Computer Misuse Act

The Computer Misuse Act that was made a law in 1990 was passed to stop unauthorized access to computers, this frequently got called hacking. There are three offences in the act, this stand as: unauthorized access to computer material is an offence, opening with intent to commit or facilitate obligating another offence and unauthorized modification to computer material. Canada and the Republic of Ireland now also stand by the Computer Misuse Act.

In 2006 the penalties for the Computer Misuse Act got increased by the Police and Justice Act. Each of the offences get categorised as sections 1, 2 and 3 when prosecuting someone. The maximum penalty for the section 1 offence is two years imprisonment and a fine. Designed for a section 2 offence, the maximum penalty is 5 years imprisonment and a fine. In place of a section 3 offence, the maximum penalty is 10 years' imprisonment and a fine.

Robert Schifreen and Stephen Gold
Stephen Gold and Robert Schifreen are famously known for being the people that hacked into the British Telecom Prestel computer system and gained admission to Prince Philip’s message box. Authorities charged both Gold and Schifreen with forgery and fraud, but the House of Lords cleared them in 1988. Gold and Schifreen did not use any of the data in a malicious way, they gained nothing from hacking the system, however, they both did commit an illegal act as they abused someone’s privacy.

Firewalls and Antivirus Software
A firewall can stop other people from hacking into your computer. A firewall is a commonly known program which filters data coming in through the Internet to a computer or network. The firewall programme stops people hacking into your system, getting control of your computer and using your device as a multitude to access or run programs. It is very important that if you own a computer or laptop to install anti-virus software programmes so that your machine is protected from electronic infections such as: virus’, e-mail virus’, worm and Trojan horse. The most popular types of anti-virus software are, MacAfee, Norton Security, Kaspersky antivirus and Kingsoft Antivirus.

Advantages of the Computer Misuse Act
-Protects computer owners if their system is compromised and used for misconduct.
-The act also holds hackers responsible for their actions.
-It means that paedophiles are held accountable for the content that is found on the computer during an investigation.
-Ensures your private accounts are being protected.

Disadvantages of the Computer Misuse Act
-A law shouldn’t have had to be made to stop people hacking into other peoples computers. -It’s expensive to install anti-virus software.
-There is always going to be people that carry on hacking and are clever enough not to get found out.
-The penalties for hacking are the same for someone that has got a charge for GBH (grievous bodily harm) or being caught in the possession of drugs etc.
-It is easy for a hacker to delete any history they have on their computer; this could make it difficult to prosecute criminals sometimes.

Personal Experience
I think that the Computer Misuse Act is a good law to have because it helps to protect people’s data. In the past I haven’t installed antivirus software and my computer has been riddled with viruses, luckily I managed to get it fixed and I then downloaded MacAfee antivirus software; since then I haven’t had any problems with viruses or email viruses on my computer. When my mum had her AOL email account it got hacked by someone who was deleting her messages etc therefore she had to delete her account and ever since she has been really careful about who she gives her address to when giving it out online.

Data Protection Act

The Data Protection Act was introduced in 1998 by Parliament. The Data Protection Act is a law that got introduced to design and protect personal data stored on computers or in a planned filing system. The data protection act was introduced to stop personal information being spread or being misused by other people, it was also said by Parliament that by introducing this new law we can control the way information is handled and to give legal rights to people who have information stored about them. Lots of information gets stored around not only around England but in other European countries therefore they have also passed on a similar law to the data protection act.
The Data Protection Act only covers information about living individuals, it does not include businesses. Data subjects are the people who have the data held about them whereas data users are the people that hold the data; however, there are more data users than people think there are. For data users there are only certain types of data which you are allowed to store, these are: what they want to use it for, how long they will keep it for and people who they might pass it on to. Data subjects are only allowed to change their data if any is incorrect, if the national security is at stake you cannot demand to see your data.

There are also 8 data protection principles, these conclude of:
1) Fairly and lawfully processed (used).
2) Used for limited purposes.
3) Adequate and relevant. Only what is needed may be used.
4) Accurate.
5) Not kept for longer than is necessary.
6) Accessible to the individual and able to be corrected or removed where necessary.
7) Secure.
8) Not transferred to countries without adequate protection.

