INTERCEPTION
The Rt Hon. Theresa May MP
Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London
SW1A 2AA
OF
C O M M U N I C AT I O N S
COMMISSIONER’S
OFFICE
31 July 2017
Dear Prime Minister,
I am required by section 58(4) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000
to make a report to you with respect to the carrying out of my statutory functions, as
soon as practical after the end of each year. In 2016, my inspectors and I carried out 166
inspections of 134 public authorities. We were notified of 1,200 errors, and conducted
investigations into 29 serious errors.
This represents a huge amount of work by my office (IOCCO). I would like formally to
thank my team for their efforts. I would also like to express my appreciation for the
work of the hundreds of people we have inspected at Public Authorities across the UK.
As well as their important work on compliance, our colleagues in Government are also
responsible for keeping the public safe: finding vulnerable missing people, uncovering
terrorist plots, and catching criminals.
In general, the standard of compliance is high. Errors and more general problems form
a very small percentage of the total activity I inspect. However, 2016’s inspections have
raised one area of significant concern. This report includes a specific chapter on errors
occurring during IP Address Resolutions. These are far more common than is acceptable,
especially in cases relating to Child Sexual Exploitation. The impact on some victims of
these errors has been appalling.
The key event impacting my work in 2016 was the passage of the Investigatory Powers Act. I
have given some detailed thoughts on the IPA in this report. The judicial ‘double-lock’, which
applies to many of the powers I oversee, is a significant change in the nature of oversight.
Under previous legislation, any concerns that Commissioners have had about conduct or legal
interpretation might have been reflected in recommendations to the authority in question
and then in public in the annual report. Apart from in the case of some communications data
errors, commissioners have had minimal powers of sanction. In the future, unless a judicial
commissioner is convinced of the lawfulness of a course of action, it will not happen.
This increased oversight brings with it a number of challenges. The Investigatory
Powers Commissioner will be more closely involved in ongoing operations than I and
my predecessors have been. I welcome the Government’s commitment to enabling