Ethical, Legal, Cultural and Environmental Impact
This topic covers the ethical, legal, cultural and environmental issues raised by digital technology, including UK legislation such as the Data Protection Act, the Computer Misuse Act and the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, and the impact of automation, e-waste and the digital divide. It is assessed in Paper 1 of GCSE Computer Science.
Method
- Learn the four key UK laws relevant to computing: the Computer Misuse Act 1990, the Data Protection Act 2018, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and what each one covers.
- Practise matching short scenarios to the correct piece of legislation.
- Learn the environmental impacts of manufacturing, using and disposing of computer hardware, including e-waste and the energy use of data centres.
- Learn positive and negative cultural impacts of technologies such as social media and instant messaging.
- Compare open source and proprietary (closed source) software, and reasons a business might choose each.
- Practise extended-writing questions that discuss and evaluate an ethical issue, such as employee monitoring, automation or always-on smart devices, from more than one point of view.
Worked example
A college employee guesses a colleague's password and looks at confidential staff records stored on the college network, without changing or deleting anything. (a) Identify which offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 this breaks. (b) Explain why the employee is guilty of this offence even though nothing was changed or deleted.
- Identify the relevant offence: this is unauthorised access to computer material, the Section 1 offence of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
- Note that guessing a password to view data that is not the employee's own counts as gaining access without permission.
- Recall that this offence only requires intent to gain unauthorised access to data; it does not require any data to be changed, damaged or deleted.
- Apply this to the scenario: because the employee knowingly viewed data using a login that was not theirs, the offence is committed regardless of the fact that nothing was altered.
- Final answer: the employee is guilty of unauthorised access to computer material (Section 1), because the offence depends only on gaining unauthorised access, not on causing any further harm to the data.
Practice questions
Try each question, then tap to reveal the answer.
Exam-style questions
Written in the style of a GCSE Computer Science exam paper, with a full mark scheme.
Define what is meant by an 'ethical issue' relating to computer technology, and give one example of an ethical issue raised by the use of technology.
A software company that lets staff work from home installs monitoring software on employee laptops that captures a screenshot of the screen every five minutes and records which websites are visited during work hours, without consulting staff about the new system beforehand. Discuss two ethical or legal issues raised by this level of workplace monitoring.
Several UK manufacturing firms are replacing production line workers with robotic arms, and some large retailers now use AI chatbots to handle most routine customer service queries that used to be answered by call centre staff. Evaluate how this rise in automation affects employees and society as a whole.
Free printable worksheet
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