IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015 - 45
circumvented the protection, shall be liable to
imprisonment of not more than three years or a
fine. (2) Within the meaning of subsection (1)
above data shall only be those stored or transmitted electronically or magnetically or otherwise in a manner not immediately perceivable.
§ 202c. Acts preparatory to data espionage
and phishing (1) Whosoever prepares the commission of an offence under section 202a or section 202b by producing, acquiring for himself or
another, selling, supplying to another, disseminating or making otherwise accessible passwords or other security codes enabling access
to data (Section 202a(2)), or software for the
purpose of the commission of such an offence,
shall be liable to imprisonment of not more than
one year or a fine. (2) Section 149(2) and (3)
shall apply mutatis mutandis" [21].
persons whose information is included in the datasets,
and without measures established to protect those
individuals, researchers risk performing research that,
if discovered to be in violation of institutional policy,
could result in termination of the research or other
sanctions against the researcher.
Researchers must also grapple with the notion that
program committee members for various research
publications might simply reject papers based on data
Neither the U.S. CFAA, nor the German Penal Code,
consider beneficent intent in determining criminal innocence, and both laws explicitly address taking information from a protected computer using unauthorized
access. There is no direct "self-defense" argument that
could be made, further complicating the provenance of
the Carna "census" data.
obtained through questionable means. However, with
no clear community consensus it is impossible to predict the outcome of such evaluations.
Researchers who are not in academia have a different problem. Should they simply use data that may have
been obtained illegally, just because it is there, or avoid
using the data in favor of legally and ethically derived
data? Or should they go even further and condemn such
illegal or unethical projects, regardless of what possible
benefit may be derived? In other words, should they
adhere to pure Consequentialism, or "the ends justify
the means?" Is the "cool factor" more important than
showing integrity, acting and speaking in ways that conform with an understanding of right and wrong, even if
that means passing up an opportunity to benefit themselves or society by using the questionably produced
data? Without any critical analysis of the legality and
ethics, how much farther will the next researcher go in
trying to one-up the person who wrote Carna? Will the
lack of community condemnation for performing such
potentially illegal and unethical experiments create a
situation where researchers are effectively encouraging
law-breaking, simply to allow researchers to get around
ethical restrictions that prevent them from creating the
data themselves?
Can Researchers Use the Carna Data?
Now that the data is available to the public, should
it be used? Researchers in both academia and
the private sector who themselves would not, or
could not, perform the same experiment must choose
whether to use the dataset. The decision has ethical
and policy ramifications that many researchers may
not know exist, or that may be made with only the
researcher's own moral compass and personal interpretation of policies and regulations to guide them.
The Menlo Report [16] and its Companion [17] both
discuss the topic of pre-existing public data under
the Common Rule regulations in the United States.
Research Ethics Boards (REBs) "have some flexibility
in how they define and interpret this class of data and
some institutions maintain a list of pre-approved sources of such data that researchers may freely use. Data
that is not on such pre-approved lists that contains
fields that can identify individuals - even though it may
be accessible to the general public - may not be considered "pre-existing public data." Researchers should
therefore consult with their REB to discuss whether
the data they wish to use falls under their institution's
'pre-existing public data' exemption criteria, or whether
they can qualify for a waiver of informed consent to
re-use existing data in conformance with REB requirements." Without an analysis of the identifiability risks of
june 2015
∕
Some have questioned the ethics and
legality of the Carna botnet.
Opposite of Integrity
Activities such as Internet Census 2012 highlight
three key issues: a) there is no clear standard for
evaluating the ethics or legality of adopting the techniques of criminal actors for supposedly "benign"
research purposes [22], b) some individuals implicitly
recognize this gray area, as evidenced by their choice
to avoid responsibility by publishing anonymously,
and c) researchers continue to push the boundaries
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
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