Legal Issues

A legal issue is a question about what the law allows or forbids. Digital technology creates new kinds of offence and lets older ones happen faster and on a larger scale, and the law often lags behind, because an Act is usually written only after a problem has appeared.

Legal issues include hacking and spreading malware, copying or sharing creative work or software without the rights to it, organisations gathering, trading or accidentally exposing personal details, and online fraud and harassment.

The three main laws

Match each action to the law it breaks.

The Data Protection Act 2018 controls how organisations collect, use, store and share personal data; its detailed rules have their own subtopic. It is the Act for mishandled personal data, not the Act about breaking into computer systems.

One incident can break several laws

Suppose someone finds a photographer's laptop still logged in, opens her photo library and copies wedding photographs to sell. Copying them breaks the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, because the work is used without permission; opening the laptop breaks the Computer Misuse Act 1990, because the access is unauthorised. If her clients' contact details were exposed too, the photographer, as the organisation holding that data, faces a personal data breach under the Data Protection Act 2018. Responsibility is split between the attacker and the photographer.

The internet crosses national borders, so something allowed in one country may be forbidden in another, and an offender based abroad is hard to prosecute because police in one country have limited power over someone living in another.