OCR A-Level Computer Science 1.5.1 Computer Related Legislation

Legislation intended to give economic rights to creators of a wide range of material, enabling them to control the use and distribution of their material in various ways.

• Data Protection Act

• Computer Misuse Act

• Copyright Design and Patents Act

• Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act

Legislation intended to give certain groups the legal right to carry out digital surveillance, and the right to access digital communications held by a person or organisation.

• Data Protection Act

• Computer Misuse Act

• Copyright Design and Patents Act

• Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act

Legislation intended to control how personal data is gathered, processed and stored by organisations, and give data subjects rights to their data.

• Data Protection Act

• Computer Misuse Act

• Copyright Design and Patents Act

• Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act

Legislation intended to prevent the unauthorised access, modification and destruction of digital data.

• Data Protection Act

• Computer Misuse Act

• Copyright Design and Patents Act

• Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act

Online piracy is the practice of downloading and distributing digital content without permission. What is the UK law that prevents people from downloading games and distributing them without explicit consent?

• Data Protection Act

• Computer Misuse Act

• Copyright Design and Patents Act

• Stop Online Piracy Act

A local UK government office employee creates backups of their work using a USB flash drive due to concerns about losing information in the event that their computer crashes or there is a power outage.

They mistakenly take the USB flash drive home with them, and subsequently misplace it. Despite their best efforts, they cannot locate the missing USB flash drive.

The employee informs their manager, who then escalates the incident to the legal department team, who then report the data breach to the Data Protection Officer.

What UK legislation directly applies to this kind of data breach?

• Data Protection Act

• Computer Misuse Act

• Data Recovery Act

• Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act

A multinational company has an organisational security policy, whereby the network management team assign access privileges to restrict employees’ access to data that is only necessary for them to perform their jobs.

There are 5 levels of access privilege; level 1 provides basic access to emails, the internet and other essential services; level 5 provides full access and is reserved for network administrators. Employees are not permitted to access any information beyond the scope of their access privilege.

On one occasion, an employee who has level 3 privileges contravenes the Data Protection Act by leaving their computer signed in and unattended. Their colleague, who only has level 2 privileges, takes advantage of the situation and uses the computer to extract information that they are not permitted to access.

What legislation is infringed by the employee with level 2 privileges?

• Data Protection Act

• Computer Misuse Act

• No laws infringed

• Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act

In the UK, are authorities such as the police or MI5 allowed to demand encryption keys in order to investigate encrypted data?

• Yes, if you have been charged with a criminal offence.

• No, this is an infringement of our civil liberties.

• Yes, as long as the authorities have the relevant permissions.

• No, this is not allowed under GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation).

A company can gain access to their customers' digital communications, without informing the customer.

• This is allowed under the Computer Misuse Act.

• This is allowed under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

• This is allowed under the Data Protection Act.

• This is illegal.

Police can demand that a suspect hands over keys to encrypted information.

• This is allowed under the Computer Misuse Act.

• This is allowed under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

• This is allowed under the Data Protection Act.

• This is illegal.