Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner - July 2016
months. Where a CSP has a business need and justification to retain data for longer, they
may do so. Generally the amount of data acquired that is older than one year does, to a
certain extent, reflect the fact that public authorities do not make applications for data
they understand to no longer be retained by a CSP.
Figure 11 Items of data by age of the data at the point of acquisition and by period of data
requested
number of items (logrithmic scale)
100,000
10,000
1,000
age
100
period
10
0
30
90
180
365
age or period of data in days
7.32 Periods of data requested. Figure 11 also shows the amount of traffic data or
service use information requested. 80% of the requests required data on an identifier for
periods of three months or less (for example, one month of incoming and outgoing call
data). A high volume of data was acquired for a period of less than one day (approximately
20%) and the vast majority of these would be traffic data requests on internet protocol
addresses to determine who was using an internet protocol address at a particular point
in time.
7.33 SPoC & DP scrutiny. 23% of submitted applications were returned to the
applicant by the SPoC for development and a further 6% were declined by the SPoC e.g.
where there was a fundamental reason why the application could not be processed such
as the unavailability of the requested data. 3% of submitted applications were returned
to applicants by DPs for further development and 2% were rejected by DPs (Figure 12).
7.34 Figure 13 shows a breakdown of the reasons why applications were returned
for further development or declined by the SPoC. Almost half were returned for the
applicant to provide further justification as to why it was necessary or proportionate to
acquire the communications data (49%). Other reasons were the SPoC becoming aware
that the data was no longer required or the SPoC identifying errors in the application.
Unfortunately a significant proportion of the reasons specified were unclear (e.g. “other”,
clarity, applicant advised to change).
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