10. The Boundaries of Cybersecurity: Ethics, Rights, and Laws 285 The last category is the combination of ethical-illegal (the bottom-left square). This category should be rare in the United States because laws are passed only after a careful, deliberate, and democratic process. How could a law be passed to make an ethical behavior illegal? This would make the law unjust. Segregation laws are an example of unethical laws because they enforced divisions and discriminated against people based on skin color. Defying these restrictions was ethical but illegal. Ethical but illegal activities like defying segregation laws are candidates for civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is refusing to obey a law, or actively disobeying a law, as an act of protest based on the belief that the law is unjust. In order for an illegal action to qualify as civil disobedience, it must be non-violent and morally justifiable, and the actor must submit to the authorities for punishment. Rosa Parks is an example of a person that committed civil disobedience when she was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, for refusing to obey bus segregation laws. The Montgomery City Code Chapter 6 Section 11 read, “...it shall be unlawful for any passenger to refuse or fail to take a seat among those assigned to the race to which he belongs…” See Figure 10.2 for the police report that was written after Parks knowingly violated this ordinance and was arrested. Figure 10.2 Rosa Parks arrest police report. Does hacktivism (see Chapter 3) qualify as civil disobedience? Some hacktivists help to keep the identity of political dissidents anonymous—this may be considered a form of
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=