IT 3165 DQ 2 Ethical Theories and Cybertechnology
The prompt asks how religion, law, and philosophy each supply different grounds for a moral principle about hacking — which is a question about justification, not about opinion, and getting that distinction right is most of the grade in 250 words.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · July 21, 2026
What is IT 3165 DQ 2 actually asking?
This question is about justification, not opinion: religion, law, and philosophy must each supply a different ground for one moral principle about hacking — one principle, three justifications. Most posts misread this as three verdicts and write that religion condemns theft, the law prohibits intrusion, and philosophy also disapproves — three restatements of the same conclusion, which demonstrates nothing.
What the question is testing is that you can see the justificatory structure underneath. Take a principle such as do not access a system you are not authorised to access. Religious ethics may ground it in stewardship or a duty owed to others regardless of consequence. Law grounds it in enacted authority and sanction — under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act it is wrong because a legislature made it so, and the boundary is 'authorisation', a legal term of art. Philosophy grounds it in reasons you could defend to anyone: a Kantian appeal to treating people as ends, or a consequentialist appeal to aggregate harm.
The payoff is that these grounds can come apart, and saying so is what makes a post substantive. A penetration test with written consent is lawful and, on most philosophical accounts, permissible. Scraping data that is technically public may breach no statute while still failing a duty-based test. Disclosing a vulnerability may be legally risky and ethically required. Naming one such divergence shows you understand that the grounds are genuinely different rather than three labels for the same intuition.
The second half — proposing a policy to your employer — is where students lose the thread. A policy is not a restatement of ethics; it is an operational rule with a scope, an owner, and a consequence. Your justification should draw on the grounds you just distinguished, and the strongest move is to acknowledge that legal compliance alone is the floor, not the ceiling.
Likely learning objectives
- Separate a moral principle from the grounds offered to justify it, and recognise that one principle can rest on several independent justifications.
- Characterise religious, legal, and philosophical justification by their source of authority rather than by the verdict they reach.
- Identify a case where legal and ethical judgements diverge, and explain why that divergence matters for security practice.
- Translate an ethical position into an operational workplace policy with scope, ownership, and consequences.
- Apply APA in-text citation to a short discussion post without letting citations crowd out the argument.
Assignment instructions
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
For this discussion: Reflect on the readings for this unit. Consider the issue of hacking, and network and security vulnerabilities, within a company you are employed (either currently or in the future). Describe how religion, law, and philosophy may each provide different grounds for justifying a moral principle for this issue. How would you propose a new policy with your employer to alleviate this issue? What key issues would you include in your justification? Response Guidelines This discussion will be an open-ended and in-depth, two-way discussion to afford you the opportunity to interact with your course instructor and other students. Please note that your initial post is due by 11:59:59 CST on Wednesday of this week. On 11:59:59 CST on Sunday of this week, please post a response post to two of your fellow learners’ posts. Length: Your content post should be between 200–250 words presented in three to four paragraphs. A paragraph should be between three to five sentences. Please add the appropriate APA citations to the content post. You will respond to at least two other learners’ initial posts. Your response posts to your fellow learners’ post should be between 100–150 words with the appropriate APA citations added. Both your content post and your response posts should reflect a collegial attitude, be free of grammar and spelling errors. Post your discussion in the discussion forum. Note: Use the sources provided in the course to support your responses. Remember to access the Web links as provided and do any Internet research necessary to support the details of your responses. Sourcing your information is required.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01An initial post of 200-250 words in three to four paragraphs, each roughly three to five sentences.
- 02One clearly stated moral principle about hacking or security vulnerabilities.
- 03Three distinct grounds — religious, legal, philosophical — presented as justifications, not verdicts.
- 04A concrete proposed policy for your current or future employer.
- 05APA in-text citations with matching references, plus two response posts of 100-150 words if your course requires them.
How do you structure the three-grounds post?
State the issue and the principle
Name the specific vulnerability or hacking scenario in your workplace context, then state the single moral principle you will justify three ways.
What the assessor is likely looking for
That a principle is actually stated and is specific enough to be justified, rather than left implicit.
