CHAPTER 8: COMPARISONS – OTHER FORMS OF SURVEILLANCE
Property Interference
8.14.
Intrusive surveillance will often depend on an entry being made into private property
to place the device. As a result, the intelligence services or police may also require a
property interference warrant, if they want to hack into a computer by physically
modifying it.12
8.15.
The security and intelligence agencies may be authorised to carry out property
interference by a warrant issued by the Secretary of State under ISA 1994. As with
intrusive surveillance, an authorising officer within the police may grant an
authorisation to carry out property interference.13 All such authorisations must be
notified to a Surveillance Commissioner who subjects them to scrutiny.14 Certain
authorisations must be approved, rather than merely scrutinised after the event by the
Commissioner: any authorisation to interfere with a dwelling house or office or that
might provide access to confidential material.15 This offers another example of
Commissioner authorisation for a highly intrusive power, to which I return at 14.52
below.
8.16.
Like intrusive surveillance, directed surveillance and CHIS, property interference is a
covert technique that carries the risk of collateral intrusion. That collateral intrusion
must be considered in advance before determining whether the interference with the
right to respect for private life is necessary and proportionate. 2,689 authorisations to
interfere with property were granted under the Police Act 1997 in 2013-14.16 Some
operations require property interference warrants in conjunction with other types of
warrant, e.g. for intrusive surveillance or interception.
Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS)
8.17.
CHIS involves the use of agents, undercover officers or informants. A long list of
public authorities are authorised to make use of CHIS, as set out in RIPA Schedule 2.
A statutory instrument sets out which individuals within those bodies may authorise
CHIS.17 Within an ordinary police force, any superintendent may authorise CHIS.
Local authorities may only obtain authorisations to carry out CHIS from a magistrate,
following changes introduced by PFA 2012.18
8.18.
Some argue that the infiltration of social networks by agents and informants is at least
as intrusive as the interception of communications: yet whereas the latter requires the
personal authority of the Secretary of State, the former (incongruously, it was said)
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
See 7.62-7.65 above.
Police Act 1997 s93.
Ibid., s96.
Ibid., s97. As with intrusive surveillance, there is an exception for urgent cases.
OSC Annual report of the Chief Surveillance Commissioner to the Prime Minister and the Scottish
Ministers 2013-14, Appendix A.
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Directed Surveillance and Covert Human Intelligence
Sources) Order 2010SI 2010/521, as amended by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Covert
Human Intelligence Sources: Relevant Sources) Order 2013.
PFA 2012 s38.
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