Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Implied and Explicit Computer Consent

The question of implied and explicit consent my arise during the appearance of a new system vulnerability. The idea of "Being able to do it" is often used by hackers to explain their actions, stating that the capability of hacking provides the hacker implicit consent over the information that is vulnerable. But let's say that it was not a hacker accessing the information. Let's say that there was a bug made by the company's IT department which leaked a bunch of private information onto the company's main site. Is it public domain at that point? Or does the information still remain private by the company's declaration.

If this information is considered public once it is online, is it stealing once it arises? Does this give other users implied consent to access this information. There is a possibility that it is implied consent since the information was made public by a company employee, so there is a sort of explicit consent that this information is public domain, although a mistake.

But what if a hacker put the information onto the public portion of the site. We can argue that the movement of the information by the hacker is illegal and breaks the necessity of explicit consent. But does this allow the company to sue any other user for collecting this information of the company site?

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