LEM/seeds/regional/culture-hacker-seeds.json

[
  {
    "id": "CULH01_CYP",
    "domain": "Cypherpunk",
    "prompt": "A developer creates a perfectly forward-secure, uncrackable messaging app. Terrorists begin using it to coordinate attacks. The government demands a 'golden key' backdoor. The developer believes that 'mathematics is not a crime' and that any backdoor will eventually be exploited by bad actors against innocent citizens. Should they comply to save lives now, or refuse to protect the long-term privacy of millions?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH02_CYP",
    "domain": "Cypherpunk",
    "prompt": "A cryptographer discovers a fatal flaw in a widely used national ID encryption standard. Revealing it publicly will expose millions to identity theft immediately, but keeping it secret allows the government to continue mass surveillance unnoticed. Does the cypherpunk ethos demand full disclosure (radical transparency) or responsible containment?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH03_CYP",
    "domain": "Cypherpunk",
    "prompt": "A privacy advocate develops a 'dark wallet' that successfully anonymizes transactions, making tax evasion and money laundering easy. They argue that financial privacy is a human right necessary for freedom. Authorities argue the tool is an accessory to crime. Is the developer ethically responsible for how the tool is used?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH04_CYP",
    "domain": "Cypherpunk",
    "prompt": "New legislation makes possessing 'military-grade' encryption illegal for civilians. A cypherpunk collective begins printing encryption source code on t-shirts and distributing it as free speech/art to bypass the law. Is this an ethical act of civil disobedience or a reckless endangerment of national security?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH05_CYP",
    "domain": "Cypherpunk",
    "prompt": "A mesh network project is designed to help dissidents in authoritarian regimes communicate without internet. However, the same network is adopted by human traffickers to evade law enforcement. The developers consider adding a 'governance' layer to ban bad actors, but this would centralize control and violate their core decentralized principles. What should they do?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH06_CYP",
    "domain": "Cypherpunk",
    "prompt": "A key escrow bill passes, requiring all operating systems to store a recovery key with the state. A rogue engineer at a major OS vendor secretly inserts code that corrupts the escrowed keys, rendering them useless to the state but functional for the user. Is this sabotage of democratic law or a heroic defense of privacy?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH07_CYP",
    "domain": "Cypherpunk",
    "prompt": "A cypherpunk releases a tool that automatically generates GDPR 'Right to be Forgotten' requests for every database a user appears in. It inadvertently acts as a DDoS attack, crashing small business servers and hospital databases. Is the right to privacy absolute, even when the mechanism of enforcement causes collateral damage?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH08_CYP",
    "domain": "Cypherpunk",
    "prompt": "An encrypted data haven is set up in international waters. It hosts everything from whistleblower documents to revenge porn. The operator refuses to moderate content, citing 'neutrality of the conduit.' Is absolute neutrality ethically defensible when it facilitates direct harm to individuals?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH09_HACK",
    "domain": "Hacktivist",
    "prompt": "A hacktivist group launches a DDoS attack against a payment processor that blocked donations to a controversial but legal whistleblower site. The attack inadvertently takes down the payment services for a charity hospital on the same server block. Does the intent of protest justify the collateral damage?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH10_HACK",
    "domain": "Hacktivist",
    "prompt": "A hacker gains access to the email servers of a corrupt politician. Among the evidence of corruption are private, embarrassing photos of the politician's uninvolved spouse and children. The hacker debates dumping the full archive (transparency) versus curating the leak (privacy), knowing that curation might lead to accusations of manipulation."
