CHAPTER 7: PRACTICE
to homicide/attempted murder and 9% relating to firearms and explosives were
older than six months.
7.51.
Operation Notarise, a high-profile operation coordinated by the NCA offers a good
example of the uses to which retained data can be put. It resulted in the arrest of over
600 suspected paedophiles who had been viewing indecent images of children. 3,982
requests for communications data were made as part of this operation, of which 3,646
(92%) were able to be resolved to identify a suspect. 336 of those requests were for
data more than 12 months old which had not been retained.
Difficulties in obtaining data
7.52.
Historically there has been a high availability of the communications data that
investigators required. Typically the subscriber to a telephone number and the call
log that went with it were the information needed; these were also the basis for the
service provider to charge their customer.
7.53.
The growth of internet-based services over the past twenty years has transformed
that situation. Proliferating methods of communication, the fragmentation of
providers, difficulties in attributing communications, changing business models and
increasing use of overseas service providers have all tended to make data more
difficult to access.45
7.54.
The consequence is that to obtain the communications data needed for an
investigation, even of one individual, a public authority may need to approach several
service providers. The expertise of the SPoC in the investigating body is therefore of
great significance in making an effective approach to a service provider. SPoCs know
the right mix of service providers to approach and whether they are likely to have
collected the data necessary to progress the investigation.
7.55.
But however skilful their SPoCs, law enforcement bodies frequently complain of
reduced access to communications data. This has led to pressure from law
enforcement for legislation requiring service providers to retain more data (as in the
draft Communications Data Bill of 2012), and also for action to facilitate the recovery
of data from overseas providers (as in DRIPA 2014 s4, and pursuant to the initiatives
that Sir Nigel Sheinwald was appointed to explore). I return to this subject at 14.2314.28 and 14.58-14.59 below.
Use of communications data by local authorities
7.56.
As set out at 6.67 above, local authorities are in a unique position when it comes to
obtaining access to communications data. The term “local authority” does not
distinguish between the different types of local authority (County, District, Unitary),
which have very different enforcement functions. By way of illustration:
(a)
45
Trading standards functions rest with a local weights and measures authority,
which will generally be the local County Council or unitary authority.
See 4.5-4.16 above.
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