144
Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Annual Report 2019
Targeted equipment interference (TEI)
19.13
The number of targeted equipment interference (TEI) authorisations cannot be presented
as comparable statistics because the introduction of TEI warrants under the IPA established
a new category of authorisation for activity which was previously conducted under
disparate legislation. Because 2018 was a period of transition, the total of TEI warrants
authorised will not reflect the total number of warrants that would have been approved
within the year if the regime had been in place. In other words, some warrants that would
now be TEI warrants will have been property interference warrants under the Police Act
1997 or Intelligence Services Act (ISA) 1994. Therefore, the figure below shows 2019
authorisations only and for UKIC includes applications made under combined warrants.
Figure 32: Targeted equipment interference authorisations for the UK Intelligence
Community and law enforcement agencies, 2019
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
1,071
848
200
0
LEA
UKIC
Targeted communications data (CD)
19.14
As in our 2018 report, we have given a breakdown of the use of communications data in
the chapters covering law enforcement, local authorities and public authorities. A total of
200,665 requests to obtain communications data were approved in 2019, including UKIC.
Communications data requests continue to be the most voluminous of the authorisations
for covert powers. As in previous years, the greatest number of applications were made by
law enforcement. A full break down of approved CD requests by organisation is also given
in Annex D.
19.15
As shown in the previous chapters, CD applications are used to request one or more data
items. Unfortunately, the systems used to process that data are not able to provide precise
statistics and we believe that there is a margin of error of around 10% on the number of
data items obtained. However, the nature of our oversight means that this does not reduce
the level of confidence that we have in the compliance of those authorities. In the region of
three quarters of a million CD items were obtained in 2019.