For the last 20 years, Home Secretaries have been signing warrants that allow for the access to the content of intercepted communications and as well as powers of entry, search and seizure for the national security agencies. Not many people object to these powers because the interception, search or entry is in a good cause that protects the public.
But how do we know this? The answer is that the Government has established a number of independent regulators (e.g. Surveillance Commissioner) and an Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) to sort out claims of abuse; this system too has been around now for almost two decades. As I mentioned yesterday’s blog, these Commissioners are appointed by, and report to, the Government whose agents undertake the surveillance.
The IPT replaced the Interception of Communications Tribunal, the Security Service Tribunal, the Intelligence Services Tribunal and the complaints provision of Part III of the Police Act 1997 (concerning police interference with property) in October 2000. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal and Commissioners have thus operated with a number of guises since 1985. This history means that statistics from all the cases heard by these Tribunals can be compiled from the various annual reports published on the web (and from Parliamentary Questions – see Hansard, 20 Jun 2005: Column 767W for example).
In summary, I calculate that there has been about 1,700-1,800 cases before these Tribunals concerning the alleged misuse of powers. Only three cases have been resolved in favour of the complainant, and two of these were in the 2008. This means there has been an overall dismissal rate for complaints of about 99.80% in total.
Pause a moment to consider that 99.80% number. Ask yourself two questions, the first being “would you use a complaints procedure that had a 0.2% chance of success?”. If you answered “No”, this implies that a number of putative complainants are unlikely to their waste time in using these formal complaints channels. The second question is “whether a 99.80% figure is credible?”. To assist the reader, in this analysis, it is useful to assess other figures around this level – for example, the 99.96% approval rating that Saddam Hussein obtained in his 2002 re-election as President of Iraq springs to mind.
That’s enough of statistics! However, I do think these numbers point to the lack of a credible complaints procedure which risks engendering mistrust in those who wield these wide ranging powers.
Chris - I wrote about how this situation might be improved at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1261192
Posted by: Ian Brown | 11/09/2009 at 08:50 AM