Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner - March 2015
Conclusion regarding the inquiry into whether there is significant institutional
overuse of Chapter II of Part I RIPA 2000 powers by police forces and law
enforcement agencies
7.92 The various inquiries that my office has undertaken in the reporting year have
resulted in a small number of instances being identified where the powers under RIPA
2000 should not have been used because:
(a) The data should have been acquired or disclosed outside the provisions of
RIPA 2000 (i.e. using the 999/112 emergency provisions); or
(b) The requests did not meet the necessity criteria (for example in a small number
of instances where data was acquired by Professional Standards departments
the high threshold for the offence of Misconduct in Public Office had not
been met and / or there was no intention for the matters to be subject of a
prosecution within a criminal court; or
(c) The applications for communications data as formulated did not adequately
set out the necessity or proportionality criteria.
7.93 The last category (c) does not mean however that given additional information the
applications might not have been sustainable. In our operational reviews and a number
of our additional inquiries we were able to interview relevant staff and obtain additional
information and, in some instances on the basis of this we were satisfied that the requests
were actually necessary and proportionate. However at scale we are generally only able to
consider whether a particular application as formulated is necessary and proportionate.
7.94 To conclude, overall my office’s inquiries did not find significant institutional
overuse of communications data powers by police forces and law enforcement agencies.
However, my office did find that a proportion of the applications did not adequately deal
with the question of necessity or proportionality and we found some examples where the
powers had been used improperly or where they had been used unnecessarily. Overall
the operational reviews showed that the communications data that was acquired was
necessary and proportionate to the matter under investigation.
7.95 My office intends to continue to conduct inquiries into specific issues to bring
more meaning to how the powers are being used and to scrutinise the level of compliance
being achieved by the public authorities. My office is in the process of examining the
operational action and communications data strategies for certain types of offences (e.g.
robbery) and is conducting a comparative study of investigations where communications
data has and has not been acquired to ascertain the reasons why there might be
differences and whether those differences might be indicative of an automatic resort to
communications data where it may not be appropriate.
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