Three grounds, contrasted by their source of authority
Give religion, law, and philosophy roughly equal space, and for each name what makes the principle binding — revealed duty or stewardship, enacted statute and sanction, or reasons defensible to any rational agent.
What the assessor is likely looking for
Whether the three are distinguished by justification rather than restated as three agreeing verdicts.
Where the grounds diverge
Point to one case — authorised penetration testing, scraping public data, disclosing a vulnerability — where the legal answer and the ethical answer separate, and say what that shows.
What the assessor is likely looking for
Evidence that the student sees these as independent frameworks, which is the distinction the question is built on.
The proposed policy
Set out a concrete rule for your employer: its scope, who owns it, what it requires, and the consequence of breach.
What the assessor is likely looking for
That it is operational and enforceable rather than an expression of good intentions.
Justify the policy from the grounds
Close by linking the policy back to the strongest ground, and note that legal compliance is the floor rather than the ceiling.
What the assessor is likely looking for
A justification that draws on the earlier analysis instead of introducing a fresh, unsupported rationale.
Which sources ground the three justifications?
Recommended databases
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- ACM Digital Library
- IEEE Xplore
- Cornell Legal Information Institute
- Your course readings for this unit
Search sequence
- 1.Start with your unit's assigned readings — the prompt says to reflect on them, and a post that cites only outside sources reads as though the readings were skipped.
- 2.Read the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on information technology and moral values for the vocabulary that distinguishes normative frameworks, so you describe grounds rather than opinions.
- 3.Look up the actual text of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to see how narrowly 'without authorization' is drawn — this is what makes the legal ground concrete rather than hand-waved.
- 4.Read a professional code such as the IEEE's or the ACM's to see how an institution converts ethical commitments into enforceable obligations; it is the closest published model for the policy you are asked to propose.
- 5.Search for one documented case where lawful conduct was widely judged unethical, or the reverse, and keep it to a single sentence in the post.
- 6.Confirm every source you cite is one you have actually opened, and build the APA reference entries as you go rather than at the end.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Information Technology and Moral Values
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · 2018
The authoritative overview of how normative theories apply to computing, with direct treatment of hacking, hacktivism and the security-versus-openness tension. Use it to state the philosophical ground precisely instead of gesturing at 'ethics'.
IEEE Code of Ethics
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers · 2020
A working example of ethical principles written as binding professional obligations — the closest published model for the policy half of the prompt, and citable in APA as an organisational author.
18 U.S. Code § 1030 - Fraud and related activity in connection with computers
Cornell Law School, Legal Information Institute · 2024
The statute itself, for the legal ground. Quote or paraphrase the 'without authorization' language to show the legal justification turns on enacted definitions.
A Framework for Ethical Decision Making
Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University · 2021
Sets out rights, justice, utilitarian, common-good and virtue lenses side by side, which makes it easy to show that different grounds can support the same principle.
Cybersecurity Framework
National Institute of Standards and Technology · 2024
Cite when your proposed policy needs to sit on a recognised control structure, so the recommendation looks like governance rather than an opinion.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Treating the three grounds as three opinions that happen to agree. If all three reach the same conclusion for the same reason, you have written one paragraph three times.
- Substituting a religious tradition's rule for its justification — 'thou shalt not steal' is the principle; the ground is the account of authority or duty behind it.
- Confusing legality with morality, which the prompt is quietly probing. Something can be lawful and wrong, or unlawful and defensible.
- Naming an ethical theory and never using it. 'Utilitarianism applies here' is not analysis until you say which consequences, to whom.
- Proposing a policy that is only a sentiment — 'employees should act ethically' — with no scope, owner, trigger, or consequence.
- Overrunning the word count. At 200-250 words across four paragraphs you have roughly sixty words per ground; the planning is triage, not compression.
Submission checklist
- One principle is stated explicitly, and the same principle carries through all three grounds.
- Each ground names its source of authority, and the three sources are genuinely different.
- At least one point where the grounds diverge is identified.
- The proposed policy specifies who it applies to, what it requires, and what happens when it is breached.
- Word count is 200-250 and the post is in three to four paragraphs of three to five sentences.
- APA in-text citations match the reference entries, and the post has been proofread as the prompt requires.
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