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• An urgent operational requirement would include attempts to locate and arrest those
suspected of committing serious offences, such as importing illicit drugs. The investigators
would need to demonstrate how the communications data would assist with the
prevention and detection and that, without the use of the urgent oral procedures,
operational opportunities to arrest the suspects and seize the drugs would be lost.
• A time-critical threat to national security could arise during the immediate aftermath
of a terrorist attack, when law enforcement investigators seek to confirm whether an
arrested terrorist suspect acted with others who may continue to pose a threat to the
public. The urgent oral process typically will be invoked to acquire call and location data
without delay.
8.29
The urgent oral process can only be used whilst the urgent situation subsists. Once the case
for urgency has ended, the written process must be used for subsequent applications.
Additional protections – certain professions
8.30
As already highlighted, communications data acquired and disclosed under RIPA does not
include content. Nonetheless, the DP must consider whether there is a risk that acquiring
the data will thereby create an unwarranted risk that sensitive professional contacts will be
revealed, or that there will be other substantive adverse consequences which are against the
public interest.
8.31
The 2015 Acquisition and Disclosure of Communications Code of Practice (paras 3.72-3.77)
requires applicants to give special consideration to requests for communications data that
relate to persons who are members of professions which handle privileged or otherwise
confidential information. This can include, for example, lawyers, journalists, members of
parliament, ministers of religion or doctors.
8.32
Public authorities must record the number of such applications and report to the IPC annually.
In 2017, public authorities advised that they had made a total of 755 applications to acquire
data which related to persons who held sensitive professions. It is fair to say that a significant
proportion of those applications would have been categorised incorrectly as a consequence of
clerical error or the applicant’s misunderstanding about the subject’s profession.
8.33
Most applications relating to sensitive professionals were submitted because the individual
had been a victim of crime. For example, it might be the case that a member of parliament
or a lawyer received threatening or malicious calls and communications data requests were
made in an attempt to attribute phone numbers or emails addresses to perpetrators.
8.34
Given the public interest in a free press, save when there is an immediate threat to life,
applicants cannot use the provisions of RIPA to acquire data which is intended or is likely to
identify journalistic sources. Instead, law enforcement agencies must now apply to a court
for a production order. IPCO inspectors found no instances in 2017 of RIPA being used
improperly to identify journalistic sources.
How IPCO oversees these powers
8.35
The acquisition of communications data is overseen across the annual IPCO programme of
inspections. The larger users of communications data, such as police forces, are inspected at
least annually. Smaller users are inspected less frequently, but at least once every two years.
Typically, an inspection takes between one and four days to complete and involves from one
to four inspectors depending on the size of the authority and the volume of data requested.