BIG BROTHER WATCH AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
before the ISC indicated that neither Ministers nor the Commissioners had
any significant visibility of these issues. The ISC therefore recommended
that the IC Commissioner should be given statutory responsibility to review
the various selection criteria used in bulk interception to ensure that they
followed directly from the certificate and valid national security
requirements.
148. The ISC noted that communications data were central to most
intelligence services’ investigations: they could be analysed to find patterns
that reflected particular online behaviours associated with activities such as
attack planning, to establish links, to help focus on individuals who might
pose a threat, to ensure that interception was properly targeted, and to
illuminate networks and associations relatively quickly. They were
particularly useful in the early stages of an investigation, when the
intelligence services had to be able to determine whether those associating
with a target were connected to the plot (and therefore required further
investigation) or were innocent bystanders. According to the Secretary of
State for the Home Department, they had “played a significant role in every
Security Service counter-terrorism operation over the last decade”.
Nevertheless, the ISC expressed concern about the definition of
“communications data”. While it accepted that there was a category of
communications data which was less intrusive than content, and therefore
did not require the same degree of protection, it considered that there
existed certain categories of communications data which had the potential to
reveal more intrusive details about a person’s private life and, therefore,
required greater safeguards.
149. Finally, with regard to the IPT, the ISC expressly recognised the
importance of a domestic right of appeal.
3. “A Question of Trust”: Report of the Investigatory Powers Review
by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation (“the
Anderson Report”)
150. The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation is a person
wholly independent of Government, appointed by the Home Secretary and
by the Treasury for a renewable three-year term. He is tasked with reporting
to the Home Secretary and to Parliament on the operation of
counter-terrorism law in the United Kingdom. These reports are laid before
Parliament to inform the public and political debate.
151. The purpose of the Anderson Report, which was both laid before
Parliament and published on 11 June 2015, and which was named after
David Anderson Q.C., the then Independent Reviewer of Terrorism
Legislation, was to inform the public and political debate on the threats to
the United Kingdom, the capabilities required to combat those threats, the
safeguards in place to protect privacy, the challenges of changing
technology, issues relating to transparency and oversight, and the case for
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