2012 Annual Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner
random sampling which may impact on other applications, the public authority is tasked to
identify the other applications which contain the same error / fault. Therefore, although the
random sampling may only pick up one error, this will lead to all error instances of that type being
investigated and reported.
Following each inspection a detailed report is prepared and this outlines, inter alia, what level
of compliance has been achieved with the Act and Code of Practice. I have sight of all of the
inspection reports in order to discharge properly my oversight functions. Where necessary, an
action plan will accompany the report which specifies the areas that require remedial action. A
traffic light system (red, amber, green) has been adopted for the recommendations to enable public
authorities to prioritise the areas where remedial action is necessary. Any red recommendations
are of immediate concern as they mainly involve serious breaches and/or non-compliance with
the Act or Code of Practice which could leave the public authority vulnerable to challenge. The
amber recommendations represent non-compliance to a lesser extent; however remedial action
must still be taken in these areas as they could potentially lead to serious breaches. The green
recommendations represent good practice or areas where the efficiency and effectiveness of
the process could be improved. A copy of the report is sent to the head of the public authority
concerned, e.g. the Chief Constable in the case of a police force or the Chief Executive in the
case of a local authority. They are required to confirm, within a prescribed time period, that the
recommendations have been implemented or outline the progress they have made to achieve
the recommendations.
7.3 Communications Data Requests
During the reporting year public authorities as a whole, submitted 570,135 notices and
authorisations for communications data. The intelligence agencies, police forces and other law
enforcement agencies are still the principal users of communications data. It is important to
recognise that public authorities often make many requests for communications data in the
course of a single investigation, so the total figure does not indicate the number of individuals or
addresses targeted. Those numbers are not readily available, but would be much smaller.
Figure 7 illustrates that the number of requests submitted in 2012 represents an approximate
15% increase on 2011.
26