2011 Annual Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner
All of the police forces and law enforcement agencies that were inspected during the reporting
year were consistently producing good or satisfactory quality applications.This is an improvement
on the previous year and it is clear that the applicants are more accustomed to the process. My
inspectors were satisfied that the acquisition of the data was necessary and proportionate.There
is evidence that the SPoCs are adopting a more robust guardian and gatekeeper function and
they are providing good advice to applicants to assist them to meet the requirements.
A number of CSP disclosures were randomly checked against the records kept by the police
forces and law enforcement agencies, and I am pleased to say that in all cases my inspectors
were satisfied the correct process had been applied and the data had been obtained with the
approval of a DP. I regard this as a very important check upon the integrity of the process and
it is most reassuring that so far it has not exposed any instances of abuse or unlawful acquisition
of communications data.
My inspectors concluded that the DPs are generally discharging their statutory duties responsibly.
The DPs in 88% of the police forces and law enforcement agencies were found to be recording
their considerations to a consistently good standard. It was quite clear that these DPs were
individually assessing each application, taking on board the advice provided by the SPoC and
questioning the necessity and proportionality of the proposed conduct. The statistics provided
to my office this year indicate that over 6,000 applications were rejected in 2011 by DPs in
police forces and LEAs. I cannot give this figure as a percentage because the total number of
applications is not reported to me. My inspectors also concluded that there is more objectivity
and independence in the approvals process within specialist departments such as Special Branch
(SB) and Professional Standards Departments (PSDs), or alternatively, they found that Paragraph
3.11 of the Code of Practice is being complied with. Last year I reported that this was an area
where there were compliance and quality issues and therefore it was pleasing to find such a good
level of compliance in this round of inspections.
“It was quite clear that these DPs were individually assessing each application,
taking on board the advice provided by the SPoC and questioning the necessity
and proportionality of the proposed conduct.The statistics provided to my office
this year indicate that over 6,000 applications were rejected in 2011 by DPs in
police forces and LEAs”
I outlined earlier in this report that a traffic light system (red, amber, green) has been adopted
for the recommendations that emanate from the inspections. This enables public authorities to
prioritise the areas where remedial action is necessary. This year 282 recommendations were
made by my inspectors during the 43 law enforcement agency inspections, which is an average
of 6 recommendations per public authority. Figure 9 shows the breakdown of recommendations
by colour.
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