Analysis of Ethics in Film - Sneakers

The movie "Sneakers" is about a group of men, led by Martin Bishop (Robert Redford), who are hired by companies to test the company's security system. The beginning of the movie portrayed them successfully breaking into a bank so the bank would know where it needed to be more secure. Two government officials approached Bishop and wanted him and his team to steal a black box from a mathematician. The box was actually a device that could decrypt any program that was encrypted. Bishop and his team successfully steal the box, and when Bishop takes the box to the government officials, he is told by one of the men from his team that the mathematician is dead, which causes them to realize the government officials are not really government officials after all, and want the box to use for harm instead of good. Bishop runs and the guys give chase. The two "government officials" turned out to be working for Bishop's childhood friend, whom Bishop believed died in prison. Bishop and his team then try to get the box back...

The ethical issue surrounding this movie is encryption, and whether or not such a device should be used to decrypt data that is not supposed to be seen by just anyone. When the team got the black box, they were able to access a system that would allow them to shut of the power of the entire country, and do other things they shouldn't have been able to do. Systems like these should be secure, but this movie shows that if someone is able to break the encryption code, then that person has the power to access what is on the system and to do whatever they want with the decryption code.

I do not think this movie realistically portrays ethical issues because by using the box, they were able to crack the code of any encryption scheme. In reality, I don't believe there would be one set of code that could crack EVERY encryption scheme. Each system will be encrypted differently, therefore it would be impossible (I think) to have one decoder for every set of code.

This movie may make people think that someone who does not work for the "good guys" would be able to get ahold of such a device and have control over things they should not.

In this movie, the law enforcement officials were actually ex-law enforcement officials. Some of these ex-law enforcement officials were pretending to be law enforcement officials, so they would have been compromised if anyone (like real law enforcement officials) found out who they really were.