Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner - July 2016
Statistical limitations in main report
Items of data (Paragraph 7.22). Where a public authority has only been able to provide figures (such as
the total number of items of data acquired) for 3 quarters of 2015 (due to the fact that the new statistical
requirements did not come into effect until the end of the first quarter), this figure has been projected by
simply multiplying it by 1.333 recurring.
By type of data under section 21(4) of RIPA (Paragraph 7.23). This breakdown excludes 3 public authorities
who were unable to accurately breakdown items of data acquired under the urgent oral procedures.
By data description (identifier) (Paragraph 7.24). This breakdown excludes 8 public authorities who were
unable to provide this breakdown down either at all, or for items relating to the urgent oral procedures.
Person type (Paragraph 7.29). These figures are based on a partial sample of 664,848 items of data. The
remaining items (c.100,000 items) were not categorised by public authorities. This was due either to staff
omitting to categorise or the system not being configured to capture this information. In many instances
(c.30,000 items) the omission is confined to the items of data acquired during the urgent oral process. Given
the fact that the majority of urgent oral requests related to tracing vulnerable missing persons, it is likely that
the vulnerable person category would be of parity with the victim and associate categories.
Age of items of data requested (Paragraph 7.30). The analysis provided in the main report is based on a
partial sample of 96,292 items of data submitted by 40 public authorities where the figures equalled the total
items of data acquired and therefore are considered to be reliable. The remaining public authorities were
unable to provide reliable figures for a number of reasons, for example:
•
those utilising one of the major application workflow systems could only produce an average
figure per application rather than a value for each individual item;
•
a large number of items did not have a date recorded against them and so it was not possible
for an age to be calculated (e.g. the request was simply for ‘current subscriber information’);
•
some public authorities had not captured this statistical information in acquisitions undertaken
outside the main workflow system (e.g. under the urgent oral process)
•
5 public authorities were utilising a workflow system during the reporting period which was not
configured to capture this information at all.
Periods of data acquired (Paragraph 7.31). For similar reasons to those given in the preceding category,
the analysis in the report is based on a partial sample of 104,182 items acquired by 39 public authorities.
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