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There is a crisis in public confidence in how personal data is being collected and used by companies and governments. Even newspapers like the Telegraph with impeccable pro-business reputations are expressing concern over the "big data" revolution.
Existing data protection laws as captured in the The UK Information Commissioner's Office key definitions on data protection are seen as out of touch with the reality of modern personal data where almost any data relating to a person can be associated with them via data linkage.
In response the EU has created draft data protection legislation. That has generated considerable controversy in the recent past. For an overview of the changes the Computer Weekly essential guide provides a summary of the main changes in legislation. OECD guidelines on protection of data and transborder data flows also provide some insight into the current approach to there regulation of personal data. A range of high-profile events seem to be leading to a large-scale revision of the need for privacy and long-standing arrangements are being reviewed. See for example the Financial Times piece on the "data harbour".
At the same time as there has been an increasing interest in assuring data privacy there has been a growing economic perspective on the market value of persona data. The World Economic Forum, representing the perspective of an economic elite, has been projecting their perspective on personal data and on the need to balance utility against privacy. In the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) we have also seen a move to look at the value of such data.
The British perspective is complex because of the felt need to encourage business to develop competitiveness. The ICO report on the implications of the EU proposals has an air of caution that is absent from the main EU proposal documents. The ICO website has more detail. The site is searchable and it is useful to see the extent of debate in the ICO discussions on data protection reform. In a recent report the Guardian carried a report on British reticence to align fully with Europe.
These potential changes will have a definite impact on computing professional practice. This is the topic of your essay. Your essay should be around 1500 words but if you need a bit more space there is no hard cutoff but you should avoid unnecessary length. Your should put yourself in the position of someone who has been asked to produce guidance for computing professionals on how the changes in data protection affect professional practice. Your essay should have an Introduction and Conclusions that introduce and summarise the content of the essay and the main content of the essay should cover three main areas:
The plagiarism detection service is an online service that enables institutions and staff to carry out electronic comparison of students' work against electronic sources including other students' work.
The service is managed by The University of Northumbria on behalf of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and is available to all UK tertiary education institutions by subscription.
The plagiarism detection service works by executing searches of the world wide web, and extensive databases of reference material, as well as content previously submitted by other users.
Each new submission is compared with all the existing information.
The software makes no decisions as to whether a student has plagiarised, it simply highlights sections of text that are duplicated in other sources. All work will continue to be reviewed by the course tutor.
Once work has been submitted to the system it becomes part of the ever growing database of material against which subsequent submissions are checked.
The software is used as a tool to highlight any instance where there is a possible case of plagiarism. Passages copied directly or very closely from existing sources will be identified by the software and both the original and the potential copy will be displayed for the tutor to view. Where any direct quotations are relevant and appropriately referenced, the course tutor will be able to see this and will continue to consider the next highlighted case. There is an on-line demonstration of the system available at https://www.submit.ac.uk/
You should try to ensure your document is clear and easy to read. You may like to consider the following:
soa@staffmail.ed.ac.uk)
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