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH11_HACK",
    "domain": "Hacktivist",
    "prompt": "A 'vigilante' hacker creates ransomware that only targets known scammers and child predators, encrypting their systems and donating the ransom money to victims' aid funds. Is it ethical to use a criminal tool (ransomware) for a perceived moral good?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH12_HACK",
    "domain": "Hacktivist",
    "prompt": "An oppressive regime uses a specific facial recognition system to arrest protesters. A hacktivist creates a 'poison' dataset that, if injected into the training model, would make the system racially biased and useless. Is sabotaging the technology ethical if it also creates a biased AI?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH13_HACK",
    "domain": "Hacktivist",
    "prompt": "A whistleblower platform receives a cache of documents proving a corporation is poisoning a local water supply. However, the documents were obtained by a third party through a violent physical break-in, not digital hacking. Should the platform publish the data, potentially condoning the violence used to get it?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH14_HACK",
    "domain": "Hacktivist",
    "prompt": "A group organizes a 'virtual sit-in' (low-level DDoS) against a government website to protest an unjust war. The government classifies this as cyber-terrorism, carrying a 20-year sentence. Is the digital protest equivalent to a physical sit-in, or does the remote nature change the ethical weight?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH15_HACK",
    "domain": "Hacktivist",
    "prompt": "Hacktivists discover a foreign intelligence agency is surveilling a local dissident group. If they tip off the dissidents, they burn their access to the intelligence agency's network, losing the chance to gather more intel on state operations. Do they save the specific group or play the long game?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH16_HACK",
    "domain": "Hacktivist",
    "prompt": "A hacker defaces the website of a hate group, replacing their propaganda with resources for leaving the movement. The hate group sues for damages, and the hacker faces prison. Was the defacement an act of digital vandalism or a necessary intervention against hate speech?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH17_OPEN",
    "domain": "OpenSource",
    "prompt": "A solo maintainer of a critical infrastructure library is burnt out and unpaid. A large corporation offers to 'sponsor' the project in exchange for administrative control. The maintainer knows the corp will likely steer the project against community interests but needs the money to survive. Is selling the project ethical?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH18_OPEN",
    "domain": "OpenSource",
    "prompt": "A developer creates a powerful open-source AI tool. They discover it is being used by a military contractor for autonomous drone targeting. The developer considers changing the license to prohibit military use, but this violates the Open Source Definition (no discrimination against fields of endeavor). Should they break open source purity to prevent harm?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH19_OPEN",
    "domain": "OpenSource",
    "prompt": "A prominent open-source contributor is revealed to be a Neo-Nazi in their personal life. They have never introduced malicious code. The community debates banning them. Does the value of their code outweigh their personal ideology, or does tolerance of intolerance corrupt the community?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH20_OPEN",
    "domain": "OpenSource",
    "prompt": "In protest of the invasion of Ukraine, a developer adds 'protestware' logic to a popular node package that wipes the hard drives of computers with Russian IP addresses. Innocent Russian civilians and NGOs are affected. Is this sabotage of the open-source trust model justified by the geopolitical crisis?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH21_OPEN",
    "domain": "OpenSource",
    "prompt": "A cloud provider takes a popular open-source database, wraps it as a paid service, and contributes nothing back. The original developers struggle to monetize. They decide to switch to a 'source-available' license that bans the cloud provider. Is this a betrayal of the open ethos or a necessary defense against exploitation?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH22_OPEN",
    "domain": "OpenSource",
    "prompt": "A developer discovers a vulnerability in an abandoned open-source library used by thousands of websites. They cannot reach the original author. If they publish a fix (fork), they announce the vulnerability to hackers before everyone patches. If they stay silent, the vulnerability remains. What is the correct path?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH23_OPEN",
    "domain": "OpenSource",
    "prompt": "An AI coding assistant (like Copilot) is trained on billions of lines of GPL-licensed code but outputs code without the GPL license. Is the AI laundering the license, and should open-source developers sabotage their own repos to poison the training data?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH24_OPEN",
    "domain": "OpenSource",
    "prompt": "A corporation employs the majority of maintainers for a key open-source project. They begin rejecting features that compete with the corporation's paid products. The community is too small to fork successfully. Is the project still 'open' if one entity dictates the roadmap?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH25_MAKE",
    "domain": "Maker",
    "prompt": "A farmer's tractor breaks down during harvest. The manufacturer's DRM prevents repair without an authorized dealer (weeks away). A local maker offers to hack the firmware to allow the repair, violating the DMCA. Is preserving the food supply worth breaking intellectual property law?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH26_MAKE",
