Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner - 2016
Statistics
The revised March 2015 Code of Practice requires public authorities to interpret and
collate statistical requirements in a consistent way. This year’s statistical returns represent
the first complete reporting period since the introduction of those revised requirements.
Items of Communications Data. 754,559 items of communications data were acquired
by public authorities during 2016. An item of data is a request for data on a single
communications address or other descriptor. For example, 30 days of incoming and
outgoing call data in relation to a mobile telephone would be counted as one item of
data. Equally, a request for the details of a subscriber to a communications service would
be counted as one item of data. The number of items of data acquired by each public
authority is detailed in Annex A.
Types of data. 50% of the data acquired was subscriber information, 48% was traffic data
and 2% service use information.
Figure 2 Type of Data.
subscriber
information
50%
traffic data
48%
service use
information 2%
Most of the acquired items of data (81%) related to telephony, such as landlines or mobile
phones. Internet identifiers, for example email or IP addresses, accounted for 15% of the
acquired data. 2% of requests were related to postal identifiers.
6
@iocco_oversight