"Warrants authorising phone taps treble"

[Roland Perry]

In article <479F0C35.26684.8F715F@davidh.spidacom.co.uk>, David Hansen
<davidh@spidacom.co.uk> writes
>"Warrants authorising phone taps treble" is the headline of the story
>at <http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/latestnews/Warrants-authorising-phone-taps-.3719187.jp>
>
>More interestingly the story continues, "THE number of warrants
>authorising spy operations north of the Border have almost trebled,
>according to new statistics released yesterday.

        "His annual report revealed the former Scottish Executive issued
        164 warrants to authorise spy operations in the last nine months
        of 2006 - an average of 18.2 per month. That compared with 102
        in the previous 15 months - the equivalent of 6.8 each month.

Compared to 253k (sic) [1] in England, this number appears to be a
bargain!

I'm guessing, but I would first look at the changes to public
authorities that happened during this time period, for example the shift
from NCIS/NCS (and HMC&E investigations) to SOCA, and any related shift
of responsibility for issuing warrants that might have occurred.

An extra 32 warrants per year is also rather small to be statistically
significant, a couple of big enquiries might cause a blip that big. Of
course, what with the Glasgow airport ram-raid, the recent figures might
be even higher :(

It will be interesting to see the report, which is due around now and is
clearly what's triggered these news reports.

[1] notwithstanding the apparent conflation, a reduction on the previous
     period
-- 
Roland Perry