The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), , gained royal assent on the 28th July 2000. The law gives the government and public authorities the ability to intercept personal communication – both online and hard copy – as well as account information, service use information and traffic information.

Account information/subscriber information includes, for example, who is the owner of the mobile number [insert]. Service use information includes IP login history, calls and duration of calls from a device or traces on SIM cards. Traffic information includes ‘live monitoring’ of a mobile when switched on or monitoring mail and postage to a specified address.

Many of the powers within the main legislation fall into the jurisdiction of the Secretary of State however states that ‘for the purposes of the grant of authorisations for conduct in Northern Ireland shall be exercisable by the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland’.

In the ‘2013 Annual Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner’, a report produced for Prime Minister David Cameron which can be viewed , outlines an independent analysis of RIPA and states that ‘2760 interception warrants (to access content of communications) were authorised in 2013, a reduction of 19% on the previous year’. The report also makes several references to the ‘Snowden allegations’

Annex B of this detailed report is of interest as it examines the total authorisations by individual public authorities. The PSNI had authorised 6,395 data comm. interceptions in 2013. However, RIPA is not only for the use law enforcement against suspected criminality but also for use against everyday citizens of Northern Ireland.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) had authorised 118 data comm. interceptions in 2013, Royal Mail had 119 and, on a far smaller scale, the Department of Environment (NI) had one. There is a number of departments that did not apply for any authorisations during last year, including the Northern Ireland Prison Service, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Health and Social Care Business Association.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act recently came back into the spotlight due to the ‘Vodafone disclosure’ – a issued by the phone network after it was uncovered that spy agencies and governments have ‘direct access’ to the company phone lines and customer data, with ‘no warrants required’.

“(DETI) had authorised 118 data comm. interceptions in 2013, Royal Mail had 119 and, on a far smaller scale, the Department of Environment (NI) had one”

Techdirt.com that “Direct access, as revealed by Vodafone, not only allows governments real-time access to enormous quantities of private communications data, but does so in a way that hides the fact that the interception is taking place at all, even to the companies involved. As Vodafone notes, introducing the requirement for a warrant for all such interception would make it much easier for companies to resist, alert the public to the sheer scale of the surveillance being carried upon them, and probably act as a natural brake on governments. Direct access to the network represents a huge exacerbation of the dangers of government surveillance: it is simply too easy to “collect it all.”

The disclosure by Vodafone, in relation specifically to the United Kingdom, stated that ‘any Secretary of State can issue an intercept warrant where the Secretary of State in question believes it is necessary in the interests of national security, for the purpose of preventing or detecting serious crime or for the purpose of safeguarding the economic well-being of the United Kingdom’.

Jason Murdock

You can check out the disclosure hub here or use the hastag #disclosurereport

There is a large number of public bodies that apply for authorisation. Here is one snippet from the report, please do note that not all are NI based as the findings are UK wide.

Jason Murdock Jason Murdock is the Editor of Off The Record and a blogger for the Huffington Post. Interests include local politics, new journalism and the quest for the Holy Grail. Contact: jason.a.murdock@gmail.com or via Twitter @Jason_A_Murdock More Posts - Website Follow Me:



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