2013 Annual Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner
(a) the present safeguards are sufficient to assure the public that their legitimate
privacy is not impaired;
(b) the present structure should be strengthened for the greater protection of
privacy.
6.5.57 I leave these questions for others to consider as matters of policy in the light of
this report. I would only emphasise here that question (b) above is heavily overlain by
matters of sensitive technical possibility, which any changes would need to accommodate.
6.5.58 Furthermore, it is, I believe, beyond question that technological developments
relating to the internet may make the public authorities interception and communications
data legitimate activities in the public interest more difficult. Recent commentary has
tended towards confining the public authorities interception and communications data
powers and activities. There is a legitimate policy question whether those capabilities
might not need to be enhanced in the national interest. Present public sentiment
might not favour that, and changes would obviously need to be very carefully weighed
with interests of privacy. But perhaps that policy question should not be completely
overlooked.
6. Do the interception agencies misuse their powers under RIPA 2000 Part I
Chapter I to engage in random mass intrusion into the private affairs of law
abiding UK citizens who have no actual or reasonably suspected involvement
in terrorism or serious crime? If the answer to that question is no, is there
any material risk that they or somebody might be able to intrude in this
way?15
6.6.1
I have to a large extent covered this in the previous section of this report.
6.6.2 The answer to the first of the two questions is emphatically no. The interception
agencies do not engage in indiscriminate random mass intrusion by misusing their
powers under RIPA 2000 Part I. It would be comprehensively unlawful if they did. I
should be required to report it to the Prime Minister. I am personally confident from the
work I have undertaken throughout 2013 and to date that no such report is required.
6.6.3 In the real world, intrusion in this context into the privacy of innocent persons
would require sentient examination of individuals’ communications. The legislation only
permits this to the extent that it is properly authorised under the statutory structure
which I have described and for the necessity purposes which the legislation permits.
None of this is ‘random’ or ‘mass’ and none of it is directed to intrude into the private
affairs of law abiding UK citizens.
15 There have been explicit media suggestions of a surveillance system enabling the state to capture
indiscriminately data relating to law abiding citizens; of mass snooping on private communications; of
massive unwarranted surveillance that is insecure and unaccountable; and questions whether intrusion
only occurs when globally collected data is actually searched.
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