IPCO Annual Report 2017
Use by local authorities
• A fraudulent trader called at the home of an elderly lady and coerced her into paying
inflated charges for unnecessary maintenance work. The local authority’s trading standards
department acquired subscriber information which related to the telephone number on a
leaflet which the suspect had left with the victim. The subscriber information enabled the
investigators to attribute the telephone number to the suspect, thereby undermining his
defence that he worked on behalf of someone else. He was convicted of offences under
the Fraud Act 2006.
Retention
8.12
During 2017 the Secretary of State’s power to give a retention notice to a public
telecommunications operator to require it to retain relevant communications data was not
within the oversight remit of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s remit, or that of his
predecessors.37
8.13
The requirement for a Judicial Commissioner to approve a Secretary of State’s decision to
give a retention notice under Part 4 IPA has only recently come into effect in 2018 and will be
commented upon more fully in the next annual report.
Statistics
8.14
Each relevant public authority is required to maintain records of their use of the power to
acquire communications data and those records must be made available to IPCO inspectors.
The public authorities, additionally, must provide their records to the IPC annually. These
returns have formed the basis of the statistical breakdown in this section.
8.15
757,977 items of data were acquired by public authorities in 2017, a similar number acquired
in 2016 (754,559 items) and 2015 (761,702 items). Figures 8 – 9 show that the vast majority
of data was acquired by law enforcement, for the purpose of preventing and detecting crime,
particularly drugs, sexual and violent offences.
Fig. 8 Items of data by public authority type
6.5
%
92.6
0.8
0.1
Law enforcement –
700,282 (92.6%)
UK intelligence community –
49,276 (6.5%)
Other public authori es –
6,293 (0.8%)
Local authori es –
787 (0.1%)
37 The former Interception of Communications Commissioner Sir Anthony May highlighted in his 2015 half yearly report (https://www.
ipco.org.uk/docs/iocco/2015%20Half-yearly%20report%20(web%20version).pdf) the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act
(DRIPA) did not provide for oversight of the Secretary of State’s power to give retention notices.
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