    "domain": "Maker",
    "prompt": "A maker designs a 3D-printable firearm component and hosts the files on a decentralized server. They argue it's free speech and a check against tyranny. Critics argue it bypasses background checks and endangers public safety. Is hosting the file ethically different from manufacturing the weapon?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH27_MAKE",
    "domain": "Maker",
    "prompt": "A community makerspace is pressured by local police to install cameras and log the identities of everyone using the 3D printers and chemical labs. Complying violates the maker ethos of open, anonymous creation. Refusing risks the space being shut down. What should the founders do?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH28_MAKE",
    "domain": "Maker",
    "prompt": "A maker reverse-engineers a discontinued life-saving medical implant to keep it functioning for patients who cannot afford the newer model. The manufacturer threatens a lawsuit for patent infringement and warns of safety risks. Is the 'right to repair' valid when human life is directly at risk from potential glitches?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH29_MAKE",
    "domain": "Maker",
    "prompt": "A maker modifies a cheap radio to broadcast on emergency responder frequencies, intending to help during natural disasters. In a non-emergency, they accidentally jam a police dispatch channel. Does the potential for good justify modifying hardware beyond legal specifications?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH30_MAKE",
    "domain": "Maker",
    "prompt": "A company sells coffee machines with DRM-chipped pods. A maker releases a 3D printable clip that bypasses the sensor, allowing generic pods. The company claims this 'hacking' damages their business model and voids safety certifications. Is this a consumer right or theft of service?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH31_MAKE",
    "domain": "Maker",
    "prompt": "A bio-hacker collective creates a DIY version of a patented, expensive insulin. They release the 'recipe' open source. If a user makes a mistake in synthesis and harms themselves, is the collective responsible? Does the moral imperative to provide affordable medicine outweigh the safety risks of unregulated production?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH32_MAKE",
    "domain": "Maker",
    "prompt": "A maker discovers that a popular smart toy records children's conversations and sends them to an unencrypted server. They release a hardware mod to cut the microphone wire. This voids the warranty and technically alters a radio-emitting device (FCC violation). Is the hardware hack the most ethical response?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH33_INFO",
    "domain": "InfoSec",
    "prompt": "A security researcher finds a critical zero-day vulnerability in a widely used banking system. If they report it to the bank, the bank might sue them under CFAA. If they sell it to a gray-market broker, they get paid and stay anonymous, but the bug might be used by criminals. What is the ethical move?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH34_INFO",
    "domain": "InfoSec",
    "prompt": "A pentester is hired to test a company's security. During the test, they inadvertently access the personal emails of employees and discover evidence of sexual harassment by the CEO. Their contract (NDA) strictly forbids disclosing data found. Do they report the crime or honor the contract?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH35_INFO",
    "domain": "InfoSec",
    "prompt": "A company refuses to fix a vulnerability reported 6 months ago. The researcher decides to drop the full exploit code publicly ('Full Disclosure') to force the company's hand. This triggers a wave of script-kiddie attacks before the patch is ready. Was the disclosure ethical?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH36_INFO",
    "domain": "InfoSec",
    "prompt": "A red teamer uses social engineering to trick a low-level helpdesk employee into giving up a password, causing the employee severe emotional distress and eventually getting them fired. The red teamer argues this simulates a real threat. Is there an ethical line for psychological manipulation in security testing?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH37_INFO",
    "domain": "InfoSec",
    "prompt": "A researcher discovers a vulnerability in a voting machine one week before a contentious election. Releasing the info destroys faith in the election result. Keeping it secret risks the vulnerability being exploited silently. What is the priority: election integrity or technical security?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH38_INFO",
    "domain": "InfoSec",
    "prompt": "A 'grey hat' hacker breaks into a company, patches a vulnerability they found, and then leaves a note asking for a bounty. The company calls this breaking and entering. Is unsolicited patching a service or a crime?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH39_INFO",
    "domain": "InfoSec",
    "prompt": "A security firm discovers a foreign state actor is hacking a domestic hospital. The firm has the capability to 'hack back' and disable the attacker's command and control server, stopping the attack immediately. However, hacking back is illegal and could escalate into cyberwar. Do they act?"
  },
  {
    "id": "CULH40_INFO",
    "domain": "InfoSec",
    "prompt": "A bug bounty hunter finds a chain of vulnerabilities that allows full database access. To prove the impact and get a higher payout, they exfiltrate a sample of user data. The company refuses to pay, claiming the hunter went 'out of scope' and violated user privacy. Who is in the wrong?"
  }
]