1) Consider Mikes use of the companys excess cloud storage for his cryptocurrency mining operation. Is this behavior ethical according to the categorical imperative (pages 2829)? Is this behavior ethical according to the utilitarian perspective (page 57)?

2) How do you think executives would respond if they found out that an IT employee was using a company system for personal gain? Readings for the questions above: Ralph felt like he was in a trance it was almost as if he wasnt even controlling his finger as it continued to swipe up repeatedly. Skimming through the most popular posts of the day on facebook was one of his favorite pastimes during his lunch break, and every now and again, he would come across a really funny post that would elicit an audible chuckle. If anyone was around watching him, they probably would have rolled their eyesit was for the best that his tradition was to spend his lunch break in the privacy of his car. In his role as one of the managers of the companys IT team, privacy was something that did not seem abundant once you stepped through the office doors.

Ralph had been with the company for about 5 years. The company developed and sold medical devices in the vibrant medical community of Boston, so aside from feeling proud of his ability to hold down a career at a respectable company, he also got some satisfaction from working for a company that developed a product that could help save lives.

Some of his previous employers had sold products or services that were of questionable value to societythose jobs always seemed harder to show up toand he had constantly found himself wondering if he was really making a positive difference in the world. Luckily, he didnt have to ask that question anymore.

Now, the only question he had to ask was how long he could put up with one of his coworkersMike. Ralph liked to joke to himself that the only thing they had in common was that they shared the same last name.

Mike had been with the company much longer than Ralph. While Ralph was in charge of managing the local technology infrastructure that remained at the corporate headquarters, Mike had managed the team that proposed and won executive support for transitioning the bulk of the companys data and processes to cloud-based platforms.

Ralphs perspective was that a company developing cutting-edge medical devices should maintain absolute control over its intellectual property and avoid storing critical information with a third party. Unfortunately, Mikes pitch on the impressive cost savings from using cloud solutions won the hearts and minds of executives, and his project was given the green light.

Luckily, Ralph had been able to convince the higher-ups that the most critical data should be stored locally and not transmitted to the cloudit was a small victory in his ongoing conflict with Mike, and it probably saved his own job.

The sound of the police car siren in the distance caught Ralphs attentionhe looked at the clock and realized he was already 5 minutes late to his next meeting. He got out of the car, walked across the lot, and headed back inside to his desk. He logged in to access his email account so he could pull up the video call access information, but upon logging in, noticed he had a new email from the other attendeethey had already canceled the meeting due to his tardiness. (By now he was about 10 minutes late.) Ralph figured he would spend the newfound time in his schedule to catch up on email.

He had the usual mix of emailsrequests from higher-level managers asking for the next round of reports and budgets, vendor contacts asking him if he needed to upgrade any of the companys hardware, a few tech support requests from employees who were having trouble accessing systems, and so on.

However, one email stood out from the restit was from the companys cloud services provider. The message was addressed to Mike, but in the header info it looked like Ralph was the lone recipientthe sender must have mixed them up by typing in the last name only and not realizing that the message was going to be sent to Ralph by accident. What was more troubling was the content of the message, which was an alert indicating that Mike should be increasing the amount of cloud storage the company was paying for to the next tier.

This didnt seem possible as Ralph had been in the cloud transition planning meetings and Mikes team had decided to leave plenty of buffer in the storage allocation as the company was on a trajectory of growth. Ralph couldnt believe that they would already be close to needing an upgrade only a few months into the contract.

Whats Yours Is Mine-ing Ralph had the inquisitive type of personality that couldnt let this discrepancy go. Luckily, due to his role as a manager, he was the only other person besides Mike who had been given extensive access to the cloud platform, even though his main duties revolved around the physical infrastructure.

He logged in and started looking around to see what this storage situation was all about. It took only about 10 minutes of digging until Ralphs mouth dropped open and without thinking he pushed his office chair away from his desk in disbelief.

It looked like Mike had set up a cryptocurrency mining operation that was exploiting the gap space on the companys cloud accountthis is why the cloud rep was under the impression that the storage capacity had almost been reached (and was thus trying to sell the company on bumping up its storage amount to the next tier).

Based on historical data on the account, it looked like Mikes program was set to calculate the used companys actual storage consumption multiple times a day and then adjust the cryptocurrency mining scripts to take up the remaining space but leave a buffer to avoid the risk of having capacity maxed out before the next memory availability check was complete. It was a pretty ingenious way to make sure that he didnt get caught, especially since there were only two people with access to these logs (Ralph and Mike).

Ralph didnt know what to dowas this his golden opportunity to report his least favorite coworker so he could get him fired? On the other hand, what would he be reportingthat Mike was using cloud storage that the company didnt even need anyway? Would they just laugh at him and send him on his way? Or, on the other hand, if he said nothing, could he get in trouble, too?

He couldnt handle the thought of reporting Mike, finding out that no one cared, and ending up looking like a fooltalk about an uncomfortable working environment if nothing came from this. He slowly rolled his chair forward, put his elbows on the desk, and rested his head in his hands. Maybe he should just get back to work and pretend like he never stumbled across this information in the first place.