Internet Legal and Ethical Standards

Legal and Ethical Issues

With the development of the Internet the majority people in developed nations relay on the Internet for a variety of activities both professionally or personally. It is crucial the existence of laws that protect users against IT related crimes. For us, Information Technology students, our job may involve dealing with customers' personal information, and in my view, it is crucial to have moral responsibilities, ethics, handle other people's personal information accordingly to organisation's policies and the law.

I am going to illustrate some important regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation which replaced the Data Protection Act and deal with data privacy and security; the Computer Misuse Act which stipulates laws that protect PC users from cyber crimes; the Copyright,Design and Patents Act (CDPA) which protects Intellectual property legal rights and finally, Moral and Ethics For IT Professionals which are moral values which IT professional must have when working for an organisation.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulates data protection laws. It was developed to harmonise data privacy laws throughout European countries and also provide higher protection and associated legal rights to people. In United Kingdom, the regulation commenced in May 2018 and was put in place by the Office of the Information Commissioner (Wired, 2018).

General Data Protection Regulation Privacy Principles:

Lawfulness, fairness and transparency: Companies must ensure that their data collection methods are legal and that they do not hide something from data subjects (Heywood & Pomaizlová, 2018).

Purpose Limitation: Companies ought to only gather personal data for a particular objective, the Company needs to evidently point out what the objective is and only gather data for as long as it could be required to accomplish that specific objective (Heywood & Pomaizlová, 2018).

Data Minimization: Companies have to only process the personal data that they require to accomplish as processing objectives. Accomplishing this has advantages such as in the occasion of a data breach, the unauthorised person is going to only have access to a restricted amount of data and data minimisation helps make it less difficult to keep data precise and up to date (Heywood & Pomaizlová, 2018).

Accuracy: Personal Data must be precise and kept up to date where ever could be required (Heywood & Pomaizlová, 2018).

Storage Limitation: Whenever the Personal Data is not required any more, companies have to delete the personal Data (Heywood & Pomaizlová, 2018).

Integrity and confidentiality: The Personal Data must be processed in a way which guarantees suitable protection of the Personal Data, which includes security towards not authorised or illegal processing and towards unintentional loss, damage, employing appropriate specialized procedures (Heywood & Pomaizlová, 2018).

Accountability: Companies must be accountable for and capable of showing compliance with the GDPR (Heywood & Pomaizlová, 2018).

Computer Misuse Act

The Computer Misuse Act was developed to safeguard PC users from computer related crimes and theft of data. It served as a standard for other nations around the world to use when dealing with creating new laws involving IT related offences, the aim of the Act was to making hacking and cracking activities illegal (Sqa, 2018).

The Computer Misuse Act is divided into three offences that IT Professionals must know when dealing with computer devices which are:

1. Unauthorised access to computer material

As an example for this type of offences, would be stealing somebody else's credentials (user name and Password) of a computer, and then utilizing it to access data on the computer. For this type of crime, the criminal will be required to pay a large fine and may be jailed for up to six months in prison.

2. Unauthorised access with intent to commit or facilitate perpetration of further offences

An example of this type of offences, would be stealing somebody else's credentials (User name and Password) of an online shopping account like Amazon for instance, and then utilizing it for shopping on the Internet. For this type of crime, the criminal will be required to pay a large fine and may be jailed for up to five years in prison.

3. Unauthorised modification of computer material

As an example for these type offences, Would be stealing somebody else's credentials (user name and Password) of a PC, and then changing or deleting the data on the computer. For this type of crime, the criminal will be required to pay a large fine and may be jailed for up to five years in prison.

Some Computer Crimes include the Following:

Modifying other people’s Computer software or data without permission.

Changing other's people computer passwords and system configuration and thus, preventing them to access their System.

Intentionally distributing harmful software.

Hacking Operating Systems and Applications.

Interfering with the regular function of a computer system.

General Electronic Fraud using computer devices.

Gaining access or actually trying to gain access to a PC without authorisation.

Stealing and utilizing other people’s credentials - such as passwords, user names, e-mail Ids and others.

Copyright, Design and Patents Act (CDPA)

The Copyright, Design and Patents (CDPA) Act was developed to protect intellectual Property rights of people and companies, it prevents the replication, alteration or publishing of software programs without having legal authorization of the owner. In Addition to these, the act also makes unlawful to download general Internet contents without having legitimate permission (Wikipedia, 2018), this is another important regulation that IT professional must know when dealing with operating systems and line of business applications.

Moral and Ethics in Information Technology

Professional ethics are a set of corporate standards and moral values that the workforce is supposed to have in an organisation. It allows the creation of a positive work environment where all the workers are aware of their rights and obligations.

Ethical responsibilities have been studied by theorists and enunciated by spiritual leaders for many years, The responsibilities of IT professionals are identical to the responsibilities of other technical specialists (Loui, 2008).

There are many cases of Lack of ethics and moral principles among Information Technology Professionals, especially those who call themselves Hackers. Some IT Professionals take advantage of their computer knowledge to evade the privacy of others and commit cyber crimes. Even at organisations where most of the workers have a basic knowledge of IT, they do not imagine that all the devices that are connected to the Network are monitored and can be easily accessed, even those personal portable devices that we carry every day with us such as smartphones and tablets, when We connect them to a Public wifi Network, they can also accessed by those who manage the IT Network, simply using Hacking Software. The problem is that these types of abuses and crimes are still difficult to report, simply because the criminals are those who administer the Network, in my personal opinion these actions represent lack of character and moral values.

According to the Computer Ethics Institute (2018) there are ten different commandments of Computer Ethics which every IT professional must take into consideration when dealing with Computer devices, which are:

1. Do not harm others by utilizing Computer devices.

2. Respect other persons' computer writing and creations by not interfering with it.

3. Do not secretly check other people's data files.

4. Do not commit IT related crimes (stealing).

5. Do not make use of PCs to misrepresent or spread untrue Information.

6. Avoid software Piracy and pay for Internet online resources that are required to be paid.

7. Do not use unauthorized computer resources and applications, if they require payments do so.

8. Give credit for other people's work and do not copy pretending that you are the original creator.

9. Bear in mind that your actions or activities may impact other people.

10. Be well intentioned and respectful towards other people when utilizing computer devices.