IPCO Annual Report 2018
Annex D: Communications Data
This annex details the use of communications data (CD) in 2018. The below tables give a
breakdown of applications from each agency, and the number of applications made in relation to
sensitive professions.
Sensitive professions
47 authorities applied for CD in relation to individuals of sensitive professions in 2018. These
figures do not include any applications from local authorities as, in 2018, these authorities were
not able to apply for events data or traffic data. It is worth noting that in the majority of these
cases, the application related to the protection of a witness or victim, for example in the case of
harassment of an individual who falls into one of these professions. Because of the sensitivity of
these applications, we have not provided any real examples of use. The relevant applications break
down as follows:
Profession
Lawyer
234
Journalist
203
Member of Parliament
113
Minister of Religion
272
Medical Doctor
498
Total
1,320
Applications by authorisation
The table below gives figures for the total number of items of CD sought within each notice given
or authorisation granted, including those granted under the urgency provisions. In total, 808,214
items of CD were applied for and obtained in 2018. This is a slight increase from the 757,977 items
acquired in 2017 and 754,559 in 2016. Unfortunately, because of difficulties in obtaining accurate
statistics from CD workflow systems, and because of changes to new systems in a handful of cases,
there is a small margin of error on this figure on those in the table below. In a small number of
cases, we believe that these figures may be inaccurate to a degree of around 10%; we believe that
is not likely to result in inaccuracies of more than 1% of our total figure.
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