Foreign and Commonwealth Office
14. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) tightened the rules
governing interception in two key areas: (i) warrants are now required to be
issued against a named individual as opposed to an address or telephone
number, and (ii) the Secretary of State is now explicitly required by the Act to
be content that the action authorised under the warrant is proportionate to the
product of that action.
15. RIPA has not added to the FCO’s workload, but it has reinforced the
existing requirement within the FCO to ensure that warrants from the agencies
requiring the approval of the Foreign Secretary pass strict quality control
criteria. The proportionality requirement leads all involved in providing advice
to the Foreign Secretary to be fully engaged in the warrantry application
process, and in all cases making a firm recommendation based on fully
weighted argument.
Home Office
Advantages
16. The change in warrants from being address specific to being person
specific has eased the burden on the Secretary of State. He has been required to
consider and authorise 1314 warrants in 2001 as opposed to 2080 in 2000. The
task has been removed from the Home Secretary in relation to amending
warrants (modifications) and this is now undertaken by Senior Officials.
17. After initial teething troubles and staff problems the issue of warrants, but
in particular modifications, is now dealt with more speedily. In practice,
however, the rise in applications (approximately 15%) has eaten up a good deal
of the headroom the Home Office expected to be created.
18. All warrants are now authorised for an initial period of three months and
renewed at three monthly intervals (serious crime) and six monthly intervals
(national security and economic well being). This has again reduced the time
staff have had to spend on renewal applications with the consequent saving in
staff time and resources.
19. The provision allowing urgent modifications with a limited lifespan to be
made by a Head of Agency, or nominated deputy who is expressly authorised
by the warrant, has meant a speedier implementation of interception.
20. The fact that agencies are now nominated on a warrant rather than Public
Telephony Operators has meant a considerable saving in paperwork and
administration costs for those in the Home Office who deal with warrantry
applications but significantly increased that of the agencies.
21. The new legislation will enable security, intelligence and law enforcement
agencies to match their investigative techniques with continuously changing
new techniques.
22. The legislation sets out clearly for the first time those agencies permitted
to carry out interception activities.
Disadvantages
23. The Home Office sees no particular disadvantages flowing from RIPA.
Scottish Executive
24. The level of interception in Scotland has increased markedly since the
introduction of RIPA. The main factor for this increase appears to be the
targets’ propensity to change mobile telephones with incredible frequency (for
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