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BIG BROTHER WATCH AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
(b) Acquisition of communications data under Chapter II of RIPA
189. According to the report, police forces and law enforcement
agencies were responsible for acquiring ninety-three percent of the total
number of items of data in 2016, six percent was acquired by intelligence
services and the remaining one percent was acquired by other public
authorities, including local authorities. Fifty percent of the data acquired
was subscriber information, forty-eight percent was traffic data and
two percent service use information. Most of the acquired items of data
(eighty-one percent) related to telephony, such as landlines or mobile
phones. Internet identifiers, for example email or IP addresses, accounted
for fifteen percent of the acquired data and two percent of requests were
related to postal identifiers.
190. With regard to the purpose of the request, eighty-three percent of
the items of data were acquired for the purpose of preventing or detecting
crime or preventing disorder; eleven percent were acquired for the purpose
of preventing death or injury or damage to a person’s mental health, or of
mitigating any injury or damage to a person’s physical or mental health; and
six percent were acquired in the interests of national security.
191. Furthermore, approximately seventy percent of data requests were
for data less than three months old, twenty-five percent aged between three
months and one year, and six percent for data over twelve months old.
Eighty-one percent of the requests required data for a communications
address for periods of three months or less (for example, three months of
incoming and outgoing call data for a communications address). Twentyfive percent of all requests were for data relating to a period of less than one
day.
192. Twenty-seven percent of submitted applications were returned to
the applicant by the Single Point of Contact (“SPoC”) for development and
a further five percent were declined by the SPoC. Reasons for refusing data
applications included: lack of clarity; failure to link the crime to the
communications address; and insufficient justification for collateral
intrusion. Four percent of submitted applications were returned to applicants
by designated persons for further development and one percent was
rejected. The main reason for designated persons returning or rejecting
applications was that they were not satisfied with the necessity or
proportionality justifications given (fifty-two percent). A significant number
of applications were returned because designated persons were not satisfied
with the overall quality or clarity of the application (twenty-one percent).
Other reasons for rejection included the designated persons declaring that
they were not independent of the investigation and requesting that the
application be forwarded to an independent designated person for
consideration (six percent).
193. In 2016 forty-seven public authorities advised that they had made a
total of 948 applications that related to persons who were members of