Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner - March 2015

no difficulty from any public authority or person in finding out anything that I consider
to be needed to enable me to perform my statutory function. Once again, I am not
submitting any suggested Confidential Annex to this report to the Prime Minister3. I do
not consider that such an annex is presently necessary. That does not mean that one may
not be needed in the future.
1.7
2014 was a significant year, not least because Parliament passed new powers
relating to the areas that I oversee; my reports to the Prime Minister were increased
in frequency from annually to half-yearly; and, various reviews of the legislation and
oversight were commissioned. In addition a number of cases relating to the legislation
that I oversee were taken to the IPT, which has made partial determinations on several of
them. I touch on all of these matters in more detail throughout this report.
1.8
My office has continued to undertake our audits of public authorities’ use of these
intrusive powers against existing legislation and to make recommendations to improve
compliance. Overall the inspections carried out by my office show that the staff within
the public authorities have a desire to comply with the legislation and to achieve high
standards in the work that they carry out. There is a strong culture of compliance and of
self reporting when things go wrong.
1.9
I do find it frustrating however when it is reported that my office has given
the public authorities a clean bill of health. In this reporting year my office made over
400 recommendations to public authorities to improve compliance or to improve the
systems and procedures for the interception of communications or the acquisition of
communications data. This doesn’t to me translate in to a clean bill of health. My office
continues to challenge positively the necessity and proportionality justifications put
forward by the public authorities to ensure that the significant privacy implications are
always at the forefront of their minds when they are working to protect the public in the
interests of national security, to save life or to prevent or detect crime. There is however
always room for improvement and the work that my office undertakes assists public
authorities to keep their systems and their use of these intrusive powers under constant
review.
1.10 Understandably, there is significant public debate at present not only about the
privacy implications of the public authorities’ use of these intrusive powers, but also about
the capabilities that the public authorities might require, the adequacy of the existing
legislation and, the effectiveness of the current oversight mechanisms. It is unhelpful and
inaccurate when the debate is framed as privacy vs. security as though you can have one
but not the other.
1.11 The key challenges for the future as I see them are to ensure that the United
Kingdom (UK) has legislation governing interception and communications data
techniques that provides reasonable clarity and forseeability, contains adequate human
rights protections and provisions for the retention, storage, access to, sharing of and
3 It is strictly for the Prime Minister to decide which parts of this report should be made public by laying
them before Parliament – see section 58(7) of RIPA 2000.

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