International Law

Home Office summary of responses to the public consultation on "Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000: Consolidating orders and codes of practice"

The Home Office has published its summary of the responses to the public consultation Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000: Consolidating orders and codes of practice (1.7Mb .pdf) which ran from April to July.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000: consolidating orders and codes of practice - responses to the consultation (269Kb .pdf) says that:

The 222 respondents comprised:

• 104 local authorities;
• 9 local authority associations;
• 10 law enforcement bodies;
• 9 other public authorities;
• 6 legal reform or scrutiny bodies;
• 5 communications service providers;
• 3 training organisations;
• 2 housing agencies;
• 2 oversight commissioners (the Chief Surveillance Commissioner and the Interception of Communications Commissioner);
• 68 members of the public (of whom 27 had experience of working with RIPA); and
• 4 other NGOs with interests in the prosecution of offenders, waste management, computing and children's rights.

Spy Blog raised the following issues in response to this public consultation, with little success:

1) Mandatory use of strong Encryption should be explicit in the Regulations and Codes of Practice

2) Automatic Number Plate Recognition data needs to be brought within the RIPA framework

3) Sub-division of "Communications Data" to now include a separate Location Based Services data category

4) All Local Authorities should have their Intrusive Surveillance and Covert Human Intelligence Source powers removed. Access to Subscriber Details should continue, but no LA access to Location Based Services data.

5) The abuse of Children as Covert Human Intelligence Sources

Full post as published by Spy Blog on November 05, 2009 (boomark / email).