Implied vs Explicit consent HW

1. Implied consent is obtaining consent from a person based on their actions. It does not have to be directly said verbally, but by the situation, location, and what they do. The example from the articles about “Jane Doe” shows that although she said the words “no” before they took her top down, it was not enough to stop the camera crew from doing it, simply because of where she was at the time and what she was doing. By being inside that bar, the camera crew implied that every woman inside who was dancing and wearing skimpy clothing would consent to their actions. As the article from “Tiger Beatdown” explains, even if a woman was fully clothed inside a stripper bar, it does not mean that she should strip or be forced to strip. How far can this go?

I believe there are a many times where implied consent is morally acceptable. One of them would be for medical emergencies. For example in an event of a major catastrophe or incident, it can result in injured people. The first thing you would do is to help them out by calling an ambulance, resulting in treatment or even emergency surgery without the victims consent as they might be unable to communicate or the situation is just too dire for the doctors to ignore. But calling for help is still the right thing to do. We do not just see someone laying on the floor, bleeding from gunshot wounds and ask them “do you need help?” It is implied that the injured person needs help and we instinctively act upon it. This can also relate to the “old lady crossing the street” scenario where we see an elderly woman with a walking cane about to cross a street and we can imply that she needs help walking through. It is morally acceptable because although we do not know whether she can cross by herself or not, it is still common courtesy. We just instinctively act upon it based on the situation and her appearance because she is walking with a cane.

Whether written by law or just common sense, there are many times where having explicit consent is necessary. From sexual activities to being recorded or exposed in public or social media. We see it all the time with paparazzi, as they would always “stalk” their subjects and take pictures and videos that were not meant for the public to see. One example can be taking medicine from the doctors. The doctors can’t just give the patients random medicine without the patients knowing, they must sign a form from the doctors, stating that they are being subscribed medications for whatever illness they might have. Another example can be security. Being in a restricted area without proper clearance can result in incarceration.

2. One of the issues with implied vs explicit consent in the computer world is the fact that some things requires you to have permission such as being a penetration tester, while others are implied because of your position or even a dire situation such as a trojan virus or an intruder being detected in your systems and having to act fast because sensitive data might be extracted. When in the field of penetration testing, you must have explicit consent from the company you are testing exploits on via verbally or a typed report. You cannot just hack the company without someone knowing or it could be considered illegal. An example of implied consent would be if you sent a hard drive in for repairs to save the files stored inside the drive. By giving them your drive, the repairmen imply that anything that is inside that drive is theirs until it is returned to the customer. So they have the right, or the clearance, to check any files inside that drive because it is their job to find and extract the files to a new drive, whether private or not. This can be applied to ethical hacking when you must think for yourself in certain situations. But always remember to think about the consequences of your actions as well, such as launching an exploit that discovers a critical hole in the systems because of assumed suspicions. As some things might or might not need consent from a higher member but is still required to take steps.