Not only is there the data protection act, similar acts have now come into force, some of which are: Copyright, designs and patents Act” which began in 1988, “Computer Misuse Act” which began in 1990, “Regulation of investigatory powers act” Which began in 2000 and the most recent act, “Freedom of information Act” which began in 2005.

Julian Assange

Julian Assange was born on July 3rd 1971, in Townsville, Australia. Assange is most famous for being the founder of WikiLeaks, a site which intended to collect and share confidential information on an international scale. WikiLeaks officially launched in 2007, it was banned from Sweden at the time because of the strong laws to protect a person’s secrecy. Later on that year the site released a U.S military manual that gave information about the Guantanamo detention centre. Carrying on from this, WikiLeaks also shared emails from Sarah Palin (vice president candidate at the time) from an anonymous source.

In early 2010 there was a sexual assault controversy for Julian Assange. He had been under investigation by the Swedish police since early August, in connection with two sexual assault cases. On the 6th of December after a European Arrest Warrant was issued by Swedish, Assange turned himself in to the London police.

Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden was born in North Carolina in 1983. In May 2013 Snowden began copying top-secret NSA documents while at work, building a record on practices that he found offensive and alarming. The documents contained vast and critical information on the NSA's local surveillance practices, including spying on millions of American people under the authority of programs such as PRISM. On June 6th the Guardian and the Washington Times released Snowden's leaked information on PRISM, an NSA program that allows real-time information to be collected, only information on American citizens. On June 14th the U.S government charged Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defence information, and wilful communication of classified intelligence with an unauthorized person. The last two charges fall under the Espionage Act. Edward Snowden still remains in hiding. In November 2013 Edward Snowden request for clemency was rejected. The USA has said that they want Snowden to return home and face criminal charges for leaking NSA documents.

Copyright and Piracy

Copyright
The Copyright and Patents Act aims to protect people who invent things from having their ideas stolen.
Copyright gives originators of some types of media rights to control how they're used and distributed. Music, books, video and software can all be covered by copyright law. If you’re the sole owner of the work, you have the right to: make copies of your work; issue copies of your work; perform your work publicly through plays, films, dances or music and you can also display your work publicly through artwork or stills from audio-visual work, or any other material used on the Internet or television. Most people feel that they have the right to be paid for the work they do, that’s why we need copyright laws.
When you buy software, you don’t actually buy the software itself. You buy the right to use it, which is called a license, however, you can only use it in the way the license says you can. The three most common licences are the single user licence, multiple user licence and the site licence.
The single user licences are the most common. This licence allows you to use one copy of the software on a single computer. Sometimes they let you use it on a laptop as well, as long as both are not used at the same time. The second most common licence is the multiple user licence. These are commonly bought by companies who need lots of copies to run on a network. A 25-user licence allows them to have 25 copies of the software running and it also costs less than 25 single user licences. The third most common licence is the site licence which allows as many copies to run as the user wants as long as they are on the same site. This is common for schools to buy software such as this.
Software is expensive to buy because companies don’t make enough money from the software, and they won’t spend money on improving and developing it.

Piracy
Piracy is obtaining, make money on from, using or making changed to copyright material without earlier permission. Piracy costs over £3 billion each year in Europe; this keeps the cost of software higher for those who do pay for it. Some common types of software piracy include fake software, OEM unbundling, softlifting, hard disk loading, corporate software piracy, and Internet software piracy. Software piracy is almost impossible to stop.
The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) originated in 1984 by the software industry and is now reinforced by over 1,200 companies. It is a not-for-profit establishment with an aim to stop software piracy and has a policy of take legal action to anyone found to be breaking the copyright law. FAST also works to teach the public about good software practice and legal requirements.

Advantages on the rights of copyright
-Copyright prevents users work getting stolen or misused by other people.
-It gives the owner the right to authorize others to produce or duplicate your work as well as the right show your work.
-Copyright allows the holder of the copyright to say no to other people using their work if they find it morally irrelevant.
-The copyright policy lasts for rather a long time; this is normally around 50 years.

