Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner - March 2015
Section 7
Communications Data
7.1
In this section I shall provide an outline of the communications data legislation,
give details in relation to our communications data inspection regime and summarise the
key findings from our inspections and some of the inquiries my office has undertaken in
the reporting year.
Types of Communications Data
7.2
Chapter II of Part I (sections 21 to 25) concerns the acquisition and disclosure of
communications data. Communications data colloquially embrace the ‘who’, ‘when’ and
‘where’ of a communication but not the content, what was said or written. Put shortly,
communications data comprise of the following.
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Traffic data which is data that may be attached to a communication for the
purpose of transmitting it and could appear to identify the sender and recipient
of the communication, the location from which and the time at which it was
sent, and other related material (see sections 21(4)(a) and 21(6) and (7) RIPA
and Paragraphs 2.19 to 2.22 of the communications data code of practice).
Service use information which is data relating to the use made by any person
of a communication service and may be the kind of information that habitually
used to appear on a Communications Service Provider’s (CSP’s) itemised
billing document to customers (see section 21(4)(b) and Paragraphs 2.23 and
2.24 of the Communications Data code of practice).
Subscriber information which is data held or obtained by a CSP in relation to
a customer and may be the kind of information which a customer typically
provides when they sign up to use a service. For example, the recorded name
and address of the subscriber of a telephone number or the account holder
of an email address. (See section 21(4)(c) and Paragraphs 2.25 and 2.26 of the
communications data code of practice).
7.3
The definition of communications data has not changed since RIPA 2000 came
into existence, despite the fact that communications technologies, and thus the types of
information generated and processed have changed dramatically.
7.4
Section 81(1) of RIPA 2000 defines a communication to include anything
comprising of speech, music, sounds, visual images or data of any description. It also
includes the movement of those communications between persons, a person and a
thing or between things. So, that would include an end-user downloading music from a
website and sharing it with other users via a telecommunication system. It also includes
the actuation or control of another apparatus within a telecommunication system for
example, activating storage from one device to another device via a telecommunication
system.
7.5
In practice users will often access several telecommunication services via their
mobile phone and those services are unlikely to be supplied by the CSP who provides
their network connection. Put simply, service use and traffic data are the data generated
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