
 Phishing at Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/resources/phishing-whatis.aspx
 Phishtank: http://www.phishtank.com/what_is_phishing.php
 Index of Prohibited books: http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch/ILP-1559.htm
 Holocaust denial:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/denial.html
41