LIBERTY AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
19
detail, to the extent that was possible without undermining national security,
about the “arrangements” made by the Secretary of State under section 6 of
the Act. The Government submitted that the Court should proceed on the
basis that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, in the democratic
society of the United Kingdom, the relevant ministers, officials and
Commissioners properly discharged their statutory duties to ensure that
safeguards were in place to comply with all the requirements of section 6.
Moreover Mr Boys Smith’s statement showed that during the relevant
period there was a range of safeguards in place to ensure that the process of
selection of material for examination (the stage referred to by the applicants
as “filtering”) could be carried out only strictly in accordance with the
statutory framework and the terms of the warrant and the certificate (that is,
could be carried out only when necessary in the interests of national
security, for the purpose of preventing or detecting serious crime or for the
purpose of safeguarding the economic well-being of the United Kingdom),
and could not be abused or operated arbitrarily.
50. According to Mr Boys Smith, all persons involved in the selection
process would have had their attention specifically drawn to the safeguards
and limits set out in the primary legislation, which were rigorously applied.
Secondly, training was provided to all these persons to emphasise the
importance of strict adherence to the operating procedures and safeguards in
place. Thirdly, throughout the relevant period operating procedures were in
place to ensure that it was not possible for any single individual to select
and examine material on an arbitrary and uncontrolled basis. Where, as part
of his intelligence gathering, an official wished to intercept and select
relevant information, he could not effect the interception himself. He would
have to take the request for interception and selection to personnel in a
different branch of the department, who would then separately activate the
technical processes necessary for the interception and selection to be made.
The requesting official would have to set out, in his request, his justification
for the selection. Moreover, a record of the request was kept, so that it was
possible for others (senior management and the Commissioner) to check
back on the official’s request, to ensure that it was properly justified.
Conversely, it was not possible for the personnel in the branch of the
department implementing the technical interception processes to receive the
downloaded product of any interception and selection process implemented
by them. Therefore, they also could not conduct unauthorised interception
and gain access to material themselves. Fourth, there was day-to-day
practical supervision of those who conducted the selection processes under
section 3(2) warrants (“the requesting officials”) by managers working
physically in the same room, who could and would where necessary ask the
requesting officials at any time to explain and justify what they were doing.
The managers also performed quality control functions in relation to the
intelligence reports generated by the requesting officials, and routinely