Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner - 2016
Description:
A police force arrested a man following a sting operation in
which the arrested person thought he would be meeting up
with a 14-year-old he had met online. An examination of his
mobile phone led officers to believe a serious sexual offence
was about to be committed by another contact named on this
device. Officers conducted a subscriber check for this contact.
It was a pre-pay mobile registered in another county. The
local police force visited the subscriber address, seized the
electronic devices there and arrested the occupant. During the
interview and other investigations, no connection to the original
man could be found. Further analysis of the phone’s activity
confirmed the subscriber details but showed that the phone
was active during the police interview. The force concluded
that the pre-pay mobile had been registered fraudulently and
was being used by another person.
Consequence:
The police arrested, interviewed, and conducted a forensic
search of electronic devices belonging to an innocent person.
Error Investigation 22
Error by:
Communications Service Provider (CSP)
Human or
Technical:
Technical
Cause:
An ‘upgrade’ to a CSP’s business systems.
Data Acquired:
Call Data Records (Missing).
Description:
A disclosure officer working for a CSP noticed that not all the
communications data records found within a legacy system
had been integrated into a new system following an upgrade.
The CSP identified a switching issue and fixed the fault. The
CSP carried out an impact analysis. This established that 462
responses to requests from public authorities had the potential
to contain missing data. Each request was rerun and in 93
cases some data was missing in the original response.
Consequence:
The CSP wrote to all of the relevant public authorities affected.
None identified any significant impact on their operations.
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