Legislation relevant to Computer Science

7* (a) OCR Photo is a free website designed to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to generate unique photographs from a text description given by the user.

The AI learns by searching the internet randomly for millions of photographs and then matching these to a textual description of the photograph. The photographs include people, property, landscapes and objects.

Discuss the legal and moral implications of this approach and what OCR Photo should consider.

You should include the following in your answer:

• what is meant by AI

• the legal and moral implications of the learning approach described in the question

• a conclusion justifying if OCR Photo should use this approach or not.

OCR Photo uses run length encoding to compress the generated photographs.

A black and white photograph is encoded using B for the colour black and W for the colour white. The encoded sequence is:

Use the grid to show the result of using run length encoding to decompress this sequence.

An investigative firm wants to start investigating cyber security issues.

Government bodies have been given additional powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

State three additional powers that this law gives to some government bodies.

As part of their new roles, employees will be accessing personal data. In order to facilitate this, all employees are enrolled on a course about the Data Protection Act.

Identify three principles of the Data Protection Act.

A team of programmers create a robot that will be used in a factory. The robot will be able to do the work of multiple humans.

The programmers discuss whether to write the instructions for the robot in assembly language or a high-level language.

Describe two differences between assembly language and high-level languages.

The robot uses a multi-core processor. The programmers assume that this means that the robot will execute programs more quickly than using a single core processor.

Give one reason why this assumption can sometimes be true.

Explain why this assumption is not always true.

* The robot stores data internally and also communicates with other robots and users via a wireless network which is password protected. All data for these tasks is secured using either encryption or hashing.

Compare the robot’s use of encryption and hashing for storing and communicating data.

You should include the following in your answer:

• the different types of encryption that could be used and how this would secure data

• how hashing could be used to secure data and which data would be suitable

• why encryption and hashing are used by the robot for stored data and communications.

The robot provides a web-based interface for users. The home screen webpage for this interface is shown in Fig. 4.

Write CSS code that could be used in an external stylesheet to format all text using the <h1> tag as white with a red background.

The robot’s web interface uses images that show the robot in action. These photographs have been taken using a digital camera.

The programmers do not want other people to download and use these images.

State the name of one relevant piece of legislation and describe how this would protect these images.

For other areas of the web interface, the programmers need to use images that they have not created themselves.

Give two ways that they could make sure these images are used legally.

Details of all users that have accessed the robot are stored in a database table called TblAccessLog. This table stores the username and user type of each user. When a user accesses the robot, the current date is added to the DateAccessed field for that user.

A selection of the data from this table is shown here. Username is the key field.

Write an SQL statement to delete all records from the table TblAccessLog for users who have a UserType of "NotNeeded".

State two requirements for a database to be in First Normal Form (1NF).

Explain why the structure of TblAccessLog means that this database is not in First Normal Form (1NF).

7* The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000) has been described as both a vital legal tool to ensure the public’s safety and an attack on an individual’s freedoms.

Evaluate the purpose and use of the Act.

You should include:

• the additional powers given under the Act

• to whom these powers are given

• the perceived benefits and/or drawbacks of the Act.

A video streaming service uses a relational database. An extract of the data from two tables from this database is shown in Fig. 2.

Membership contains data about current memberships that customers hold and package contains data about different streaming packages available.

State what is meant by the term ‘primary key’.

Identify the foreign key used in the database and the table name where this is a foreign key.

Identify the data type of the CostPerMonth(£) field.

Give the name of the field that could be stored using a Boolean data type.

The Adverts field indicates if customers will be shown adverts. true indicates that customers will be shown adverts, and false indicates that adverts are not shown.

Write Structured Query Language (SQL) to return the Username and FirstName fields for all customers who see adverts.

When new customers join the streaming service, their name, email address and contact details are captured so that they can be entered into the database.

Identify one method of capturing a new customer’s personal data, describing why this method is suitable.

Sometimes the company may need to move or backup its data they hold about customers.

Identify two methods of exchanging data with other computer systems.

The database supports ACID transactions. ACID stands for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability.

Describe what is meant by a transaction being durable.

Give one way that durability can be achieved for a completed transaction.

Explain how record locking can be used to ensure that the ACID principle of isolation is achieved when carrying out multiple transactions.

Give one disadvantage of using record locking.

The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 applies to all videos that are streamed.

Explain how this act applies to the videos.

All videos that are streamed are compressed. Customers have the option to choose from watching the videos with lossy compression or lossless compression.

Explain how this choice will impact the customer.

A program is written using an object-oriented programming paradigm and uses a class called video to organise the videos that are streamed to customers.

The class video has these attributes:

• name

• number of views

• star rating.

The constructor method will set the name attribute to the name that is passed in as a parameter. The constructor will also initially set the number of views to 0 and the star rating to 3.

Write program code or pseudocode to declare the class video and initialise the required attributes as private.

You should include both the attribute definitions and the constructor method in your answer.

A public method called updateviews() will update the number of views after a video has been viewed. This method is defined inside the video class.

Write program code or pseudocode for the method updateviews() to increase the number of views by one.

4* “The Computer Misuse Act means that computer users are criminalised for simply trying to learn how systems work.”

Discuss whether or not you agree with this statement.

5* “When it comes to government electronic surveillance, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”

Discuss whether or not you agree with this statement. You should include:

• To what extent the UK government is able to monitor electronic communications of its citizens

• Technical measures citizens can take to help prevent their communications being monitored.

6* “Technology is changing too quickly for the law to keep up.”

Discuss to what extent you agree with the statement above. In your discussion you should explain which laws regulate the use of technology and how advancements in technology have made the laws difficult to enforce/implement.