Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner - March 2015
there was no description as to how they were linked to, and aggravated by, the officer’s
misuse of a position in public office. The applications often relied upon vague and dubious
descriptions under the ‘umbrella’ of misconduct in public office and my inspectors were
not satisfied that the high threshold for the offence of misconduct in public office had
been met. There did not appear to be any intention for some of the matters to be subject
of a prosecution within a criminal court. Turning to proportionality lengthy periods of
traffic or service use data were often sought without sufficient justification and it was
not clear whether other lines of inquiry had been considered and if so why they had not
been pursued. For example, a number of the applications concerned investigations into
officers forming inappropriate relationships with victims of crime. Whilst in some cases
the circumstances may justify that it is reasonable to suspect serious inappropriate activity
was taking place, for example, the formation of sexual relationships with vulnerable
victims; some of the applications examined detailed fairly minor transgressions and did
not identify whether serious wrongdoing was suspected, or failed to give convincing
reasons to suspect that serious wrongdoing was occurring. In these applications it was
also not apparent why other action, such as intervention by the officer’s supervisors
or misconduct interviews were not considered, or if they had been why they were not
deemed appropriate. In such cases my inspectors concern was exacerbated where there
appeared to be little resolve to subsequently pursue a prosecution when evidence was
acquired which supported the initial premise of the application.
7.82 In conclusion this inquiry has identified that a number of the requests submitted
by Professional Standards departments did not satisfy the necessity requirements and/
or were disproportionate. As a result of these serious concerns my office engaged
with the National Policing Lead for the Counter Corruption Advisory Group to outline
the compliance issues identified. The National Policing Lead wrote to all police forces’
professional standards leads and heads of department in December 2014 setting out our
concerns and we expect to start to see improvements in compliance in this area. My office
has also made recommendations for the SPoCs to exercise their guardian and gatekeeper
functions more effectively in relation to applications submitted by Professional Standards
departments.
Inquiry into the use of RIPA 2000 to acquire communications data to identify
journalistic sources
7.83 In October 2014 due to the serious nature of the concerns reported in the
media about the protection of journalistic sources, and the allegations that the police
had misused their powers under Chapter II of Part I of RIPA to acquire communications
data the Rt Hon. Sir Paul Kennedy, who was at the time acting as interim Commissioner,
considered it necessary to launch an inquiry in this matter and make an additional report
to the Prime Minister.
7.84 In February 2015 I published the report setting out the findings of my office’s
inquiry into these matters. This report45 set out the extent to which these powers were
45 http://www.iocco-uk.info/docs/IOCCO%20Communications%20Data%20Journalist%20Inquiry%20
Report%204Feb15.pdf
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