2012 Annual Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner
A number of CSP disclosures were randomly checked against the records kept by the police
forces and LEAs, and I am pleased to say that in all cases my inspectors were satisfied the correct
process had been applied and the data had been obtained with the approval of a DP. I regard this
as a very important check upon the integrity of the process and it is most reassuring that so far
it has not exposed any instances of abuse or unlawful acquisition of communications data.
The evidence shows that the SPoC process is a robust safeguard. The SPoCs are exercising
their guardian and gatekeeper function responsibly and my inspectors saw ample evidence of
the SPoCs challenging applicants and DPs in cases where they felt the requirements of the Act
had not been met. They also saw ample examples of the SPoCs assisting the DPs to discharge
their statutory duties responsibly. The SPoC has an important responsibility under the Code
of Practice to make sure the public authority acts in an informed and lawful manner. In my
last annual report I was concerned to report that 20% of the police forces, LEAs inspected in
2011 had a lack of staff in their SPoC unit. Regrettably this year my inspectors found that 19%
of the police forces and LEAs were experiencing serious backlogs in dealing with applications
due to a lack of staff. There is a risk that applicants in these public authorities will be hindered
from achieving their investigative objectives because the data is not getting to them quickly
enough. The impact of this upon investigations is incalculable. Amber recommendations have
been made for these public authorities to take the necessary steps to ensure that they have
sufficient trained staff. Furthermore, green recommendations were given to 2 police forces for
the SROs to keep the staffing under continuous review as there appeared to be little resilience.
During the reporting year some of the police forces have taken advantage of the collaboration
provisions in the Policing and Crime Act 2009. It is likely that in the future more police forces will
brigade their SPoC resources into a region and this may assist to resolve some of the resilience
issues, so long as the regional SPoCs are sufficiently resourced.
“The evidence shows that the SPoC process is a robust safeguard……..My
inspectors saw ample evidence of the SPoCs challenging applicants and DPs
in cases where they felt the requirements of the Act had not been met”
My inspectors concluded that the DPs are generally discharging their statutory duties responsibly.
The DPs in 74% of the police forces and LEAs were found to be recording their considerations
to a consistently good standard. It was quite clear that the majority of the DPs were individually
assessing each application, taking on board the advice provided by the SPoC and questioning the
necessity and proportionality of the proposed conduct. The statistics provided to my office this
year show that just under 5500 applications were rejected in 2012 by DPs in police forces and
LEAs. If we suppose that the total number of applications is a third of the number of notices
and authorisations, then it is reasonable to suggest that approximately 3% of all applications
were rejected by the DPs. It is important to make the point that a much larger percentage of
applications will have been refused or returned to the applicants for further development by the
SPoCs prior to them even reaching the DPs.This would be a useful figure to collect in future, but
it is not currently a requirement of the record keeping provisons in the Code of Practice.
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