BBC News - 'Fresh proposals' planned over cyber-monitoring

[Roland Perry]

In article <519D42DC.5080800 at zen.co.uk>, Peter Fairbrother 
<zenadsl6186 at zen.co.uk> writes
>It's when they get into more intrusive matters. like phone and internet 
>logs, that more severe restrictions are warranted. The intrusion is 
>different, and more severe - so why not more severe restrictions? Like 
>a Court-issued warrant?
>
>That would cos for the Court time, but it would be balanced by not 
>needing to go through a SPOC for most enquiries.
>
>Might even end up cheaper - suppose Plod get a warrant, costs £800, and 
>get a list of 50 people the suspect called. If a SPOC RDQ enquiry costs 
>£20, a non-SPOC RDQ enquiry costs £2, and a SPOC log enquiry costs 
>£100, that's a saving of £200 overall (I have no idea of the actual 
>costs, but I hope the point is made).

Briefly, the issue is that when it's really important (for example an 
estranged father rings his ex-wife to say he's committing suicide and 
taking the children with him, now) then court orders are too slow.

And if every request required the police and the telco to physically 
attend court (which is likely to be some distance from the telco's HQ) 
and then be required to respond to a non-urgent request in a week rather 
than a month, then the costs would spiral out of control (for all 
parties involved).

>(Hmm - a while ago I called 999 about a fire, and the operator asked if 
>I was calling from <my address>, which I had not told her - do they pay 
>for that RDQ service? Is it different from investigative RDQs? I can't 
>imagine there is a SPOC involved for a 999 call.)

The emergency services are allowed to know where people are calling from 
(including mobiles, which is why so many these days have GPS because 
that's a USA requirement). Perhaps you'd rather wait for them to get a 
court order??
-- 
Roland Perry