All posts in the topic Who guards the guardians? (Short link)
[Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?]
There's been some fuss in the press about the fact that Poole Council has used
the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 to snoop on its residents. Back
in January (29th) I sent the following FOIA request to Newham Council:
"Has the London Borough of Newham been empowered to obtain communications data
pursuant to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000?
If so, since the above mentioned Act can into force, how many times has the
Authority used such powers as outlined in the Act to obtain communications data
and how many individuals have had their communications data intercepted?"
On the 6th Feb I got the following response:
"We write with regard to your recent enquiry for information held by the
Council under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The
information requested is:
1. Are we authorised under the Act? The answer to this is "yes".
2. How many times have we exercised powers? To which the answer is that we
have served notices to obtain communications data on 28 occasions since 1st
January 2006. We do not retain any data older than this.
3. How many individuals have had their communications data intercepted? To
this, the technically correct answer is "none". This is because communications
data is not the kind of data that can be intercepted; it would be the
communications content that could be intercepted and Local Authorities are not
authorised to do this. We don't actually know how many individuals we have
sought communications data for, in fact that is often the purpose of our
issuing the notice. For example, we may suspect that one person is using
several different mobile phones and several different aliases and the purpose
of our investigation is to seek evidence that it is indeed just one person
rather than several. For this reason, it is impossible to answer the second
part of this question.
To put this into context:
An example of communications data could be the name or address of a subscriber
of a particular mobile phone number. It could also be a list of the phone
numbers that the handset has dialled or texted within a specified period. This
kind of data is sitting on the Communications Service Provider's database (e.g.
billing or customer service system) and is not therefore an intercept.
Obtaining this kind of data is within our power, under certain circumstances,
but I stress again that it is not an intercept.
Communications content is what is data actually contained within a text
message/email (i.e. the message itself or the email addresses to which a
message was sent) or involves "listening in" and/or recording an actual phone
conversation. This type of activity is not within the power of the Local
Authority. It is generally the security services and police who conduct such
operations and each intercept must be authorised by the Secretary of State."
It's nice to get things put into context.
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