Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner - July 2016
provides clarity on these matters and the interception agencies and warrant issuing
departments should work with the Home Office and the Commissioners from the current
oversight bodies to achieve this. The agencies should also take steps to reinforce with
transcribers and operational teams the importance of identifying promptly when a subject
of interest is not using a particular identifier, ensuring that the interception is suspended
and cancelled immediately and that such instances are reported to IOCCO.
Error statistics
6.90 The total number of interception errors reported to IOCCO during 2015 was 62.
The breakdown of the causes of the errors is contained in Figure 5.
6.91 Some 76% of the errors were attributable to the interception agencies and 13%
to the CSPs when giving effect to interception warrants.
6.92 The remaining 11% of the interception errors were caused by CSPs providing
police forces with the content of communications when only communications data
under Chapter 2 of Part 1 were required or contraventions of section 1(5) of RIPA, for
example, where police forces did not have the necessary authority in place to access
stored communications (see sections 2(7) and 2(8) of RIPA for definition of stored
communications).
6.93 Figure 5 shows that 81% of reported errors fell into three key categories: section
15/16 safeguards breaches, failure to cancel interception or interception of the incorrect
identifier. This is an almost identical pattern to 2014.
Section 15/16 safeguards breaches
6.94 Some 35% of the errors constituted breaches of the section 15/16 safeguards.
The majority of errors in this category fell into three distinct areas and some examples of
these errors are given here.
6.95 Over-collection. These were generally technical software or hardware errors that
caused over-collection of intercepted material and related communications data. Where
errors are caused by a single technical fault there may be multiple consequences (e.g.
large volumes of material erroneously collected). In some of these cases the material and
data contained details of individuals’ private communications, whereas in other cases the
material contained communications that were not personal in nature (for example, machine
to machine). These errors can take a number of months to investigate and generally
the cause of the error or system malfunction is identified and completely resolved. A
significant amount of work is undertaken to implement measures to prevent recurrence
and in some cases periodic sampling and checking procedures were implemented to
enhance the interception agency’s ability to monitor and detect such errors. In all cases
steps are taken immediately to ensure that the erroneous material and data is deleted.
38
@iocco_oversight