Disadvantages on the rights of copyright
-The failure to share work. Copyright does not allow you to agreeably permit others to use your work or to issue it, even if this isn’t for a profit.
-Authorship is not ownership. You have to own the copyright to be able to get the rights that it allows, being the creator of the work does not always guarantee ownership of the work.
-In countries such as Canada, the Canadian copyright law does not allow for parodying of work without permission.
-It takes a lot of time and effort to apply for a copyright registration.

Personal Experiences
The only experience I have to do with copyright is when I copy and paste a picture from the internet in to a piece of work I’m doing, other than that I don’t have any personal experiences when it comes to copyright and piracy. However, someone I used to know used to copyright CD’s and DVD’s but they got found out twice, the first time it was a heavy fine and the second time he got arrested for it.

Crime Prevention

HOLMES2

Computers play a large part in helping with crime prevention. The first ever computer programme to help officers make sense of large amounts of information was called HOLMES2 Incident room. HOLMES2 incident room identified and helped plot lines of enquiry, kept track of vital pieces of evidence and reduced the amount of paperwork. This great new piece of technology also had a special function called Casualty Bureau- this was a special function that helped to coordinate the repercussion of major incidents, such as terrorist attacks, floods or train crashes. The way in which the system worked was by the relatives providing information about the missing person, this new information would then get put into the system where it would directly and automatically match casualty details from accident scenes, evacuation centres and hospitals. In most cases, if the system has found a match the police will contact the relatives that provided the information with news on the missing person. On September 11th 2001 there was a series of terrorist attacks in the United States, HOLMES2 helped identify British victims by matching them from the missing person’s reports back in the UK to the casualty list in the USA.

For minor crimes such as theft, criminal damage and damage or theft to a motor vehicle people can now report these types of minor crimes online via the online police website- www.online.police.uk.

Identification Techniques
Biometrics is also another factor which helps to contribute to dealing with crime prevention. Biometrics is another new technology device which identifies people using physical characteristics such as fingerprints or retinal scans. Biometrics works by recognising someone’s individual/ unique finger pattern. A couple of years ago to record somebody’s fingerprint you had to put your fingertip on a pad of ink and then stamp it down on a piece of paper, however, as technology has become more advanced over the years you can now electronically scan your fingerprint, this also helps to enhance the image if the print isn’t clear enough when you scan it. Computers match the prints against a database of fingerprints which have already been catalogued. DNA is used to help collect information about victims and criminals. Everyone has their own unique DNA; however, identical twins are exempt from this as they share identical DNA. The majority of the time samples of DNA get left at crime scenes; these can be broken down into a profile and compared with that of known criminals or suspects. DNA is all the same and can be found in samples of body fluid, tissue or hair.
Other identification techniques which include the use of using computers include facial recognition and Automatic Number Plate Recognition also known as ANPR. Facial recognition systems are becoming more popular and many are now installed in airports in order to help manage CCTV. ANPR are cameras that can tell police officers within seconds whether a vehicle has been stolen, is known to be involved in crime, or is untaxed. There are many digital cameras which scan and record vehicle registration marks of every passing car. Once the numbers have been collected over a certain amount of time they get cross-checked against a number of databases, including the Police National Computer, the DVLA and police intelligence records.
Evidence collection, tracking, analysis and availability have improved dramatically. Some people think that police officers have become to dependant on modern technology and they have begun to look back on the days of ‘bobby on the beat’ which was the local police officer who knew about what was happening in the local community.

Advantages

-Technology allows for quicker DNA testing.

-High-speed cameras can quickly scan databases and license plates faster than law enforcement recruits can manually capture and track them.

-It is safer using GPS systems to track down a specific car rather than taking part in a high speed chase between the offender and the police.

-Helps to reduce the amount of crime that goes on because everything is monitored so closely.

-A lot of room is saved by having electronic fingerprinting systems rather than lots of pieces of paper in a filing cabinet.

-Facial recognition, DNA printing, DVLA is the most accurate way of collecting data about someone.

