_ Case scenario:
Charlie and Carol are students at a university in a computer science program. Each writes a program for a class assignment. Charlie’s program happens to uncover a flaw in a compiler that causes the entire computing system to fail; all users lose the results of their current computation. Charlie’s program uses acceptable features of the language; the compiler is at fault. Charlie did not suspect his program would cause a system failure. He reports the program to the computing center and tries to find ways to achieve his intended result without exercising the system flaw. The system continues to fail periodically, ten times (beyond the first failure). When the system fails, sometimes Charlie is running a program, but sometimes Charlie does not. The director contacts Charlie, who shows all his program versions to the computing center staff. The staff concludes that Charlie may have been inadvertently responsible for some, but not all, of the system failures, but that his latest approach to solving the assigned problem is unlikely to lead to additional system failures. On further analysis, the computing center director notes that Carol has had programs running each of the first eight (of ten) times the system failed. The director uses administrative privilege to inspect Carol’s files and finds a file that exploits the same vulnerability as did Charlie’s program. The director immediately suspends Carol’s account, denying Carol access to the computing system. Because of this, Carol is unable to complete her assignment on time, she receives a D in the course, and she drops out of school.
_ Requirements:
A. Analyse of the case scenario should have the following details clearly mentioned:
1. What are the ethical issues in the case?
2. Gather the relevant information about the case including all the stakeholders, any related facts, details, etc.
3. Find all the consequences of the case, the rights of each person involved etc.
4. Analyze the case from different points of view.
5. Explain how the problem could be solved USING the ethical model that you chose by applying the principles that you have learned so far or feel free to search for the relevant ones to be required to solve the case.
6. How can the problems found in the case be prevented in the future?