Six business schools (Harvard, Dartmouth, Duke, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Stanford) have dismissed the application of several examinees after learning that these individuals were able to access the highly restricted pages containing the test results by following a hackers instruction on how to twist the security of the application software created by Apply Yourself, Inc.- the firm that designed the software being used by the six business schools to facilitate their admission tests and results. The undeniably huge amount of discomfort caused by having to wait for the official release of the results has disposed certain examinees to access the test-results, thinking that their doing so will not have any moral and legal consequence to the institutions. These unauthorized accesses have been traced by the software firm, resulting to the dismissal of applications made by those examinees.
Ethical Issues in the Case
The ethical questions to be asked include (a) is it morally wrong for the examinees to disobey the institutions instructions to wait for the official release of results And (b) what grounds for the ethical judgment of the dismissal to be morally right
Consequences of the Actors Behaviors in the Case
The incident may inspire doubt whether they (schools and software firms) can handle security threats adequately, and thus, lead to credibility issues upon proving that the system has serious flaws. These are negative consequences that can extend to damage the credibility of the academic institutions in general as the schools involved are the most respected ones in the industry as arguably, well-regarded institutions generate higher expectations from people. This picture may encourage other daring attempts to security. While the subjects have been rendered painful sanction for what took place, this cannot stop the creativity of human mind to seek ways by which the hacking can be done better next time. On the other hand, the incident also provides a blatant criticism to the flaws existing security measures being adopted by the firm who manufactured the software as well as the six academic institutions. This criticism has opened doors to the possibilities of security enhancements, thereby preventing possible future worse security attacks. Further to that, the sanctions received serve as warning signals to individuals who may desire to do the same, thereby lessening the chances of occurrence of the same incident.
Analysis Potential Solutions to the Case
As what we have seen, morality and legality are obviously not always in agreement on what should be permissible and not permissible. There are many gray areas of moral and legal conflicts, and these are seemed to be provided for by the very design of our laws and our society, extending to what seems to be the elite of the ethical systems followed within our society. It is important to note though that the main reason the law and other policies exist is because we would want to live a life and a society that we believe is morally right.
Any attempts to render judgment on right or wrong questions entail looking at the issue from the moral standpoint. Human beings, as moral agents, have the capacity to decide on moral things on their own and the price we have to pay for that is admitting that we are responsible for our own moral choices. A lapse in judgment entails imprudence or deciding with insufficient information to begin with. In the Harvard case, it was the lapse in integrity that took place as there was a deliberate and conscious effort to violate the academic institutions policy. It is impossible to think how an examinee would not be aware of the agreements he or she has with the school where the application is made. It is natural to think that when an individual submits an application, he or she knows will be informed about the manner by which they will inform about the results. It seems from here that the curious applicants were trying to twist the policy to satisfy their self-interests. (5) This is indeed an aggressive behavior but whether the behavior will be useful in a business context is questionable because a business, for me, has to be well-grounded on sound ethical considerations.
In business, one deals with individual employees and the society as a whole and an action even if done within a business context necessarily would have an impact to the society as a whole. In my view, for it to thrive, it should be socially friendly and one that exercises its corporate responsibility. Any system is not perfect and even the most features-packed software can have its won flaws. But to take advantage of the imperfection is an opportunistic way to have gains. Not only that, the fallibility of the system cannot decide on moral issues, but humans can. Therefore, it is useless to blame the flaws of the system. (3) The subjects who committed the unauthorized access could have considered the aspect of a social responsibility they have formed upon giving consent to the policies of the schools to work and bound them. Policies exist to bring a certain sense of order and avoid the possibility of chaos. When the student made hisher application to the school, he or she automatically becomes subject to the rules implemented by the campus, as far as his admission applications are concerned. When one violates the policy, it inspires others lack of confidence towards the policy and an attitude of resilience towards that policy. People will start to challenge it and the results may be a disorder. (2) Utilitarians never like the possibility of disorder, especially if it does not bring any greater good. Saying that the incident actually triggered efforts to make the security better is easily undermined by the idea that we are still not sure whether in the end, the efforts to enhance security measures can prove to be essentially beneficial as human creativity will always find a way to work on a solution. Kant does not agree that such violation is universalyzable and passes the categorical imperatives. An action seems to pass Kants categories if and only if it is the best solution that can be adopted to resolve the issues. The issue I think is not really about painstakingly waiting but rather, its about knowing the results (the painstaking wait is a consequent of the desire to know the results anyway). In this case, we have an alternative way of resolving our issue of knowing whether we passed or not and that is to wait for the official release of the results. (1)
Legally speaking, examinees are told to wait for two reasons following the system is necessary for everything to be orderly and because that is supposedly the only way by which examinees could know the results. Apparently, agreement to wait and the schools instructions still holds true, regardless of whether another opportunity to retrieve the information exists or not. (3) The hackers instructions provided an alternative way of knowing the results but the moral significance of the action lies on the examinees social responsibility that entails dismissing a course of action that could possibly end other individuals in the society. The harm committed here is the formation of distrust as far as the capacity of handling security is concerned. (4) Moral considerations render that the access is not permissible. Violating the rule may result to a degree of disorder as for sure, word of mouth goes out and that will encourage people to try hacking the results, if no sanctions were imposed.
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