Black Markets, White Hats & Grey Laws

The future of online trust, innovation & self-regulation lies in the gap between users’ expectations formed by laws and norms, and their capabilities formed by technology. As this gap widens, so too does ambiguity between asserted rights and cyber threats... and we are left wondering how to separate the "good guys" from a "bad guys." How do we close this gap and thereby lower risk and instill trust in online activities? I discuss how ethics can guide our decisions and solve conflict of rights in the midst of information uncertainty. Specifically, commercial and public researchers are presented with novel ethical challenges that bear strong influence for online trust dynamics: to defend against Internet threats, they infiltrate malicious botnets; to understand Internet fraud they must deceive end users; to measure how communications are being used legitimately and not they need some access to sensitive network traffic. We discuss how ethics has re-emerged as a crucial ordering force.