Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner - July 2016
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are also relevant to the interests of national security;
in the interests of public safety;
for the purpose of protecting public health;
for the purpose of assessing or collecting any tax, duty, levy or other imposition,
contribution or charge payable to a government department;
for the purpose, in an emergency, of preventing death or injury or any damage
to a person’s physical or mental health, or of mitigating any injury or damage
to a person’s physical or mental health;
to assist investigations into alleged miscarriages of justice;
for the purpose of assisting in identifying any person who has died otherwise
than as a result of crime or who is unable to identify himself because of a
physical or mental condition, other than one resulting from crime (such as a
natural disaster or an accident;
in relation to a person who has died or is unable to identify himself, for the
purpose of obtaining information about the next of kin or other connected
persons of such a person or about the reason for their death or condition; and
for the purpose of exercising functions relating to the regulation of the
financial services and markets or to financial stability.40
7.14 Parliament prescribed restrictions on the statutory purposes for which public
authorities may acquire communications data and also on the type of data that can
be acquired. For example, local authorities can only acquire service use and subscriber
information for the purpose of “preventing or detecting crime or of preventing disorder.”
Annex A provides details of the types of data and the statutory purposes under which
each public authority can acquire that data.
7.15 In order to justify that an application is necessary, the application needs, as a
minimum, to cover three main points and describe the link between them (see Paragraphs
2.37 and 2.38 of the Code of Practice):
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the event under investigation, such as a crime or vulnerable missing person;
the person, such as a suspect or witness, and how they are linked to the event,
and
the communications identifier, such as a telephone number or internet
protocol address, and how the identifier relates to the person and the event.
7.16 Proportionality. A DP is forbidden from approving an application for
communications data unless he believes that obtaining the data in question, by the
conduct authorised or required, is proportionate to what is sought to be achieved by
so obtaining the data. Thus every application to acquire communications data has to
address proportionality explicitly (see Paragraphs 2.39 to 2.45 of the Code of Practice).
40 SI 2015/228 – The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Communications Data) (Amendment) Order 2015.
This statutory purpose was added during 2015 so that the Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential
Regulation Authority may obtain communications data for the purpose of exercising functions relating
to the regulation of financial services and markets or to financial stability.
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