MR JUSTICE BURTON
Approved Judgment
Chief of MI6 and the Director of GCHQ. Save in exceptional circumstances, an
interception warrant cannot be issued except under the hand of the Secretary of
State, who will be the Home Secretary for the purposes of MI5, and the Foreign
Secretary for the purposes of MI6 and GCHQ.
65.
There are two kinds of interception warrants, a s.8(1) warrant, which can be
described as a ‘targeted warrant’, with which these complaints and this judgment do
not deal, and a s.8(4) warrant, which can be described as an ‘untargeted’ warrant or
‘strategic’ warrant (by reference to the similar monitoring considered in Weber) or,
because of the provision in sub-section 8(4)(b) below, a ‘certificated’ warrant. S.8
reads as follows:
“8 Contents of warrants.
(1) An interception warrant must name or describe either—
(a) one person as the interception subject; or
(b) a single set of premises as the premises in relation to
which the interception to which the warrant relates is to take
place.
(2) The provisions of an interception warrant describing
communications the interception of which is authorised or
required by the warrant must comprise one or more schedules
setting out the addresses, numbers, apparatus or other factors,
or combination of factors, that are to be used for identifying the
communications that may be or are to be intercepted.
(3) Any factor or combination of factors set out in accordance
with subsection (2) must be one that identifies communications
which are likely to be or to include—
(a) communications from, or intended for, the person named
or described in the warrant in accordance with subsection
(1); or
(b) communications originating on, or intended for
transmission to, the premises so named or described.
(4) Subsections (1) and (2) shall not apply to an interception
warrant if—
(a) the description of communications to which the warrant
relates confines the conduct authorised or required by the
warrant to conduct falling within subsection (5); and
(b) at the time of the issue of the warrant, a certificate
applicable to the warrant has been issued by the Secretary of
State certifying—