Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner - March 2015
Section 1
Introduction
1.1
This is my second report as Interception of Communications Commissioner. My
2013 report was well received and I have therefore retained the form and some of the
legislative background and explanatory content this year.
1.2
I regard my principal function as being to satisfy myself, and thus to report to the
Prime Minister, that the Secretaries of State and the public authorities operating under
the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA 2000) Part I (and to a limited extent
Part III) do so lawfully and in accordance with the existing legislation. My secondary, but
nonetheless important, aim is to better inform the public about what the legislation
allows (or perhaps more importantly what it does not allow), how my office carries out its
oversight and the level of compliance that the public authorities are achieving.
1.3
It is perhaps useful to revisit the role that Parliament intended the Interception
of Communications Commissioner to carry out when the RIP Bill was debated in 2000. It
is clear from the debates that the intention was for the Commissioner to “conduct audits
and check what is happening in practice, rather than examine every case universally”1. I
am satisfied that my office has introduced a vigorous audit and inspection regime to
enable us to carry out the function intended by Parliament effectively. It was recently said
that the Interception of Communications Commissioner “acts like a public conscience,
identifying when RIPA 2000 is not used as expected”2 and this portrayal of my role is
particularly relevant to some of the investigations and inquiries that my office has
undertaken recently.
1.4
I do not regard myself as a promoter of the legislation or of the public authorities’
use of it. My primary focus is to audit independently compliance against existing
legislation. Changes to the legislation and matters of policy are for others, Parliament
in particular, to consider and decide. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) also has an
exclusive role in the United Kingdom in proceedings for actions that are incompatible
with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
1.5
I again make the point that it is a challenge to provide a full public account of what
the intelligence agencies in particular actually do because much of the operational detail
is sensitive for understandable reasons. Furthermore with regard to the interception of
communications my office is constrained by the statutory provisions in section 19 of RIPA
2000 forbidding disclosure, as are the interception agencies and Communication Service
Providers (CSPs). For these reasons there is always going to be certain information that I
cannot reveal publicly, but this limit to transparency certainly does not mean that there
is limited accountability.
1.6
I can report that I have full and unrestricted access to all of the information and
material that I require, however sensitive, to undertake my review. I am in practice given
such unrestricted access and all of my requests (of which there have been many) for
information and access to material or systems are responded to in full. I have encountered
1 Standing Committee F - Tuesday 28 March 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill Comments by the
Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Charles Clarke)
2 Professor Alan Woodward, University of Surrey via Twitter @ProfWoodward
www.iocco-uk.info
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