Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner - March 2015
the powers are being used. This statistic is particularly important as there has in the past
been legitimate public concern expressed in relation to the allegedly large number of
statutory necessity purposes for acquiring communications data. Figure 8 shows that
just half a percent of all the requests were for purposes other than the prevention and
detection of crime or the prevention of disorder, in the interests of national security,
or in an emergency to prevent death or injury. Figure 8 also reiterates the point I have
made elsewhere35 that it is inaccurate and unhelpful to refer to RIPA 2000 as anti-terrorist
legislation and infer that its use for non-terrorist related matters is inappropriate.
7.29 It is not possible to report the number of individuals to whom the 517,236 notices
and authorisations relate. What we can say is that number would be much smaller as
public authorities often make multiple requests for communications data in the course
of a single investigation, and also make multiple requests for communications data
in relation to the same individual. We note that the Home Office has not included a
requirement for this statistic to be collected in the revised code of practice.
7.30 Although this would undoubtedly be an informative statistic, in our view there
are a number of compelling reasons as to why the collection of this statistic is likely
to be prohibitively difficult. For example, one notice or authorisation may include
data requirements that relate to different individuals; there is not always a one-to-one
relationship between a communications address and an individual; a large number of
requests are unsuccessful in conclusively attributing a communications address to an
individual; there would be duplicates for a number of reasons, for example, different police
forces might be investigating and acquiring data on the same individuals (and even when
those individuals had been identified those requests might not be linked). Furthermore
the statistics that are currently collected by public authorities are all recorded at the
start of the process or at the point of requesting the data. At this point of the process
the individual on whom data is being acquired is often unknown, and this might well be
the reason why the data is being acquired in the first place (i.e. to identify an unknown
individual).
7.31 The best chance therefore of comprehensively attributing communications
addresses to individuals would be at the termination of an investigation where various
sources of information in addition to communications data could be drawn upon. But
even at the end of the investigation there might still be a large degree of ambiguity
or a number of communications addresses that have not been attributed successfully
because it was not possible to do so or, because it was no longer a relevant line of inquiry
to pursue and therefore it was not appropriate for the public authority to identify to
whom the particular communications address relates to. Such retrospective recording
of information would represent a major shift from the current statistical recording
practices and, in our view, would be an onerous administrative burden. My office would
also be concerned about the unintended consequence whereby a greater amount of
communications data might be sought than was actually necessary in order to satisfy the
statistical requirements of linking a communications address to an individual. This year
during our operational reviews, which we will discuss later in this section of the report,
35 http://www.iocco-uk.info/docs/IOCCO%20Communications%20Data%20Journalist%20Inquiry%20
Report%204Feb15.pdf
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