Disadvantages

-Police officers are becoming dependant on all the new technology available to them.

-Sometimes inaccurate information can be produced.

-If the system ever breaks there is the possibility that all the data that has been collected could get cleared from the computer.

-Not everyone has Wi-Fi access so if you wanted to report a crime, you wouldn’t be able to do it online.

Personal Experience

I haven’t had much experience when it comes to technology that helps deal with crime prevention; however, I have had one or two experiences. Back in April last year I went to Florida with my friend and when we arrived at Miami airport we had to go through immigration, this is where we had to get our fingerprints scanned. Also when we went through immigration we had to look into this camera so it could record and identify our facial recognition. As I am too young to drive I haven’t had any experiences to do with APNR cameras.

Offline Entertainment

As well as there being online entertainment there is also offline entertainment. Offline entertainment has changed dramatically over the years, with technology becoming more advanced the simple things such as Gameboys and videos no longer exist.

Video games

Video games go all the way back to the 1940’s where they were first introduced by Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, who in 1947 created the invention they described as the ‘cathode ray tube amusement device’. This invention was to be known as the earliest interactive electronic game. The first ever video game, ‘Spacewar!’ was created in the 1960’s. Mainstream video games didn’t get introduced until the 1970’s-1980’s, this is when arcade video games, gaming consoles and home computer games were introduced to the general public. The msot common forms of video consules are the Xbox, PS2 (or PS3), PSP and the Wii. All these types of gaming consoles have been made into many forms of different models.

The Nintendo Company has been running since 1889 and was founded by a Japanese company. The first Nintendo game console known as the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in North America in 1985. Nintendo then went on to develop the Game Boy handheld console, which was released in 1989. As technology became more advanced the more recent handheld game Nintendo have produced is the Nintendo DS, this was released in 2004. As Nintendo could see with their large sales the Nintendo DS was a good seller they went on to make the DS one step better. The Nintendo DS Lite brought a smaller factor but was known for its double screens, a microphone and as well as it having a touch-sensitive lower screen. Sales continued to increase so more models were to be made, the most current form of a Nintendo handheld gaming system is the Nintendo DSi which features larger screens and two cameras and the DSi XL that contains a 90% bigger screen.

Video games have become part of a big industry. Nowadays it is common for video gaming to be taught in school and as part of the curriculum students have to know how to make their own game.

Advantages

-Video games can improve hand-eye coordination, especially for people who play fast action games.

-They improve reaction time.

-You have to use your brain a lot of the time so a lot of quick thinking is involved because you’re playing as part of a challenge all the time.

-Some games can be educational.

Disadvantages

-Most gaming consoles are very expensive.

-Through a constant use of your thumbs, wrists and eyes it can lead to problems such as eyestrain, RSI and other physical problems.

-There is no physical activity involved.

-They can be seen as being very unsociable because most games are for one player.

-A newer model of a specific gaming console is always being released so if you have just brought one, chances are that as soon as the new version comes out you will want that one.

Personal Experience

When I was younger I did own a Gameboy that I used to love. I did really enjoy using my Gameboy, however the games for it were very expensive so I only played on a couple of games that in the end became very boring from where I had played them so much. For my 10th birthday I got the Nintendo DS which was the very first one which was made. I really liked the DS because I could use my old games from my Gameboy and my new games for the DS at the same time. After about 3 years my DS broke, however, my sister got the Nintendo DS light in 3D which is very good as you can also access the internet through it and connect with other players for certain games.

