CHAPTER 9: LAW ENFORCEMENT
level of crime being investigated than on the specific technique that it was proposed
to use at any given time.
Capabilities: communications data
Perception of the problem
9.34.
Law enforcement view themselves as engaged in a difficult struggle with serious and
organised criminals and terrorists, a struggle in which their opponents hold many of
the advantages. Increasing numbers of their targets are employing techniques such
as Tor, PGP and VPN to ensure their anonymity:18 they can be hard to discover, and
communications data can be an important part of the answer.
9.35.
The National Policing Lead singled out IMS (see 4.16 above) as a particularly
significant challenge to future capabilities. He also told me that it was becoming more
difficult to attribute a device to a person, to discover the true user of an identifier, to
identify the location of a device at the time of use or when trying to locate a victim, to
identify which service has recorded some of the data, to separate CD and intercept
material and to analyse without bulk machine-based techniques.19
9.36.
As a senior counter-terrorism officer put it to me: “We have had 15 years of digital
coverage being the main thing – a golden period. But the way people run their lives
is not so accessible to us now.” Human surveillance and use of CHIS were not seen
as effective substitutes. As the National Policing Lead emphasised, the alternatives
to the use of communications data tend to be more intrusive and to carry both a higher
associated cost (in equipment and workforce deployment) and a higher risk to those
deployed.
9.37.
No one sought to quantify for me the shortfall in information, after an ill-fated attempt
to do so in 2012.20 I was told that law enforcement only records what it can use and
access, not what it cannot. But in summary, it has access to a decreasing proportion
of an increasing quantity of digital information.
9.38.
Some specific business, technical and legal risks were identified, including:
18
19
20
(a)
the reduction in the routine retention of communications data by service
providers for business purposes (because, for example, inclusive tariffs make
it unnecessary to keep details of every call made);
(b)
the growth in OTT services, typically provided from outside the UK and
through service providers who may be less willing or able to cooperate;
(c)
difficulties in resolving IP addresses (i.e. attributing an action on the internet,
including sending an email, to a particular device); and
4.46 and 4.65-4.68 above.
Submission to the Review of Richard Berry, National Policing Lead for Communications Data, 29
September 2014.
JCDCDB Report, paras 34-36.
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