Product of bulk interception
2.21.
It is GCHQ's ability to interrogate the data obtained through bulk interception that
has been retained following the selection for examination stage (2.17-2.18
above) that provides the capability to answer questions about developing
incidents as they occur and identify the individuals involved. Much of the
information needed to produce this intelligence is drawn from a composite of
individual pieces of data, some of them long pre-dating the event.
2.22.
The 2015 ISC Report made the point (para 80) that the value of bulk interception
lies not just in the “actual content of communications” but in “the information
associated with those communications”, including both:
(a) communications data, “limited to the basic ‘who, when and where’”; and
(b) content-derived information, “including the characteristics of the
communication”.67
The ISC added that to its own surprise, the primary value to GCHQ of bulk
interception lay not in the content but in the associated information.
2.23.
The Bill applies a slightly different set of definitions. Bulk interception may
produce the following categories of data:
(a) Content, defined in clause 233(6) in terms of the meaning of any
communication; and.
(b) Secondary data (similar to what the ISC called communications data, and
informally known as metadata), defined in clause 128 by reference to
•
systems data, defined in clause 235(4) and (5) as including data that
enables or facilitates the functioning of a telecommunication system or
service; and
•
identifying data defined in clause 235(2)(3) as including data that
identifies a person, apparatus, system, service, event or location68
that meet the qualifying conditions set out in s128(4)(5).
As noted at 2.9 above, a bulk interception warrant may be limited to secondary
data.69
67
68
This is currently referred to by GCHQ as Content-Derived Metadata, and distinguished by them
both from communications data and from “true” content.
Identifying data must however be logically separable from the content of a communication, or
private information: thus, I am told that it is not understood by the SIAs to cover, for example, a
linguist’s conclusion that a speaker has a particular regional accent.
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