We discussed what is meant by CyberEthics and whether it was a field of study distinct from regular ethic or just a subset of it. We didn't really find an answer.
We looked at the sources of morality and considered Supernaturalism at length. I asked students to think of examples where supernaturalism is invoked in discussions about technology. Generic engineering and reproductive rights were the two we could think of.
I mentioned Supernaturalism in debates about the environment. But the most interesting (but not convincing) I found are arguments like this against the use of RFID based on Revelations.
In discussions of CyberTechnoloy Supernatural arguments are rarely invoked.
Thinking about the John Oliver video on Credit Scores from the last class I asked student to propose ideas that a government might use to make the problems less severe.
We came up with some suggestions and discussed them briefly.
We watched a video on the Social Credit system in P.R. China. I asked the class how much of the problem stems fro the technology, and how much of it is about how it is used. Someone pointed out that there is widespread surveillance in UK cities, but none of us would have any cause to be afraid. So is it the technology itself, or how it is used? Is technology neutral? These are questions we will return to.
I asked students to speculate on which countries in Europe had citizens most paranoid about data privacy. One student proposed Sweden and Finland, and speculated that this was connected the their proximity to Russia. I proposed Germany, because if it's past.
It turns out Finns are super happy. It has been argued that fear about data protection is inversely correlated with trust I the government. Finn trust their government. Germany came second. The Austrians are most concerned.
I talked a little bit about the exam and the essays.
I explained hash functions on the board.
We adjourned to the lab at 1830 because getting the code sorted is our main priority now.
In the lab we looked at the PESEL again. If you are being pedantic you need to check the date and month. For simplicity any date that is <32 is good. But the month is more complicated:
If the m2 > 3 and the m1 is odd then it is bad
We looked at the different ways to make data persist in PHP and how long it can last. We also considered a bit how cookies can pose a threat to privacy.
In light of the weather warning for tonight I e-mailed exercises to students and suggested that they could work from home if they wish. I will be available online on Google Hangouts to answer any questions. For those students that want to come to class I will be here anyway.
I spoke a bit about HTML 5 inputs and how the browser do some very basic form validation for us.
We did some exercises using regular expressions. They didn't go as well as I would have liked. So perhaps some students need look at those again.
I previewed next weeks videos by introducing checksums. We looked at the Luhn credit card validation algorithm. Students seemed less impressed by this magic that I was expecting.
We moved to the lab at 2000
I e-mailed students the specification for the coding component of the module.