Music

Music has dramatically changed since the time records were made around the 1860’s. The record player is something that was very popular and back in the day and the only way of playing music, people would have to purchase a vinyl record which is like a giant version of a CD which would play 1-2 songs on it. As record players were so large it meant that they were very space consuming which for people that lived in small houses it wasn’t very practical. The record players were huge which meant they were very space consuming. As technology became more advanced Fritz Pfleumer invented tapes which were another way of listening to music. Tapes were a great deal smaller than vinyl records and it was often that the tape would unravel which caused them to break, however tapes did come with more advantages than records as they held a lot more songs and were less space consuming. With technology continuing to become more advanced the next form of music device was the CD which came about in the 1980’s. CD’s are still around nowadays however it’s not very common that you see people listening to CD’s as they can download them from iTunes for the same amount of money. The first portable music player was the Walkman; this was a small device which you could listen to CD’s on. Portable music players then became more advanced and in 1998 MP3 players came out, this then advanced to MP4 players, this was then followed by the Apple Ipod classic. The Ipod classic was the first type of Ipod to be made by Apple and to be run through iTunes, this became very popular with the public as it was easier and more space efficient to by albums through iTunes rather than to buy them through a shop such as HMV. Since the Ipod classic Apple have produced many more advanced types of IPod’s, the current one being the Apple Ipod Touch.

Advantages
-If you only like one song from an album you save money as you can chose to pay for that one song.
-They will never be out of stock.
-You can package a chosen single to someone and send it to them.
-You can keep all your music in one place.
-You can buy ITunes gift cards for people so it’s better than buying them a CD as they can choose which songs they want.
-Rather than having lots of records and CD’s you can purchase music from Itunes which saves a lot of space.
-Records are worth a lot of money nowadays.

Disadvantages
- You need Wi-Fi to be able to access ITunes.
- You need an apple product to be able to use the ITunes software.
- There are many sites where people can illegally download music.
- You can’t collect records/ CD’s if you buy them through ITunes.

Personal experiences
My first ever portable music player was a MP3 player, it worked by plugging the USB stick into my computer and putting the music from my computer onto the MP3 player. I really liked my MP3 player because I would take it wherever I wanted to and the battery lasted a long time. Nowadays because I have an Apple Iphone I listen to all my music through there and it’s a lot easier to choose which songs I wish to listen to, however, my phone battery is rubbish and when I listen to music it normally runs out of power very quickly which can be very annoying as I really like listening to music. I also like the idea of how I can just buy songs off of ITunes whenever I want and how I can choose selective songs rather than buy a whole album.

Televisions

When televisions first came out they consisted of four basic channels; BBC 1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4. However, this is no longer the case; nowadays you can get hundreds of programmes on Sky, Freeview and Virgin Atlantic boxes. On many types of media boxes such as the most common ones being Sky and Virgin you can record, pause, fast forward and rewind programmes for whenever you are busy. Also now on many boxes you have the option of paying an extra amount of money per month and as part of your package you can get ‘On Demand’ this means any programme from the channels BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 you can get from your television at any time. Recently television has changed from analogue to digital making it more accessible for people to experience many different channels. From box TV’s to plasma screens televisions people are always buying new televisions due to better resolution, HD settings and recently the most advanced type feature included in a television is the 3D feature which is amazing. Nowadays televisions have become a lot more complex as they have so many different options on them; also recently it has become known that you can buy TV’s that include a Wi-Fi feature which means you can connect your laptop, Ipad, Iphone or Ipod to your television to play videos, films and music.
Advantages

-Higher resolution.
-You can always watch the programmes you want to watch whenever you want.
-More television programmes to choose from.
-More compatible with modern day technology.
-More precise.
-You can use Blu-ray players which mean the picture quality is a lot better.

Disadvantages
-Too many channels to choose from.
-Modern TV’s are expensive.
-Not compatible with older technology, for example, analogue videos.
-Sometimes ‘On Demand’ doesn’t work due to a weak signal connection.
-Some TV’s are so thin they are very fragile.

Personal experiences
My parents have always owned digital TV’s ever since I can remember. Currently we have a Virgin TIVO box which allows us to access thousands of channels, it also means we can watch BBC Iplayer, ITV player, 4 on demand and demand 5 through on demand whenever we like. My sister recently got a 3D television for her birthday which is amazing, however you have to buy 3D DVD’s which are very expensive. I have never really had any problems loosing signal or bad picture quality at home unless the weather is extremely bad. Also on the TV I have in my kitchen it has a USB port so I connect my phone, laptop and Ipad through it which comes in very useful when I have friends round and want to play music or videos on the screen.