Civil Rights

There has been many debate about the impact of ICT in today’s society, civil rights has been infringe in many different ways since the development of ICT. Giving individual to receive equal treatment is not always possible or can be quite difficult; many surveillance cameras are now around the street, phone hacking and computer hacking are also very popular in today’s society. With more data and more technologies it means it’s more likely that rights to privacy and civil rights are compromised. These are examples on how civil rights are being infringed and due to all of these; certain laws are created to protect individual and give them the freedom they should have. Government exchanges data and people worried about their personal data not being accurate or being shown to public. Computer makes copying and collecting data more sufficient and very convenient

Examples of how ICT may/can breach civil rights
Surveillance Cameras- having surveillance cameras is not illegal but how you use the video in the surveillance camera sometimes may breech civil right. Putting the video online or broadcasting it to everyone may be considered as illegal.

Phone hacking- is illegally listening to the voicemails or conversation of a mobile phone without the consent of the phone’s owner. Mobile phone hacking can also mean intercepting mobile calls to listen, taking control of the phone to receive copies of text messages etc. 

Phone hacking has been all over the news this recent years and the biggest talk is the News of the world. This is an article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16265505

The Internet

How Internet-related civil rights covered by current law?

The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the ECHR both contain articles relating to freedom of thought, expression and association. The ECHR also contains an article relating to the right to private life and private correspondence. Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers

Is there an alternative model for Internet rights?

Many governments have promoted rights for electronic commerce and strengthened intellectual property rights, but few have done parallel work to represent the interests of the general public. They believe that the new digital media, there has been no specific move to protect rights to access and use information and communications technologies.
The Association for Progressive Communications has been developing a Charter for Internet Rights as part of its work on Internet rights. It sets out seven key themes:

• The right to communicate 
• Freedom of expression and information exchange 
• Diversity of content, ownership and control, and the protection of user rights 
• The licensing and control of intellectual property 
• Privacy 
• Global, regional and national governance of the Internet 
• Rights awareness and realisation of rights 

Data Protection Act 1998
Data protection act 1998 covers how information about a person is used and stored. This act is a UK law on processing data on identifiable living people. It requires protecting people’s fundamental rights and freedoms to the processing of their personal data. It provides a way for individual to control information about themselves and anyone holding personal data for other purpose is legally obliged to comply with this Act.

This act covers 8 data protection principles:

• Personal data shall be obtained only for lawful purposes 
• Personal data shall not be transferred to a country without adequate protection 
• Personal data shall be processed fairly and lawfully 
• Personal data shall always be accurate and up to date 
• Personal data shall be adequate, relevant and not excessive and other data needed may be used 
• Personal data shall not be kept for longer than necessary for that purpose or purposes 
• Rights of individuals, you should have the right to have data about you removed 
• Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data 

Computer Misuse act

Computer Misuse act is an act of the UK Parliament in 1990. It’s design to stop computer/internet crimes as hacking into other people’s computer or system, helping a person to gain access to protected files on someone else’s computer.

It’s split into sections

• Accessing computer material without permission with intent to commit further criminal offences. EG hacking into bank’s computer and wanting to put more money into your account 
• Changing or altering computer data without permission. EG writing a virus to someone else’s data 

There are many different types of computer misuse; they all come in several forms. The most popular or known one is hacking. Hacking is where an unauthorised person uses a network to gain access past security password to see data stored on computer, hackers sometimes use a software hacking tools and target particular sites on the internet. Another well know one is viruses. Viruses are generally simple programs written by people, its main purpose is to damage computers or files. Unauthorised transfer or copying is another type of computer misuses. Illegal transfer of data is very easy and quick thing to do but personal data cannot be copied without the copyright holder’s permission and if someone does copy it then it’s breaking the computer misuse law. Furthermore, email and chat room abuses can also be classified as computer misuse. Internet services such as chat rooms and email have been the subject of many well publicised cases of impersonation where people who are online pretend to have a different identity. Chat rooms have also been used to spread rumours about certain people but the biggest and well known one is email spam, where millions of emails are sent to advertise both legal and illegal products and services. Lastly, copying or distributing copyrighted music, software and films are also illegal. Copying music or movies using computer then distributing it on the internet without the copyright holder’s permission is the main and commonly issue, this breaks the copyright regulations.

How can you or how to prevent computer misuse?

• Closing down chat rooms 
• Some chat rooms have moderators who help to prevent abuses 
• Reduce email spamming 
• Never reply to anonymous emails 
• Setting filters on your email account 
• Reporting spammers 
• Security 
• Keeping their data safe with “backups” and sufficient security with passwords