FinFisher: Disguising Greed as Security Gamma International is a company that provides a software solution for organizations that need intelligence to maintain security. In order to get intelligence, FinFisher (the software tool) uses various methods in order to tap into people 's daily routines, including screenshots of desktops at regular intervals, webcam hijacking, and keylogging. This spyware can get into computers through seemingly harmless methods such as email attachments. With this much power, FinFisher can give organizations the ability to enforce almost any law simply because they have so much information they can use to blackmail. Although this can provide a very large amount of security, if given to the wrong hands,
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One hacker was able to get his hands on 40 gigabytes of information about Gamma Group 's customers and what software they are able to infect while remaining undetected. Since 2009, many countries including China, United States, and Australia have been active users of this software (Blue, 2014). These countries range from communist regimes to democratic countries that supposedly assert human rights such as privacy. Although surveillance generally does not hurt others, public interest values privacy a lot more than many governments do. Shedding light on the fact that countries do in fact spy on their own citizens can cause public backlash and hurt the stability of a nation. For example, journalist Glenn Greenwald claims that she has data proving that New Zealand has in fact been monitoring its population to maintain its secure state (Duckett, 2014). The Prime Minister promised to resign if he ever found out of any sort of spying occurring because the New Zealand government insisted there would not be “wholesale spying” (Agence France Presse, 2013). Gamma Group might seem to not be the main problem because it is the countries ' governments lying about their activities; however, Gamma Group is the reason they even have surveillance. FinFisher is a software "solution" that might be preventing crimes from happening, but ruining the public image of the government and software giants is causing more harm than help. One big ethical problem this brings up is that software is able to make entire countries change their policies in order to get just one piece of software to be legal. Computer scientists are able to make products that have enough power to affect the world on a global scale like no other product can do. The misconception that this situation exemplifies is "Users are
One hacker was able to get his hands on 40 gigabytes of information about Gamma Group 's customers and what software they are able to infect while remaining undetected. Since 2009, many countries including China, United States, and Australia have been active users of this software (Blue, 2014). These countries range from communist regimes to democratic countries that supposedly assert human rights such as privacy. Although surveillance generally does not hurt others, public interest values privacy a lot more than many governments do. Shedding light on the fact that countries do in fact spy on their own citizens can cause public backlash and hurt the stability of a nation. For example, journalist Glenn Greenwald claims that she has data proving that New Zealand has in fact been monitoring its population to maintain its secure state (Duckett, 2014). The Prime Minister promised to resign if he ever found out of any sort of spying occurring because the New Zealand government insisted there would not be “wholesale spying” (Agence France Presse, 2013). Gamma Group might seem to not be the main problem because it is the countries ' governments lying about their activities; however, Gamma Group is the reason they even have surveillance. FinFisher is a software "solution" that might be preventing crimes from happening, but ruining the public image of the government and software giants is causing more harm than help. One big ethical problem this brings up is that software is able to make entire countries change their policies in order to get just one piece of software to be legal. Computer scientists are able to make products that have enough power to affect the world on a global scale like no other product can do. The misconception that this situation exemplifies is "Users are