BIG BROTHER WATCH AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
operational, legal or technical staff. Where necessary, they examined further
documentation or systems relating to those warrants.
175. Nine hundred and seventy warrants were examined during the
twenty-two interception inspections (sixty-one percent of the number of
warrants in force at the end of the year and thirty-two percent of the total of
new warrants issued in 2016).
176. Retention periods were not prescribed by legislation, but the
agencies had to consider section 15(3) of RIPA, which provided that the
material or data had to be destroyed as soon as retaining them was no longer
necessary for any of the authorised purposes in section 15(4). According to
the report, every interception agency had a different view on what
constituted an appropriate retention period for intercepted material and
related communications data. The retention periods therefore differed within
the interception agencies; for content, they ranged between thirty days and
one year, and for related communications data, they ranged between six
months and one year. In practice, however, the vast majority of content was
reviewed and automatically deleted after a very short period of time unless
specific action was taken to retain the content for longer because it was
necessary to do so.
177. The IC Commissioner expressly noted the he “was impressed by
the quality” of the necessity and proportionality statements made by
analysts when adding a selector to the collection system for examination.
178. Inspectors made a total of twenty-eight recommendations in their
inspection reports, eighteen of which were made in relation to the
application process. The majority of the recommendations in this category
related to the necessity, proportionality and/or collateral intrusion
justifications in the applications, or to the handling of legally privileged or
otherwise confidential material relating to sensitive professions.
179. The total number of interception errors reported to the
IC Commissioner during 2016 was 108. Key causes of interception errors
were over-collection (generally technical software or hardware errors that
caused over-collection of intercepted material and related communications
data), unauthorised selection/examination, incorrect dissemination, the
failure to cancel interception, and the interception of either an incorrect
communications address or person.
180. Finally, with regard to intelligence sharing, the IC Commissioner
noted that:
“GCHQ provided comprehensive details of the sharing arrangements whereby
Five Eyes partners can access elements of the product of GCHQ’s interception
warrants on their own systems. My inspectors also met representatives of the
Five Eyes community and received a demonstration of how other Five Eyes members
can request access to GCHQ’s data. Access to GCHQ systems is tightly controlled
and has to be justified in accordance with the laws of the host country and handling
instructions of section 15/16 safeguards. Before getting any access to GCHQ data,
Five Eyes analysts must complete the same legalities training as GCHQ staff.”
57