Report of the Independent Surveillance Review
5.10
99
With regards to the capabilities of the SIAs, the Committee found that ‘GCHQ’s bulk
interception is a valuable capability that should remain available to them’,8 and was
satisfied that ‘current legislative arrangements and practice are designed to prevent
innocent people’s communications being read’.9 However, it also acknowledged that
‘the time has come for much greater openness and transparency regarding the Agencies’
work’.10 In this vein, the report avowed intrusive capabilities of the SIAs that had
previously only been ‘implicitly authorised’ under existing legislation, such as the use of
ICT operations against targets overseas and the acquisition of bulk personal data sets.
The Investigatory Powers Review
5.11
As part of the unveiling of DRIPA 2014 in July 2014, the home secretary announced
that the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, would be
appointed to review the operation and regulation of investigatory powers. The review
was given statutory force in Section 7 of DRIPA 2014.
5.12
Under his terms of reference, Anderson was asked to look at whether or not the UK
required new legislation and, in particular, whether Part 1 of RIPA 2000 (which deals both
with interception and with communications data) needed to be amended or replaced. He
was also tasked to examine transparency requirements and the effectiveness of current
statutory oversight arrangements.
5.13
Anderson delivered his report to the prime minister in May 2015, and the government
published it in full in June. Anderson is critical of RIPA 2000, describing it as ‘obscure since
its inception’, having been ‘patched up so many times as to make it incomprehensible to
all but a tiny band of initiates. A multitude of alternative powers, some of them without
statutory safeguards, confuse the picture further. This state of affairs is undemocratic,
unnecessary and – in the long run – intolerable’.11 Anderson agrees with the ISC that a
‘comprehensive and comprehensible new law should be drafted from scratch, replacing
the multitude of current powers and providing for clear limits and safeguards on any
intrusive power that it may be necessary for public authorities to use’.12
5.14
One of the most radical recommendations in the report, as the author himself
acknowledges, was that all warrants (including a new type of ‘bulk warrant’) should
be authorised by judicial commissioners, rather than the secretary of state. Noting
that secretaries of state are rarely, if ever, held politically accountable for the issue of
warrants, Anderson believes that a system of judicial warrants would help improve public
confidence. Having taken evidence from a number of US companies, he also suggests this
Ibid., p. 33.
Ibid., p. 112.
Ibid., p. 120.
David Anderson, A Question of Trust: Report of the Investigatory Powers Review [Anderson
Report] (London: The Stationery Office, 2015), p. 8.
12. Ibid., p. 4.
8.
9.
10.
11.