2013 Annual Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner
requirements for:
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•
•
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the total number of applications submitted,
the total number of items of data requested,
the total items of data broken down by statutory necessity purpose (i.e.
prevent / detect crime, national security etc.)
the total items of data broken down by crime type or other purpose (i.e.
murder, robbery etc).
4.21 In my view the unreliability and inadequacy of the statistical requirements is a
significant problem which requires attention.
4.22 We are aware that a number of CSPs are releasing transparency figures in relation
to the communications data disclosures they make to public authorities. These statistics
should be treated with caution as again different counting mechanisms and rules are
applied which can lead to misleading comparisons. In my view the statistical information
should be collected by the public authorities, under required conventions and counting
mechanisms to ensure that it is comparable and accurate.
4.23 Taking these difficulties into account, it is with considerable caution that I have
decided to publish further statistical information in this report. The public authorities
are not mandated to provide some of this statistical information and as a result it has
not been easy, or in some cases possible, to extract the information from their systems.
The public authorities all, without question, considered my request for further statistical
information as part of their general duty under section 58(1) of RIPA to disclose or
provide to me all information I may require to carry out my function. With that in mind
they have been extremely helpful in making available what further statistical information
they could. In particular some police forces experienced significant difficulties and were
unable to provide enhanced statistics without examining each individual application. It is
not feasible to count thousands of requests manually and therefore some of the further
statistical information I publish in this report is based on samples of the overall total.
4.24 Figure 6 shows the breakdown of the 514,608 notices and authorisations by type
of public authority. It will be seen that 87.7% of these were made by police forces and law
enforcement agencies. Less than 1% were made by local authorities and ‘other’ public
authorities. ‘Other’ public authorities include regulatory bodies with statutory functions
to investigate criminal offences and smaller bodies with niche functions. This breakdown
must be treated with caution for the reasons outlined in the preceding paragraphs.
4.25 Annex B of this report provides a breakdown of the 514,608 notices and
authorisations by public authority. It is only indicative of the amount of communications
data acquired by these public authorities and must be treated with caution for the reasons
outlined in the preceding paragraphs. It is important therefore that the numbers are not
used inappropriately to produce league table comparisons.
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