Investigatory Powers Bill (Eighth sitting)

Debate between Gavin Newlands and Victoria Atkins

Committee Debate: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th April 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Joanna Cherry]

My hon. Friend will no doubt agree that, in Scotland at least, it is the police who investigate serious crime, under the direction of the Lord Advocate.

[Victoria Atkins]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gavin Newlands]

The point has been dealt with, and I think we need to move on. The effect of new clause 10 —[Interruption.] I will finish, amid the chuntering. These new clauses require data retention notices to be issued only for specific investigative or operational purposes, to obtain specified data where those data are believed to be of substantial value. We do not believe, however, that the role of communications data in the investigation of crime justifies the Secretary of State’s mandate for blanket retention of historical communications data for the entire population for 12 months.

Investigatory Powers Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Gavin Newlands and Victoria Atkins

Thursday 24th March 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Victoria Atkins]

Q So in those two areas—counter-terrorism and serious organised crime—this legislation could help not just our country, but our neighbours overseas as well.

Richard Berry: Yes, absolutely. From experience, I was involved in running a national operation on human trafficking, and we basically created a dataset from a significant amount of intelligence gained during that national operation over six months. It went straight into the analytical work files within Europol and we were able to map organised criminality right the way back to mainland China in some cases. The added value point, which is what you are making, very much comes from that sharing.

Simon Grunwell: Can I just add to that? A significant thread for us is organised tobacco smuggling, which is international by default. So it can only help.

[Gavin Newlands]

Q Just a follow-up to a question asked in the last panel about ICRs as they relate to mobile devices and third-party apps. You brought up easyJet earlier, and I have got an easyJet app on my phone. As far as I am aware, it creates a lot of ICRs as defined in the Bill. There is no way to differentiate between an ICR that is created manually or automatically by a third-party app. How would that limit the operational effectiveness of ICRs for you?

Chris Farrimond: To go back to my previous answer on this point, from your mobile record—the ICR from that—we would require your provider, Vodafone or whoever, to help us to understand which flight provider you were using. If they came back to us and said, “One of the domain names is easyJet”, we would say, “Thank you very much.” That is what we would expect from Vodafone. We would then go to easyJet and say—with the right authority signed off, obviously, and with the proportionality, necessity and everything that goes with that—“Can you tell us about his travel plans?” They would, hopefully, be able to do precisely that with the data that they hold on their flight details. But as for the actual app, all that we would look for from your provider would be to tell us that you have been making use of easyJet, and that would give us the next point in our investigation.