Ict and the law

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ICT and the Law

        In this piece of coursework I will be talking about various laws and how they affect myself, Mr James (An Adult with a disability) and Mr Hulse (An adult in employment. There are 4 laws I will be concentrating on:

  • The DPA
  • Health and Safety
  • The CMA
  • The Copyright, Design and Patents Act

DPA (1998)

The DPA (Data Protection Act) is a law which enforces how data is collected and stored. It stops it from being misused and transported to countries who do not have similar protection of data. For instance, if a school had the personal data of a student and sold it to someone or gave it away, or pinned it up on a notice board or a wall somewhere, they would be prosecuted by the DPA for misuse of data. The DPA ensures all personal information digitally stored is not used in any other way than necessary, and are not viewed and changed when there is no need to. How would you feel if you applied for a job and someone had changed your GCSE results to a very poor standard, making it near impossible to get the job, or if someone had made all the results really good, you would be given a position and expected to do more work than you can possibly accomplish. What if someone had added one or more offences to your criminal record? This is why the DPA exists. This law covers both digital and written information which is covered from the moment it is created until the moment it is erased. The law lets the Data Controller (the owning company) of the data to allow or disallow access, viewing and/or editing of the information about various data subjects (the person who has data about them stored outside their direct control) they own. Certain organisations are authorised to view and edit any file on the internet, such as the police, forensics agencies, the government and the secret service.

There are eight principles enforced by the DPA;

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  • Data must be kept secure;
  • Data stored must be relevant;
  • Data stored must be kept no longer than necessary;
  • Data stored must be kept accurate and up-to-date;
  • Data must be obtained and processed lawfully;
  • Data must be processed within the data subject rights;
  • Data must be obtained and specified for lawful purposes;
  • Data must not be transferred to countries without adequate data protection laws.

        These principles keep all data on the internet kept safe to the extent of how much they need to be kept safe, and have been an effective way of keeping personal data secure and ...

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Summary This document gives the reader a good breadth of information covering the main points of the legislation mentioned in the title. There are some good examples in each section and this helps to demonstrate the understanding the student has of the principles of each piece of legislation. Overall the document would benefit from clarity. This is in terms of the structure of the writing and also the way the legislation is portrayed as "law". It would help overall if there could be some clarification of what is law and what is not. This piece of work is four stars overall.