This course covers social, legal, and ethical issues commonly arising in key areas related to computing technologies.
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This course will explore a variety of ethical and legal issues facing those who use or program computers. Issues can be divided broadly into professional ethics, dealing with the ethical responsibilities of the programmer, and social issues, dealing with concerns we all have as citizens.
Understanding of laws and issues in areas such as privacy, encryption, freedom of speech, copyrights and patents, computer crime, and computer/software reliability and safety; understanding of philosophical perspectives such as utilitarianism versus deontological ethics and basics of the U.S. legal system.