75. I now turn to give three examples of the fourteen errors made by the
Communications Service Providers (CSPs).
76. The first, reported by the Secret Intelligence Service, concerned warrantry
paperwork. The CSP incorrectly sent warrantry paperwork for a cancelled
warrant to a government department instead of back to SIS for destruction.
77. The second, reported by the Northern Ireland Office, relates to a CSP
intercepting the wrong mobile telephone number. The correct number was passed
to the CSP but the company mistakenly intercepted a number one digit higher.
78. The third error was reported by the Security Service. Product from an
interception revealed that the target intended seeking a new home telephone
number. On being given a new number, the CSP automatically continued
intercepting before receiving the warrantry paperwork for the new number. The
Security Service suspended the intercept on the original number immediately and
added the new number to the schedule to the warrant. No calls to the new number
were monitored or transcribed before it was added to the schedule.
79. No errors were reported by the Metropolitan Police Special Branch or the
Ministry of Defence.
RIPA Part I Chapter II: Acquisition and disclosure of communications data
80. All Public Authorities have a duty to report any errors which occur when
they are acquiring communications data under Section 5 of the draft Code of
Practice. They are obliged to provide an explanation for the errors and most
importantly they must also describe the action which they have taken to prevent
similar errors occurring again. The most common types of errors are the
transposition of numbers or where numbers have been provided by members of
the public and either reported or noted down incorrectly. These are human errors
which unintentionally can result in the acquisition of data which is not relevant to
the matter under inquiry. In such circumstances the Public Authority must destroy
the data as soon as it has made its report to my office.
81. Public Authorities also have a responsibility to report any errors which are
made by Communications Service Providers (CSPs) in the course of acquiring
communications data. Generally such errors occur when the CSP concerned
discloses data which is in excess of that originally requested by the Public
Authority. Often this occurs as a result of a fault in the system or it may be due
to a mistake which has been made by the CSP when keying the request into a
computer.
82. During the period covered by this report 3,972 errors were reported to my
office. A total of 2,712 of these errors were attributable to CSPs and the
remainder (1,260) were blameworthy errors made by Public Authorities. This may
seem a large number but indeed it is very small when compared to the overall
number of requests for communications data which totalled 439,054 during the
same period. I have concluded that no useful purpose would be served in
giving further details about the individual errors in this report. There are two
reasons for this. First, as I have already indicated, the inspections are not yet
complete so that any description might well be incomplete and paint a false
picture. Second, I am not at present convinced that a useful purpose would be
served by a detailed description of the errors in relation to communications data
in a report of this nature. My successor may well, of course, take a different view
in subsequent reports. I should add that neither I nor any member of my team have
found any instances of wilful or reckless conduct and that is why there is no
mention of this in the report.
83. My Inspectors work closely with the Public Authorities and CSPs to review
their systems and processes so that errors are kept to an absolute minimum but of
course human error can never be eliminated completely. A large number of the
Law Enforcement Agencies, who are the principal users of communications data,
have acquired fully automated systems and these greatly reduce the scope for
keying errors. My Inspectors review all the errors during their inspections and
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