The personal computer has become a near necessity in modern society, and business and government have also become dependent on the computer for all manner of operations and functioning. With new opportunities come new dangers, and there are concerns today both for ethical violations in computer use and crime making use of the power of the computer. Ethics is the art of doing what is right in a societal context, and the computer user is part of such a context in the virtual world, or the world of cyberspace. Computer ethics includes everything from proper online etiquette to respect for the privacy of others. Computer crime may take place through overt theft, confidence games, and new electronic means of capturing data, creating viruses that destroy other computers, and crimes not even thought of yet. Fighting computer crime requires a law enforcement community that is computer literate and constantly on the watch for criminal activity and new crimes. It also requires a legislature willing to change existing laws to match new capabilities.
Computers today are part of our lives in ways we often do not even notice, not only in the more obvious personal computers we use at home and the larger computers we may use in such places as banks and libraries, but also in computer technology that is found in home appliances such as television sets, coffee makers, microwave ovens, videocassette recorders, and hand calculators, not to mention toys and games. The arrival of the computer age was so rapid that we have not yet managed to cope with all the changes or with many of the consequences. More and more people are concerned about the issue of privacy in an age in which virtually everything we do is recorded somewhere in a computer system. The potential for abuse is great. Congress has considered the issue, the courts have had to deal with it many times and will certainly have to address it in many cases in the future, and the public...