2013 Annual Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner
3.51 I explained my reasons for this as including my perception that there was
understandable public concern about the necessity and proportionality and the potential
intrusion caused by interception of communications on the scale which the agencies
were believed to engage in. This included my understanding that the true heart of
this concern was (or might be) a general relatively uninformed fear that large scale
interception by government controlled agencies might risk providing the government,
a future government, the interception agencies, malign individuals or conceivably cyber
intruders with an opportunity or ability to intrude (“snoop”) into the private lives of
individuals who have no connection with any threat to national security, serious crime or
any other justifiable statutory purpose for interception.
3.52 My thought was that a full understanding by me of the Retention, Storage and
Destruction of intercepted material was central to an appreciation of such potential
intrusion as there might be. This should enable me to inform the Prime Minister in
appropriate terms (and, through him, the public) of the true informed measure of any
justifiable public fear in this respect. I explained that if I were not myself satisfied in any
respect, I would require that the agency take steps to achieve compliance.
3.53 The responses. All 9 interception agencies responded to my requests in full
and with full cooperation. In the result my office now has, and I have fully considered,
tabulated information on this topic containing specific answers to all the questions by all
the agencies. For obvious reasons of sensitivity, I cannot make public individual details,
but I am able to say the following:
•
•
•
•
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there is a variety of different retention and storage systems used by each of
the interception agencies. These have developed over time to accommodate
the nature of the different operations which they undertake. There is thus
unsurprisingly little consistency in detail;
none of the interception agencies retain and store for more that a short
period the contents of intercepted communications which do not relate to a
warranted target or which are of no legitimate intelligence interest. In some
systems irrelevant content is deleted manually, in others automatically. A
typical period is 24 hours, although some are shorter than this and others
rather longer. For example, an interception agency may delete the content of
the intercepted communications of a warranted suspected serious criminal
straight away if they are not of intelligence interest;
as to the content of communications which do relate to a warranted target
and which are of legitimate intelligence interest, retention periods again vary
depending on the legitimate intelligence use to which this may be put. But
section 15(3) of RIPA 2000 applies to it and my investigations have satisfied me
that its provisions are properly observed. For example, an interception agency
may delete the content of the intercepted communications of a warranted
suspected serious criminal that are of legitimate intelligence interest when
the target is arrested and charged or when the relevant operation comes to
an end;
lawfully intercepted related communications data may in some interception
agencies and for technical reasons be stored separately from the content