Telegraph article on RIP

[Roland Perry]

In article <48481586.26231.A9B484@davidh.spidacom.co.uk>, David Hansen 
<davidh@spidacom.co.uk> writes
>On 5 Jun 2008 at 15:42, Roland Perry wrote:
>
>> I never said that DPA did. But maintaining the balance of power between
>> threats of court orders, or release under DPA was not, in my view, in
>> the public interest.
>
>Who said anything about keeping things as they were?

The change that was introduced was RIPA Pt1 Ch2. - and later very 
similar powers in the Social Security Fraud Act, see insertion (2E).

We all know it's not to your liking.

>> I'm afraid you are mistaken there. CSPs who frequently got these
>> requests had lists of at least a dozen commonly used legacy powers (for
>> staff training purposes).
>
>And the number of these "legacy" "powers" which have been exterminated
>is?

The RIPA regime has removed the possibility of them being used for 
acquiring telecoms data, but they still persist for all other kinds of 
enquiry to which they can validly be applied, which might include such 
things as powers to get copies of your water bill; whatever might assist 
the investigators with the power. To give you some examples which I'm 
sure would apply to most of the legacy powers (but are probably not 
listed in them as assiduously) I quote below the laundry list in the 
SSFA:

(a) any bank;
(b) any person carrying on a business the whole or a significant part of
      which consists in the provision of credit (whether secured or
      unsecured) to members of the public;
(c) any insurance company (within the meaning of the Insurance Companies
      Act 1982 (c. 50));
(d) any credit reference agency (within the meaning given by section
      145(8) of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 (c. 39));
(e) any body the principal activity of which is to facilitate the
      exchange of information for the purpose of preventing or detecting
      fraud;
(f) any person carrying on a business the whole or a significant part of
      which consists in the provision to members of the public of a
      service for transferring money from place to place;
(g) any water undertaker or sewerage undertaker, any water and sewerage
      authority constituted under section 62 of the Local Government etc.
      (Scotland) Act 1994 (c. 39) or any authority which is a collecting
      authority for the purposes of section 79 of that Act;
(h) any person who (within the meaning the Gas Act 1986 (c. 44))
      supplies gas conveyed through pipes;
(i) any person who (within the meaning of the Electricity Act 1989
      (c. 29)) supplies electricity conveyed by distribution systems;
(j) any person who provides a telecommunications service;
(k) any person conducting any educational establishment or institution;
(l) any body the principal activity of which is to provide services in
      connection with admissions to educational establishments or
      institutions;
(m) the Student Loans Company;
(n) any servant or agent of any person mentioned in any of the preceding
      paragraphs.
-- 
Roland Perry