Report of the Intelligence Services Commissioner for 2005-2006 published at last
The long awaited Report of the Intelligence Services Commissioner for 2005-2006 (.pdf 10 pages) has now been published.
The accompanying letter by the outgoing Intelligence Services Commissioner Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, presenting the report to the Prime Minister Tony Blair is dated 12th December 2006
There is nothing at all controversial in the public version of this slim report, with the number of intelligence agency interception and other property interference warrants being reported in the confidential appendix, as has been the case in all the previous five reports.
Page 1 of the Report is headed "Annual Report of the Intelligence Services Commissioner for 2004", which is presumably a copy and paste error from the previous report, where the functions of the various intelligence services and RIPa are described, taking up 5 pages i.e. more than half of the actual content of the report.
There is the customary statement about the professionalism and dedication of the civil servants and others who the Commissioner has inspected or has met with.
There is a small titbit of information about successful appeals to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal
38. During 2005 the Investigatory Powers Tribunal made a determination in favour of two complainants who lodged a joint complaint. This is the first time that the Tribunal has upheld a complaint. On the grounds of confidentiality, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal Rules 2000 prohibits me from disclosing specific details about the complaint, but it is sufficient to say that the conduct complained of was not authorized in accordance with the relevant provisions of RIPA nor was it a complaint against any of the agencies or persons whose conduct I have been responsible for reviewing. The Tribunal ordered payment of an award of compensation to the complainants and the respondents to destroy the relevant records as provided for by section 67(7) of RIPA.
Why are they so unnecessarily secretive ? Perhaps this is really the first case in which the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled in favour of the complainant(s), rather than the only judgement which they have made public, regarding an ex-policeman disability pension directed surveillance dispute ruling, IPT/03/32/H (.pdf).
Why has it taken so long for this entirely bland and uninformative report to be made public ?
Comments
Wasn't the Tribunal case mentioned that of Chief Superintendent Ali Dizaei, legal adviser to the National Black Police Association (NBPA)?
Posted by: Ian Brown | February 20, 2007 7:33 AM
@ Ian - probably a different case, since both this report and that of Sir Swinton Thomas, the Interception of Communications Commissioner (see later blog postings), who both have an almost identical paragraph about the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, mentioning complainants plural for the one case.
Of course it could be that the police officer and his professional association were the joint complainants.
Wasn't the Dizaei case ruled on in 2006, rather than in 2005 ?
Posted by: wtwu | February 20, 2007 8:17 AM