Director-General of the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism at the
Home Office.44 In that statement, Farr indicates that “the full details of
the [RIPA] sections 15 and 16 arrangements are (and always have been)
kept confidential” and asserts that “they cannot safely be put into the
public domain without undermining the effectiveness of interception
methods.”45
These
arrangements
remain
secret.
The
Government
presented them to the IPT in a closed hearing but they were not disclosed
to the Applicants.
B.
US-UK intelligence sharing regime
89.
When the Applicants initiated proceedings before the IPT, there was no
information in the public domain setting out the rules governing
intelligence sharing between the UK Government and foreign intelligence
agencies, including those of the US.
90.
The Applicants note that, prior to their initiation of proceedings, on 10
June 2013, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
addressed Parliament. In that statement, he asserted that the UK
Government complies with UK law with respect to information it obtains
from foreign governments and referred to RIPA.46 The Government later
admitted, during the IPT proceedings, that RIPA was not applicable to
intelligence sharing. In its 5 December 2014 judgment, the IPT held “[i]t is
common ground that RIPA is not applicable to a case where there has not
been interception of communications by the Respondents, but receipt of
intercepted communications by the Respondents from the NSA”.47
Witness Statement of Charles Blandford Farr on behalf of the Respondents, Exhibit CF1 (16
May 2014) (lodged with the Court in the List of Accompanying Documents in the original
Application).
45 Farr Witness statement, paras 100-101, and quoted in the Liberty & Others v GCHQ & Others
[2014] UKIPTrib 13_77-H, at para 77 (“First IPT Judgment”).
46 Privacy International Grounds, para 26, (lodged with the Court in the List of Accompanying
Documents in the original Application).
47 First IPT Judgment, para 17.
44
39