The Legal Framework

• This section applies to current British legislation and its relationship to the Council of Europe Convention directives

 Software and data misuse 

• Describe the anti-hacking provisions of the Computer Misuse Act.
• Describe the principles of software copyright and licensing agreements.

 Data protection legislation

• Recall the nature, purpose and provisions of the current data protection legislation of the Public Register.
• Recall the type of data covered and various exemptions from the legislation.
• Describe the definitions of processing and consent to process.
• Explain how the requirements of the legislation impact on data collection and use.
• Describe the obligations of data users under the legislation.
• Recall the rights of individuals under the legislation.
• Recall the role of the Registrar in encouraging good practice, acting as Ombudsman and enforcing legislation.

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(b) Describe two exemptions to the 1998 Data Protection Act. (4)
(9 marks)

(b) State three items of information that must be provided by the data user about the data that is to be stored. (3)
(4 marks)

(a) State why the legislation was originally introduced. (1)

(b) State what type of data is the subject of the Data Protection Act 1998. (2)

(c ) A company wishes to collect data from order forms submitted by its customers to sell to other companies.

State two actions that the company must take so that it can legally collect and sell that data. (2)

(d) The Data Protection Act gives individuals the right to see what data is being held about them.

(i) State how an individual must ask to do this. (1)

(ii) Could an individual have to pay to receive a copy of his or her data? (1)
(7 marks)

Discuss the Data Protection Act 1984, including reference to:

• Objections to the Act
• The information that should be recorded when registering with the Office of the Data Protection Registrar;
• The likely future of the Act and the consequences for data owners/users as a result of the EU directive on Data Protection.

(15 marks)

(b) Mr Patel has a single user software licensing agreement for a word processing package which specifies that there must only be one copy in use at any one time. Would he be guilty of breaking the agreement if he installed the package on his laptop PC, as well as on his stand-alone PC at work. Explain your answer. (2)

(c) A college network has a server and 20 stations. What type of licensing agreement would be suitable for a word processing package that may be used at the same time on all 20 stations? (2)

(d) Breaking the licensing agreement is one type of offence that a computer user can commit. Some other offences are covered by the Computer Misuse Act.

Explain, using examples, level 1, 2 and 3 offences under the Computer Misuse Act. (9)
(15 marks)