Feature:Ethical Programmers Guild

James Moyer has submitted a piece that I'm interested to see what everyone thinks of. It basically describes creation of a formalized guild of programmers that would be advance ethical coding. Particularly related to privacy issues. Read it and speak your mind.

The following was written by Slashdot Reader James Moyer .

In proposing this idea, I think that it would a little bit of background would be appropriate. I am a student at Ohio State, and I have a strong interest in civil liberties and privacy issues. In fact, I am now in the process of organizing an on-campus student organization to criticize Ohio State's overuse of the social security number, biometric identification and other related issues to privacy directly concerning the university.

Here on Slashdot I use the nickname JimBobJoe posting from email address [e-mail].

I also consider myself a Libertarian, and from many of the postings on Slashdot, it appears that there are quite a lot of Libertarians out there too. There is no coincidence, in my mind, that some of the most stringent privacy laws in the nation hail from a highly technical, Libertarian state, being Washington state. In the same vein, it is rather amusing to see countries such as Malaysia attempt to draw computer professions into their country, where the severity of their laws turn many away.

At any rate, I have been putting in quite a lot of thought concerning privacy. It has occurred to me that the connection between the Libertarian philosophies of many computer programmers and the pro-privacy, pro-civil liberties leanings of those philosophies is quite a powerful mix.

This time period is quite an important one when it comes to these issues. How biometric identification and data privacy will be handled will most likely set up the paradigm for how it will be handled when everyone will be running Linux 4.x on a processor that computes teraflops with ease.

The next sentence is a rather obvious concept. Many of the projects that we are most concerned with when it comes to privacy, such as biometric identification and data processing requires programming.

My proposal is this: to set up a computer programmer's guild whose goal is to promote "ethical" programming. What is meant by "ethical" is of course not yet defined, but it certainly means a pro-privacy perspective.

Computer programmers are at quite an advantage right now due to demand. Certainly it is difficult to find qualified sys admins, scripters and programmers in order to meet many companies' and governments' needs, especially with consideration to Y2K. With this in mind, the opportunity is available to refuse to work on certain programming projects. The thinking here is that "Big Brother" would find existence difficult without computing professionals to support its needs. Although I have not personally made up my mind concerning the next thought, some may say that computer programmers almost have an obligation to keep "Big Brother" in line.

This proposed computer guild would make refusal significantly easier. Yes, it is indeed a union where one was thought unnecessary. These are the planks that I have come up with:

• A Clear Manifest agreed to by the members of the organization. The manifest is the position on the organization, what are, in our eyes, acceptable and not-acceptable uses of computers.
• Anonymity is essential. It allows for members to report on what organizations are planning on doing without fear of retribution. That way the organization also will become a way for companies'/organizations' plans to be publicly exposed, with discretion, where they conflict with this guild's manifest.
• Support and boycott where this organization's manifest does conflict with a proposal, to support the computing professions who refuse to work on such projects, to boycott companies/organizations who do, and make public statements concerning the projects.

Worthy of note are the next two ideas:

• Harrassment and ostracizing of those who decide to work on these projects in conflict with our manifest, is unacceptable and anathema to the objectives of this organization.
• Cracking and sabotage. It could be defended that a situation may arise in which many feel that a planned sabotage via cracking is necessary. A lesser form of sabotage is to either poorly code or poorly plan (perhaps suggestion Windows NT as an appropriate solution for a project) a particular situation. Either way, this organization should not necessarily be against such actions, but it is probably not in its best interest to become directly involved. Sincerely, I personally can not decide about this last topic, but there is a "Minute Men" sympathy in me that requires its mentioning (historians should not be offended by the reference.)

At any rate, I present the basics of the proposed organization to the Slashdot community, and I invite comments.

James Moyer