BIG BROTHER WATCH AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
State for the purposes of preventing serious crime ceased to have effect after
three months, unless renewed. These warrants were renewable for periods of
six and three months respectively, and could be renewed at any point before
their expiry date by application to the Secretary of State. That application
had to contain the same information as the original application, together
with an assessment of the value of the interception up to that point and an
explanation of why its continuation was necessary, within the meaning of
section 5(3), and proportionate (see section 9 of RIPA at paragraph 67
above and paragraphs 6.22-6.24 of the IC Code at paragraph 96 above). The
Secretary of State had to cancel a warrant – even before the original expiry
date – if satisfied that it was no longer necessary on section 5(3) grounds
(see section 9 of RIPA at paragraph 67 above).
401. In view of the clear limitation on the duration of section 8(4)
warrants, and the requirement that they be kept under continuous review,
the Court considers that the rules in respect of the duration of interception
under the section 8(4) regime were sufficiently clear and provided adequate
safeguards against abuse.
402. Paragraph 7.9 of the IC Code provided that where an intelligence
service received unanalysed intercept material and related communications
data from interception under a section 8(4) warrant, it had to specify
maximum retention periods for different categories of material which
reflected its nature and intrusiveness. Those specified periods would
normally be no longer than two years, and had to be agreed with the IC
Commissioner. So far as possible, all retention periods had to be
implemented by a process of automated deletion, triggered once the
applicable maximum retention period had been reached (see paragraph 96
above). Pursuant to paragraph 7.8 of the IC Code retained intercept material
had to be reviewed at appropriate intervals to confirm that the justification
for its retention was still valid under section 15(3) of RIPA (see
paragraph 96 above).
403. In their submissions to the Grand Chamber, the Government
provided further information about the retention periods. Communications
to which only the “strong selector” process was applied were discarded
immediately unless they matched the strong selector. Communications to
which the “complex query” process was also applied were retained for a few
days, in order to allow the process to be carried out, and were then deleted
automatically unless they had been selected for examination.
Communications which had been selected for examination could be retained
only where it was necessary and proportionate to do so. The default position
was that the retention period for selected communications was no longer
than a few months, after which they were automatically deleted (although if
the material had been cited in intelligence reporting, the report would be
retained), but in exceptional circumstances a case could be made to retain
selected communications for longer (see paragraph 293 above). In practice,
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